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Author Topic: Get rid of Park to Park  (Read 637 times)

K2WPM

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Get rid of Park to Park
« on: February 24, 2023, 04:18:29 PM »

Am I the first one to think this?

When I'm activating, 20 - 30 people calling me, and one guy comes in at the end "park to park."
Okay, hold on, you guys, I have a park-to-park.
But then there's maybe four or five more.
And I have 20 or 30 op's sitting there.

I used to do it myself when I'm at a park and would call another activator, but I stopped.
Now, when I start, I try to break others' POTA pile-ups, just using my call sign, no "park to park."
If I have a decent antenna, I can get in there.
When I break the pile up, I usually say, "yeah, I'm at a park also, K-XXXX." But I think I'll stop doing that.
But even if I don't exchange my park, it still counts as a park-to-park, so long as both logs have the park info.

So why do this?

This struck me a little while ago, when I was a hunter for the weekend.
Almost every activator had the same scenario.
20 - 30 people calling them.
Then a (usually weak) signal at the end of the pile-up, "park to park."
Then four or five more.
And 20 - 30 people sit there for a half hour.

I realized, yeah hunters probably get annoyed with this.

So why not eliminate it?

David, K2WPM
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LNXAUTHOR

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2023, 04:47:32 PM »

i don't mind waiting on p2p calls... i also appreciate calls for qrp ops... i hope more activators ignore the lids tuning up on freq and calling in with 1500 watts
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AK5B

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2023, 05:27:33 PM »

I think this whole "activation" thing is rather sad.  I can remember the days when working a station half-way around the world held a certain magic (still does for me) that inspired learning, tinkering and building antennas.  To my way of thinking, making an excuse to operate such as POTA is kind of sad, really.

Just my opinion which most will not agree with but that's fine.  To each his own.
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K1VTX

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2023, 05:46:26 PM »

Just like any other pile up, I take them as I hear them. "Park to Park, stand by. Can I have the station ending XYZ"?
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AE0Q

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2023, 08:00:48 PM »

I think this whole "activation" thing is rather sad. <snip> To my way of thinking, making an excuse to operate such as POTA is kind of sad, really.

Gee, how is Parks On The Air getting people ON THE AIR any different than you working DX to make contacts for 6M WAZ #58.  Or a weekend contest, of any variety.  Or my getting CW WAZ #319 20 yrs ago?  Or the Wednesday CWT one hour episodes?

Isn't that what ANY operating "event" or goal does?  Gives hams a reason to turn on a radio to see who is out there?  I know everyone has an opinion, but I really don't see the basis for your comment on this  :-(

Glenn AE0Q
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AE0Q

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2023, 08:23:31 PM »

Am I the first one to think this?

When I'm activating, 20 - 30 people calling me, and one guy comes in at the end "park to park."
Okay, hold on, you guys, I have a park-to-park.
But then there's maybe four or five more.
And I have 20 or 30 op's sitting there.

Given that working parks IS the goal of Parks On The Air, I'm going to guess that you mean just stop SAYING "park to park" on SSB when calling a park??  This sounds like an East coast, SSB-on-40m problem :-)

I operate CW and activate parks in Colorado, out here in the West where there might only be a handful of people within range on 40m in the daytime.  We have to mostly use 20m or higher and work lots of weak signals to work the mass of East coast stations that you guys are sitting in the middle of. 

I have NEVER had 4 or 5 other parks call me, EVER, in 110 park activations!!  And those have all been single-park activations, two-fers, three-fers and four-fers are almost unheard of out West.  Many days I work 200 stations on CW in a couple of hours of calling CQ and TWO of them are at other parks, and I'm at mountain parks with S1 noise level and full-size wire antennas, where the weakest QRP stations in the field can be heard and worked.

If I hear a weak P2P on CW, I just respond with "P2P ?" but I think most CW activators don't bother with it.  Slide 100 or 200Hz off the activators frequency and you will get right thru :-)  Whatever you do, NEVER call him on CW dead zero beat !!!

Glenn AE0Q
« Last Edit: February 24, 2023, 08:26:56 PM by AE0Q »
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NSGA Edzell 1974-77  CTM2  GM5BKC : NSGA Rota 1972-74   ZB2WZ, SV0WY
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W1VT

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #6 on: February 25, 2023, 02:35:15 AM »

I think it is great that there is a ton of activity where folks can work 200 stations in a day!
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AE5X

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #7 on: February 25, 2023, 04:17:08 AM »

I don't mind the P2P calls. It's a separate category of "awards", important for some - and the ops calling are likely to have lesser antennas than the hunters at home. When I'm at a park myself, and call another park, I never mention that I'm at a park and do not give my number - I know they'll get credit for it anyway.
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AE5X

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #8 on: February 25, 2023, 04:33:14 AM »

I think this whole "activation" thing is rather sad.  I can remember the days when working a station half-way around the world held a certain magic (still does for me) that inspired learning, tinkering and building antennas.  To my way of thinking, making an excuse to operate such as POTA is kind of sad, really.

The "activation thing" causes an emotional response in you, and that response is sadness? Let's go back in time a bit: How was your relationship with your father?
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WB8VLC

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #9 on: February 25, 2023, 10:21:39 AM »

After today my thoughts are to just rid ham radio of pota ops altogether?

 I am presently listening to N9NFT at a park in Fla. calling cq pota on 29.58 simplex all the time oblivious that it's a repeater input.

At least if you are going to do pota then at least know the band plan so that you are not  interfering with the Portland Oregon 29.58/68 repeater and others on the same frequency.
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WB8VLC

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #10 on: February 25, 2023, 11:35:12 AM »

And if anyone questions why I didn't  just go to 29.58 and inform him about his operation it's because  I was on my Motorola MT1000 10 FM handheld which only had the repeater output programmed and during the times when the repeater was dropping out during the hang timer I could hear him  calling endlessly cq pota cq pota for a full 10 minutes until he finally moved down lower to AM.
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ONAIR

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #11 on: February 25, 2023, 03:46:25 PM »

POTA has become a great resource. It has made some quiet bands come alive again!  I heard that this could soon expand to putting supermarkets, hotels, and even gas stations on the air!  ;)
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KD8FTH

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #12 on: February 27, 2023, 01:36:55 PM »

I have observed the exchange between p2p stations, honestly not taking much more time than any other. Call confirmation. Signal, park identifier 73. Truthfully we are talking maybe a few more seconds per exchange. In my experience.
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WA3SKN

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #13 on: February 27, 2023, 02:10:28 PM »

Make the contact and go on... your not talking 30 seconds here.  It will take a lot longer to change it and nobody will follow it 100% anyway!
"Human nature does't change!"

-Mike.
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KG4RUL

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Re: Get rid of Park to Park
« Reply #14 on: February 28, 2023, 04:09:11 AM »

So it would follow that we eliminate Peak-to-Peak for SOTA and Island-to-Island for IOTA?
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