While doing Pota’s, several operators at te other park (park-park) seem to know which park I am in. I was thinking they were running their logging sotware and looking at the Pota site. I finally asked, “how do you know which park I am in so quickly”. They said their logging software shows the park when they add the park number. That would be cool. If it exists, I’m not sure how to see it.
See my red arrow. It will auto-populate if the system has already seen it logged.
Sometimes if you’re the first one to get them and they haven’t already been spotted on the POTA page you’ll have to enter it yourself, but that’s maybe 0.01% of the time.
Thank you.
Now that I put more thought into it I need to make some stipulations. Typically when I’m at a park activating, I spend most of the time hunting because I’m a wuss. So in the spots side, I will click on their call sign and it will populate into my log with their park number. But it won’t show where the park is. I do understand now that if I hover over the Christmas tree in the spot before I click on it I can see where they are at. Also when I’m in a less wussey mode, and I’m activating, when I put their part number in I do realize in the drop-down it shows. It would just be nice to have a name associated with a part number available. I hope any of this makes sense.
73,
Roger
N0LAF
- I hunt 99.99% of the time and I don’t consider myself a wuss for doing so. Without hunters parks would only get activated by P2P contacts. We each need each other and many top activators also hunt P2P before they get rolling on their own activation.
- Yes, the additional explanation helped. I never use the spotting portion of WRL for your stated purpose, I always just refer to the POTA spotting page which shows me all the info you are asking for and more, but I now understand that you want the Park’s name and not just its number. Do you mind saying why that is important to you?
Hey Brian thanks for responding again.
I don’t really consider myself a wuss for hunting most of the time. I don’t really know why I added that. Seems like anytime I talk about hunting versus activating I do seem to throw that in there though. I definitely don’t feel that way about any other hunters. I just strictly relate it to me and my absolute fear of pile-ups. It is a fear that I feel would be beneficial to get over, especially if I want to get more contacts at parks, special events or field day. I think those sitting on a frequency always do a whole lot better contact wise than hunters. Then again for me, it’s never about numbers, it’s really just about having fun and hanging out with the guys.
As for why I would like to see the park name and location, it just always strikes me how quickly someone else can say, oh hey you’re at this park, as soon as I tell them the number, and I just enjoy that.
When I’m hunting I will simply ask them which park they’re at. Because I am not looking at the Pota site, I don’t know actually where they are. Like today, when I asked them, they were in Massachusetts so I knew kind of where I was reaching.
If you haven’t tried the spotter section, you might give that a try if you use WRL alot. It works really well. It follows the Pota site closely. I’ve got Friends that’ll be sitting next to me and they’ll go back and forth on the Pota site and then back to their log and I’ll already have the site found and in the log ready to hit log contact. It works very well. If you’re using cat control and the spotting section, you click on a spot the radio gets all set up for you. Once you make your contact and hit log, you click on the next spot and it starts all over again. I think it’s pretty cool.
The spotting section also works really well with DX clusters and events when you’re hunting those. I do have a few friends in the club that also use wrl and after I showed them that function they were pretty amazed.
73,
Roger
N0LAF
Here’s what I would suggest on the Activating pile-up fear… it’s YOUR activation and you run it the way that YOU want to.
If you want to take your time and spend 60 seconds with every hunter, then you do that.
If you want to ignore all the call signs being thrown out before you call QRZ, then you do that.
If you want to take 30 seconds between each log entry and calling QRZ, then you do that.
You control the flow of the activation, not the hunters. If they don’t like having to wait until you call QRZ then they will move on. No big deal.
Just like many people that have mic fright (I did), you just have to DO IT a few times to get past the anxiety. The first time I called CQ POTA I was petrified at the thought of what might happen, but it all worked out in the end as my license plate shows.
EDIT: I just looked at your POTA stats. You’ve got plenty of Activations, so who am I to give advice to you? 
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Brian,
I do appreciate your words of wisdom and you’re encouragement. I’ll definitely get out there and fight the good fight.
I don’t know if you do field day, but if you do, enjoy.
73,
Roger
N0LAF