Florida State POTA

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].

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.

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73
Paul KN4BAR

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.