Florida State POTA

Category: News

  • Official Park List Updated!

    We have added 3 Florida state parks to the Official Park List to bring the total number of parks available for use during the contest to 177. The state just opened a new park in the panhandle recently, a park that was listed as closed is now open again, and we omitted one existing park from the original list by error. The three parks added are:

    • US-0635 St. George State Park, Franklin County
    • US-3621 Fort Foster State Historic Site, Hillsborough County
    • US-13011 Shoal River Headwaters State Park, Walton County

    The new list is marked as “Rev 2.0” in the bottom right footer. If you previously downloaded the list from the website please remember to “refresh” the page before downloading or printing to ensure you have the “Rev 2.0” version of the list with 177 parks.

    Direct link: https://fspota.org/wp-content/uploads/Florida-Start-Parks-List-with-POTA-Number.pdf

    POTA.APP shows almost 400 Florida sites on their website. Please keep in mind that only parks managed by the Florida State Park Service are valid locations for the Florida State POTA Contest. These 177 valid locations are identified on the Official Park List for the contest.

  • Final 2026 Rules Published

    The Tamiami ARC, Florida State Parks on the Air committee is pleased to announce the publication of the final rules for the April 17-20, 2026 contest event. The rules, the “official parks list”, and FAQ for the event can be viewed on the event website:
    https://fspota.org/rules/

    Beginning in January, 2026 the committee will begin an aggressive advertising campaign to promote this event to the amateur radio community in Florida and, via ARRL resources, to the nation as well. Our hope is to attract 100’s of participating individuals and clubs, and to come close to activating all 174 eligible park entities in the State.

  • MANAGEMENT UPDATE 4

    The event committee met again on Sept 25th and continued their review of the rules. We also spent some time developing a list of possible promotional actions to take beginning early in 2026 to promote the 2026 FS POTA contest and develop interest in the Florida ham community to participate. Our next meeting is scheduled for October 9th at which time we should be able to finalize the rules and publish them. A key decision was made to not actively engage in collecting and promoting planned activations or spots for activations. The pota.app already provides this capability for all participants to use and it has nationwide access. We would still encourage posts to be made to this Groups.io reflector as well but the event management will not be actively tracking this activity on the website in 2026 as was done in past years. Please send any questions or rules suggestions to [email protected].

  • Management Update 3

    The FL State POTA committee met again this morning, 9/11/15. With some rule changes still to review and approve, the next meeting is scheduled for September 25th. Please make any suggestions ASAP to [email protected]. The contest dates and duration for 2026 remain firm for April 17-20 from 8 am to 8 pm local time on each day. Thanks to Stan, K4SBZ for his great on-point suggestion to change the FT8 QSO rule wording. The committee agrees whole-heartedly with that change.  Mark your calendars and make your plans. The draft rules and the official FL STATE POTA parks list is on the new event website.

  • Management Update 2

    We have been doing some best practices investigations that included visiting other state POTA websites. Looks like both GA and TX will be operating April 18-19, 2026 along with FL. Most states use either the postal 2-letter state abbreviation with the POTA letters; e.g. gaparks.org or ncpota.org. Some states like Texas and Ohio have their website URL as tspota.org or ospota.org. This got us to thinking that flspota.org was a bit of an outlier so we just registered fspota.org earlier this week as a possible new URL. Unfortunately, we discovered that flpota.org is not available. It was just registered recently on Mar 20, 2025 via the Namecheap. Inc domain registrar.

    The owner identity is hidden in the registration records. If anyone is, or knows who. the domain name owner is please ask them if they would be interested in transferring ownership of the flpota.org domain name to the Tamiami ARC to use with the Florida State Parks on the Air competition. We can be contacted at email: [email protected].

  • New Management Update 1

    On 7/28/25, the management committee for this event had its first organizing meeting via a Google Meet video. The committee consists of the following volunteer members from the Tamiami ARC: Paul KN4BAR, Jim N7JIM, Jon W4OMX, Ken NS1C, Mark KQ4EKK, Steve NS4P, Frank W2XYZ, Jack W1JJR

    A “rules sub-group” was formed to review and recommend new rules for 2026. A draft of the new rules will be reviewed by the full committee on 8/21/25.

    We did all agree on the following guidelines for taking this event forward to 2026 and beyond:

    1. not to schedule in conjunction with the FLQSO Party
    2. to hold the 2026 event on April 18 and 19, 2026
    3. to accept only .adi format log files
    4. to develop an aggressive marketing and promotion campaign for the 2026 event starting in January 2026
    5. to eliminate the high power (>100 W) category
    6. to exclusively use ONLY the POTA US-xxxx park identifier
    7. to review and update the events “official” FL State Parks List
    8. to add the solicitation and support of youth (<18 yr old) participation as a goal of the event
    9. to consider a Youth operator category or a score bonus for including youth operators in your activation or hunting operation.
    10. to consider, perhaps, extending the event time frame to include portions of Friday and/or Monday in the operating time

    The event date for 2026 is carved in stone as is not operating in conjunction with the FL QSO Party. Everything else is still under consideration and review leading up to the adoption of final 2026 rules later this year. Please respond here with any comments or suggestions you may have for this event, or you can email to [email protected] with your comments.

    Our committee will meet again in closed session on 8/21/25 and an update to this post will be made shortly thereafter.

    —

    73
    Paul KN4BAR

  • New Management

    The management of the Florida State Parks on the Air (FLSPOTA) was assumed by the Tamiami Amateur Radio Club in July 2025. A club committee of 8 club members is now actively managing this event. First orders of business will be:

    • Obtain logs from the 2023, 2024 and 2025 event and publish the results.
    • Review and perhaps modify the event rules for the 2026 event.
    • Determine dates for the 2026 event. Easter is on the first Sunday of the month.