WARC Parks on the Air!
WARCPOTA rules
WARCPOTA Score Sheet
WARCPOTA Presentation
Time to talk about one of those OTA events! Wait. I did this already. Just kidding, just kidding, we are here to talk about a club POTA event that will be taking place. I know, we did one this spring to try and activate from all the PWC parks, and it was tons of fun, and of course the thought is, lets do this again. I am thinking annually, but we shall see. That event is NOT what I am talking about. One of our members told me that they had a lot of fun, but it would be even better if it were a competition, to which I thought, YES.
And with that, WARCPOTA (Woodbridge Amateur Radio Club POTA) was born!
My thought process for how things should be laid out and the rules for the competition. My brain set off at a sprint on ideas on how to make it more fun, which means more rules, but then I set out to simplify as best I can, but hey, any part of it can be changed, especially if it can make it better for the contestants, so feel free to send ideas. My head is kind of a convoluted mess with all kinds of ideas on things that can be done, so hopefully I can give some insight to you guys to see how I got to where I did.
I am extra at times and I know it. A lot of competitions are very similar, you know, 1 point for high power, 2 for low, and 3 for QRP, or 1 for voice, 2 for digital and CW, things like that. So I wanted to incorporate something different, still give incentive for lower power, so I came up with the wacky idea of for every watt below a certain threshold counts as an extra point for each contact as an incentive.
This past event, we got out to 8 parks, which I thought was a fantastic turnout. If we kept the contest to the club and people combined into larger groups, we may end up with only 1, 2, or 3 scores submitted. Fun to go out and play, but terrible bragging rights. I like to brag, and if I win a competition, I would rather I not be a shoe in. I was trying to come up with ways for people to want to avoid activating the same parks, but still have a bonus to teaming up with someone who might be mic shy.
Also, I wanted to give an incentive for people to leave the area to participate, but more important, I would love to gain participation from our out of state members. We can use more members, and this could be an extra kick to get some to join or at least remain members after moving.
An incentive to check in where you will be right before the competition so that we all don’t step on each other is good. We have ways to reach each other, but it would be good to get out the word right before the competition.
I want all the logs to be submitted by a certain time, and since it is still POTA, there is also incentive to make sure that your log gets uploaded to Parks on the Air. I am still not quite sure that everyone from the last event submitted their logs, if you are one of them, shame on you, you know who you are!
This criteria leaves things kind of a mess, and then the question comes up, should it be just a club contest, or a world contest. My brain melted to work through these issues, but I think I did it, and even have a couple cool awards for participants.
Lets pass around the rules that I have printed out and go over what is a the heart of the WARCPOTA contest. I will send it out on the reflector so those online will be able to see them too. If you want to try and follow along, you can, but it may get confusing for a bit, but hopefully it will get easier to understand in the end. There is a lot to unpack, so lets do this. First of all, it is POTA, follow all POTA rules, you can be either activator or a hunter. There are bonus points and multipliers for being in a park, but just wanted to be clear, ANYBODY can participate in any way that POTA allows. The contest will be held on the second Saturday of October, (in 2025 this is the 11th from 1PM to 5PM, basically 6 months from when we had the last event, but a little later in the day to get more people in the west.
The only real difference from POTA in terms of logging is that Woodbridge Wireless members will add call sign extension so that we can tell if we got a member or not. Members will add a slash and the state that you are located in, and add an ‘X’ to that if that is outside of the state that you live in. So if I were to activate a park in Pennsylvania, I would use ‘KN4AHN/PAX’. This makes this competition more difficult, sure, but since I wanted to encourage us to contact each other, this makes the overall scoring easier, in my head anyway.
Which brings us to the second most important part of any competition, the scoring! It’s the most important thing for winning, for those of you that were wondering. I wanted to make every watt count, so the scores are calculated by subtracting the maximum power wattage that you use from 100 if on Phone, 50 on CW, and 50 on Digital for times the number of contacts made. This adds a flair that might make people think a little about their power level. If you run full power on Phone, that means zero points. If you run with an amp, that means negative points. There is an award for the worst score, it would be wild if we had a couple folks battling it out for something like that.
