Parks on the Air (POTA) Logging with Ham Radio Deluxe

Parks on the Air (POTA) has become one of the most popular activities in amateur radio — and it's easy to see why. It combines the challenge of portable radio operation with the simple pleasure of getting outdoors. Whether you're setting up a station at a national park and working a pile-up of hunters, or sitting at your home station chasing activators from around the country, POTA offers something for every operator. Ham Radio Deluxe is built to support both sides of the program, with dedicated POTA fields, a built-in park reference database, and the logbook tools you need to get your activation log uploaded correctly.

What Is Parks on the Air?

Parks on the Air is an international amateur radio award program that encourages licensed operators to visit and operate portable equipment from parks, wildlife areas, forests, and other public lands. The program began in early 2017 after the ARRL's National Parks on the Air special event ended — a group of volunteers wanted to keep it going, and the response from the ham radio community was overwhelming. By 2018, POTA had become a nonprofit organization. Today it spans the globe, with over 49,000 active hunters and 29,000 activators participating worldwide.The growth numbers are striking. POTA logged roughly 40% more QSOs in 2025 than in 2023, making it one of the fastest-growing segments of amateur radio. On any given day, hundreds of activators are on the air simultaneously from parks across North America, Europe, Asia, and beyond.

Activators and Hunters — How POTA Works

POTA has two types of participants. Activators are operators who travel to a designated POTA park, set up a portable station, and make contacts from within the park boundaries. Hunters are operators who contact activators from home, mobile, or any other location. Both roles earn awards, and both are essential — without hunters, an activator can't build a log, and without activators, hunters have nobody to chase.

To qualify as a valid activation, an activator must complete a minimum of 10 contacts within a single UTC day from within the park boundaries. Contacts can be made on any amateur band and mode — HF, VHF, UHF, SSB, CW, FT8, RTTY, and others all count. Land repeater contacts do not count, but satellite contacts do. The activator must then upload their log to pota.app in ADIF format to receive activation credit and to give hunters their credit.

Hunters don't submit logs — they receive credit automatically when an activator uploads a log containing their callsign. A hunter can work the same activator on multiple bands and modes in the same UTC day, with each unique band/mode combination counting as a separate contact.

A particularly prized contact is a Park-to-Park (P2P) — when two activators, each operating from their own POTA park, work each other. P2P contacts earn special credit for both operators and are a highlight of any activation.

Getting Started as an Activator

An activator's first step is finding a valid POTA park. The program recognizes national parks, national forests, state parks, wildlife management areas, and many other public lands — but not local city or county parks. The pota.app website has an interactive map of all recognized parks worldwide. Each park has a unique reference number in the format US-0001 (updated to ISO country codes in 2024), which must appear in your activation log.

Equipment for a POTA activation doesn't need to be elaborate. Many successful activators use a simple QRP radio, a lightweight wire antenna strung between trees or on a telescoping mast, and a battery or solar panel for power. The portable, self-sufficient nature of the station is part of the appeal. Once on site and set up, an activator posts a spot on pota.app to let hunters know what frequency and mode they're on, then calls "CQ POTA" and works through the pile-up.

After the activation, the log must be exported in ADIF format and uploaded to pota.app. This is where your logging software matters — and where Ham Radio Deluxe is built for the job.

POTA Awards

POTA's award system gives both activators and hunters a ladder of achievements to climb. Standard awards are issued in tiers based on the number of unique parks activated or hunted — Bronze at 10, Silver at 20, Gold at 30, Platinum at 40, Diamond at 50, and Sapphire at 75. There are also geographic awards for activating or hunting parks across multiple US states, DX entities, or continents.

For dedicated activators, the Rover series rewards activating multiple parks in a single UTC day — from Rover Warthog (5 parks in a day) up to Rover Lion (30 parks in a day). The Repeat Offender awards recognize activators who return to the same park again and again, starting with the Oasis Award at 20 activations from the same park. POTA also runs seasonal Support Your Parks events each quarter, with awards for both activators and hunters who participate.

Ham Radio Deluxe and POTA

Ham Radio Deluxe includes dedicated POTA support throughout the logbook — built for both activators and hunters, and designed to produce ADIF files that upload correctly to pota.app.

For Activators — My Station POTA Setup

Before heading to the park, activators set up their station profile in HRD's My Station window. The Location tab includes a dedicated My POTA field where you enter your park reference number. Clicking the ... button opens HRD's built-in POTA park database — a fully searchable list of over 90,000 park references worldwide, updated regularly, showing park name, country, Entity ID, latitude, longitude, and grid square. Once your park reference is saved in your station profile, it flows automatically into every QSO you log during that session.

If you're activating multiple parks in the same outing — for a Rover run or an N-fer — you can maintain separate station location profiles for each park and switch between them as you move.

For Hunters — Logging POTA Contacts

When logging a contact with a POTA activator, hunters use the dedicated POTA tab in HRD's Add/Modify Logbook window. The POTA Ref field records the park reference number of the activator's location. As with the activator setup, the ... button opens the full park database for quick lookup by reference number or park name.

If an activator is simultaneously activating more than one park — a common practice known as an N-fer — hunters can enter multiple park references separated by commas in the POTA Ref field, correctly capturing all parks worked in a single QSO entry.

ADIF Fields and the Compatibility Bridge

This is where HRD's POTA implementation goes deeper than most logging software. The ADIF Standards Committee has defined official dedicated fields for POTA data: POTA_REF (the hunter's park reference) and MY_POTA_REF (the activator's park reference). HRD implements these correctly — your POTA data is stored in the right fields per the current ADIF standard.

However, pota.app — the platform activators upload their logs to — has not yet updated its import system to recognize these new standard fields. It still expects the legacy SIG and SIG_INFO fields that predate the dedicated POTA ADIF fields. To bridge this gap, HRD includes a data move function that copies or moves your POTA reference data between the new standard fields and the legacy SIG fields before export. The result is an ADIF file that uploads cleanly to pota.app while keeping your internal log data in the correct format. When pota.app eventually updates its import system to support the standard fields, your logs will already be correctly structured.

DX Cluster and POTA Spotting

HRD's built-in DX cluster client connects to major cluster networks where POTA activator spots frequently appear. Many operators include the park reference number in the comment field of a DX spot, making it easy to identify POTA activations as they come through. Dedicated POTA spotting networks also exist, though they use a different format than standard DX clusters — HRD's cluster integration focuses on the major networks where POTA activity is most consistently visible.

Why POTA Has Taken Off

POTA succeeds because it's accessible at almost any level of the hobby. A newly licensed Technician with a handheld radio and a 2m simplex contact can participate. A seasoned Extra class operator with a full HF station and a wire antenna can spend a weekend Roving between parks and rack up dozens of activations. There's no entry fee, no scheduled start time, and no competitive pressure — just the satisfaction of making contacts from a beautiful location and building toward a tangible set of awards.

For new HF operators in particular, POTA is often described as the best on-the-air learning experience available. Setting up a portable station, troubleshooting antenna issues in the field, managing a pile-up, logging accurately in real time, and uploading a correctly formatted ADIF file afterward — it covers nearly every practical skill in the hobby in a single outing.

And for hunters operating from home, POTA turns an ordinary afternoon on the radio into a purposeful session — working stations from across the country and around the world, building toward awards, and supporting the activators who are out in the field making it all happen.

Quick Links

• pota.app — POTA spots, log uploads, awards, and park database
• Official POTA Rules
• POTA Activator Guide
• POTA Hunter Guide
• Ham Radio Deluxe Logbook — full feature overview
• Download Ham Radio Deluxe — free 30-day trial