LOTA

[WRPH745]

I have had this idea running around in my head for awhile and I am wondering if it has any merit or not.

I call this idea LOTA, Locals of the Air, and it is a rip off of POTA and SOTA.  Both POTA and SOTA for all intensive purposes are HF activities.  I was wondering is something similar could not be done for 2m, 70 cm, and GMRS.

I am thinking just like POTA their would be hunters and activators using only simplex.  The difference would be activators could use any public location, such as city parks, county parks, ball diamonds, etc.

The one add-on that you could do with LOTA is adding a fox hunt category to it besides the normal POTA style activity.

Before I actually did anything with it, I wanted to get some people's opinions if it.

Thanks

[marcspaz]

Both in VA and in FL, there are a lot of POTA activations on 2m and 70cm FM. They usually call on or around the calling frequencies so they are easy to find.  With SOTA in VA, there are a lot of VHF/UHF activations. 

 

I'm not sure about the rest of the country, but around these 2 states, except for the GMRS and fox hunt aspects, it's already happening.  I'm not sure if that is a good indicator that you will have interest from others or not.

[WRPD494]

I like it, and like marcspaz - I just had a simplex 2M (146.520) SOTA contact with someone atop Mt Mitchell, NC.  

My local Target (I think it is the Target) keeps making some odd "CQ" on MURS, and the local kids have been having fun with FRS. 

Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes!   Get more people "radio-active" with their basic kit.

[pierogipatriot]

i've been thinking about the same concept and my searches have led me to this post. Have you talked to anyone else about this? I'm an avid hiker and always bring my radio when i hike to listen and try to hit gmrs repeaters that i can't hit from my home. About a month ago i was able to hear my son (at home on my base radio) from a nearby "peak" about 650' on gmrs simplex.  This led me to discover the SOTA and POTA but the closest "pota peaks" are about an hour from me (plus i dont have a ham license) A gmrs version of sota would be awesome, especially if it doesn't have to be on a >2,000ft peak. The hardest thing might be notifying enough people about the where/when before hand and getting to the peak at the said time to make contacts. 

[TNFrank]

The main limitation I see is that VHF/UHF Simplex is Line of Sight so range would be limited to the environment you're in and how high you could get your antenna. Here where I'm at a mile or two with a good 4db, 70cm antenna 15' in the air with a 25w radio won't make it to a buddie's house 3 miles away. 

Not saying it's not a good idea or wouldn't be fun you just need to figure the limitations into the equation. 

[WSHL413]

As marcspaz said there are POTA contacts on 70cm and 2m bands and one can spot with those frequencies. Never tried GMRS or CB frequencies...wonder if those would appear as OTHER under the Band drop-down list?

Regarding parks and locations other than state and federal: a while ago I reached out to the POTA program administrators to ask about expanding the program to include local, municipal, county and regional parks. They said it wasn't going to happen primarily due to the added burden on the volunteer coordinators and huge number of additional QSOs stored in the database. Human and technical limitations, in other words.

Personally I would like to see the program expanded to include more parks, especially in urban and suburban areas where long drives to state or federal parks is a problem (or groups of parks become off-limits like what happened in Virginia with wildlife management areas). Also hams who have mobility and transportation issues may find local parks more accessible.

POTA has an excellent and effective infrastructure and organization already in place so would one want to reinvent the wheel?

There are long threads about this topic on QRZ and probably other forums if you want to fall down that rabbit hole.

All this said, I like the LOTA concept and it could work well in suburban California. Perhaps a scaled-down program similar to SOTA as you suggested.

[amaff]

I came in fully expecting Lavatories On The Air 

[Northcutt114]

I've been hesitant to comment on this thread, especially given that the OP is three years old at this point, but secondarily because I feel like I'm just raining on someone's parade...but here I am. 

I just don't see how it would be done. As @WSHL413 has already said, just the additional data entry and agreement on which parks to add would create an exponential amount of work for the POTA volunteers. So adding anything other than agreed upon state and national parks is out of the question.

Now, as to doing a GMRS version of it, I just don't see how that would work. All of your contacts would have to be within a few miles of each other. As I understand it, part of the gamesmanship behind POTA is that it is a challenge. Figuring out propagation, working different bands, measuring conditions, etc. If you did it on GMRS, all of that goes away and it becomes a local, simplex game...and finding more than 10 GMRS users in an area - at least where I live - wouldn't be possible.

I will say, I'm surprised to know that people do POTA on VHF. I had no idea. I've only ever looked at spots on 10m, since that's my access level at the moment. I would imagine that's a tough activation to make.

[HHD1]

Similar to LOLITA's or no?