On top of the points, I included Multipliers in this competition just to make things really difficult. If you guys haven’t figured it out by now, I wasn’t kidding about being extra, and everything about this makes it show more and more. There is a times three multiplier for signing into the 2 meter repeater (147.24 + Mhz, 107.2 Hz pl) in the hour prior to the contest with the park number that you will be activating. This way we can all know where we are operating from and who is participating if you do not already know. I was told that this is unfair to those that are out of the area, the examples used were Kansas and Europe, but to be honest, there are not many parks that you can activate from that CAN reach the repeater. This means that Echolink will be utilized, and I don’t know anything about Fusion or WiresX, but if they are like Echolink, then that would leave a few ways that people can remote into the repeater and gain this multiplier. Then there is a multiplier for each park you activate, so if you hit a 2fer or a 3fer or are a rover hitting multiple parks, also multipliers for Park to Park contacts, and one for each Woodbridge Wireless members contacted.
At this point in the scoring is where I really decided to step off the deep end. I wanted to encourage member spreading out, and also to get our members that have moved and still support the club a good reason to join us on the air. The members that no longer live in the area will get a times five multiplier for reaching any Woodbridge Wireless member, and a times three multiplier for any park contacted. They could really run away with the points if they decide to jump in and have fun. To keep from having only a couple large groups from our club participating, if there is another station and operator that activates from the park you are in, your score will be halved. And that is for each additional station, so if you are one of three stations that activates from the same park, your score with only be one quarter of what it would have been. If you are activating multiple parks, make sure there isn’t another station in any of them! That being said, if you run a ‘pass the mic’ operation with multiple operators on one radio, there is a 50% bonus for each operator that is activating. Meaning if you have 100 points and 3 additional operators, you end up with 250 points, and they don’t even have to have the same contacts as you. This will ensure that new members, or those without the gear can get out and have some fun on the air too!
That is it for the competition, but there is one last opportunity to adjust your score. I said in the beginning that my ideas make a convoluted mess, and I wasn’t kidding! With that in mind, I tried to simplify it as much as I could by making an easy-ish to follow spreadsheet. For the most part, all you need to do is input you and your station information, what the maximum power you were running for the different modes, and how many Woodbridge Wireless members you contacted. So long as everyone uses the call sign extensions it should be just scrolling through your log and counting. The spreadsheet can on the club website will automatically calculate the score for the contest and send it in. I started a WARCPOTA gmail account to send it to, and it just needs sent in by the end of October. I mentioned one last opportunity to adjust the score. If your log gets submitted on October 19th, you will get an additional 2 times multiplier. Unless you have bad luck. I had to throw in one curveball to the competition, and that is if you are the LAST submission on the 19th, then you will receive negative 5000 points instead of the multiplier. Is it a risk worth taking? Only time will tell. Just send in your log, the WARCPOTA Score Sheet, call sign in the subject with hunter if you did not activate a park, as well as uploading your log to POTA. If it does not show that you were at the park you stated, the submission will be discarded. There is special scoring that I will have to do for out of state members because that was getting hard to figure out on the spreadsheet, but I will happily figure them out. That is all that needs to be done. I would like a picture of your setup so others can see, but not required.
Confused? I get it, there is a lot going on and I did not make this simple in any way, so let me see if I can clear it up some for everyone left scratching your heads. Bottom line, if you want to participate, then set up at home or at a park on October 11th from 1 to 5 PM just like you would for Parks on the Air. Keep your power as low as you reasonably can and have fun. To make scoring bonus points easier, add the call sign extension on your call with the state you are located in (W4IY/VA). The spreadsheet that I made up should do all the scoring for you once you fill it in after the competition. There are extra bonus points to snag, but if you want simple, that hopefully helps.
Now that operating, scoring and submitting are covered, time for the important stuff. Bragging rights. We have four award categories and they are, Highest activator score in Virginia, Highest activator score outside of Virginia, Highest hunter score, and the coveted ‘Worst score of the competition’. I have not decided on prizes, but I will let you know this. The worst score will be getting the grand prize. Just remember, POTA is not a competition. Neither is Field Day, but now you have points for both.
Any Questions?
George, KN4AHN
