From the Mind of Trevor Stone

An edited version of this article appeared in this moth's BARC Bark, the Boulder Amateur Radio Club newsletter.

At the beginning of February the Parks on the Air website informed me that I’d made contact with one thousand parks. This milestone is celebrated with the Western Prairie Fringed Orchid Hunter Award, complete with a colorful PDF I can download, print, and frame at my own expense. It could take a position on the wall on my shack next to my Wiggins Acalypha Hunter award for 700 parks, my Oasis Activator award for doing 20 activations at Sawhilll Ponds, and my Rover Warthog award for activating five parks in a single day. There’s only one problem: my shack is whatever picnic table I’ve found to set up my radio gear, so there’s no walls to hang a frame. Maybe I could nail my Howell’s Spectacular Thelypody Hunter award (500 parks) to a tree and hang my end-fed from it.

In the 2010s “gamification” was a hot term in the tech world. Using elements from video games like high scores, streaks, profile avatars, badges, and leveling up tickled the human brain in ways to remain focused on using the app. Anyone who’s stuck with language practice because the Duolingo owl doesn’t want you to lose your streak has experienced the subtle nudge of gamification.

Amateur radio is of course no stranger to gamification. The first DX Century Club (DXCC) members were honored almost 90 years ago, and the hope of getting a few new countries in the log has driven many hams to innovate improvements in their antennas and station design. What’s new with the POTA awards system is the onramp: operators receive a digital award on their profile with just 10 parks, DX awards start at 5 countries, and the parks and QSOs counters go up every time they load their profile, and the page has more than a dozen charts showing progress towards different awards. Progress is tracked almost instantly and with minimal bookkeeping requirements: no need to wonder when your QSL card from Rhode Island will arrive so you can finally claim Worked All States.

When people ask about my hobby, I often answer that I go to a state or national park, set up a ham radio, talk to people, and earn Fake Internet Points. The real reward, of course, is having fun outdoors. But I would be lying to myself if I said the fake internet points weren’t an effective motivator. With the Diamond Activator award (activating 50 parks) and over 5000 QSOs under my belt, I’ve been striving for some of the more challenging awards. The N1CC Activator award is my current target: activate 10 parks on 10 different ham bands. It may just be fake internet points, but it convinced me to experiment with portable 80 meter antennas and get my CW skill into good enough shape that I can work 30 meters. I’ve also made sure to get out to a park at least once each month for the last two years, just in case POTA adds a new award for that. Not bad for a pile of PDFs.

Many moons ago, in a discussion about sexual initiative, tamheals asked "Don't you want to beat a woman over the head and drag her back to your cave?" I thought about it for a moment. "No... I want to lure a woman back to my cave to watch foreign films."