CW POTA
a field manual

Parks on the Air is a year-round operating program where one operator sets up in a designated park and makes contacts with everyone else listening from home.

Think of it as a standing invitation: pick a park from the registry (pota.app), go outside, put a radio on the air from inside the park's boundary, and work as many people as you can in one sitting. The operator in the park is the activator. Everyone chasing them is a hunter. Make ten or more contacts in a single day and the activator earns credit for that park; hunters rack up credit for every activator they catch.

The program is free, global, and entirely built around voluntary log submissions. There are no mandatory exchange formats, no timing windows, no organizers on the air. Just operators, parks, and the honor system.

You pick a side each time you sit down. Both are rewarding. Activators work harder; hunters get credit faster.

A single POTA QSO in CW takes less than thirty seconds on a quiet band. Here is one, decoded.

Plug in callsigns, pick a side, and the manual rewrites itself for the QSO you're about to have. Print it, tape it to the rig, work the script. The URL updates as you type — bookmark or share it to come back to the same setup.

Newcomers read through a decoded exchange and decide they aren't ready. They are. POTA CW is the most forgiving Morse environment you will ever find — slower, warmer, and designed for people learning on the air.

On speed. Most POTA activators run between 15 and 20 words per minute. Some run slower on purpose — 12, even 10 WPM — when the bands are quiet. This is nothing like contesting. If an activator is going faster than you can copy, send QRS ("slow down") or simply ?. Almost every activator will slow down happily. Better yet, you usually don't even need to ask: most activators match the speed of whoever calls them. A CQ at 25 WPM answered by your 13 WPM callsign gets a 13 WPM reply. Call at the speed you can copy, not the speed you heard in the CQ.

On minimum viable copy. You do not need to decode every character. For a hunter, the entire exchange hinges on three things:

Everything else — the TU ES GM, the pleasantries, the double-sent state — is decoration. Miss it all and you still have a valid QSO in the log.

On sending mistakes. When your fingers slip mid-callsign, don't hammer out a long string of error dits. Just pause a beat and start the word or callsign over — the operator on the other end will understand, and it's faster. Every CW operator loses control of their fingers now and then, at every speed, after every number of decades on the key.

On the question mark

The single most useful character in CW is ?. It means "I didn't copy that — please repeat." Sent alone, it's universally understood. Sent after a fragment, like N1R?, it means "I got N1R — who are you?"

If an activator sends you a partial call and a question mark, send your entire callsign back — never just the missing piece. A partial reply leaves the activator guessing whether you're correcting the fragment, a new station butting in, or confused about what they need. Your full callsign confirms what they already have and fills in what they don't. No ambiguity.

You will send ? constantly when you're starting out. Everyone does. Experienced operators send it too. Asking for a repeat is not a confession of incompetence; it's just normal CW traffic. The only failure is sitting silent and letting a QSO collapse.

One caution: never send ? into silence. If you tune to a spotted frequency and hear nothing, the activator is very likely mid-QSO with a station you can't hear — and your question mark lands squarely on top of the callsign they're straining to copy. ? is for repeats inside a QSO you're already part of, not for probing a quiet frequency. Just wait and listen for a bit.

When to send nothing

The hardest skill for a new hunter isn't sending — it's staying quiet. In a pileup, every dit you key lands in the activator's ear on top of the station they're actually trying to copy. Three situations call for radio silence, and new hunters break all three constantly:

The partial isn't yours. When the activator answers a pile with a fragment — KK7? — they are speaking to exactly one station. If your callsign doesn't contain KK7, send nothing. Not your call "just in case," not a quick repeat — nothing. The activator is not trying to work you, and anything you send makes the station they are trying to work harder to hear. Wait for the QSO to close, then call again.

The activator came back to someone else. You call, others call, and the activator answers with a full callsign and report that isn't yours: KK7KKT GM UR 579 579 WA WA BK. If you are not KK7KKT, send nothing. The one exception: the call is a plausible mis-copy of yours — a single dit away, like KK7KKN heard as KK7KKT. Then answer with your full call embedded in the report so the correction rides along: BK DE KK7KKN GM UR 55N 55N WA BK. If you're not sure whether that busted call was meant for you, the safest move is still silence.

Silence is not an invitation. The activator answers a station you can't hear — QRP, DX, or just on the wrong side of the skip zone — and from where you sit the frequency goes quiet. That gap is not your cue. It's routine for an activator to hear several hunters while none of the hunters can hear each other. If you didn't hear a CQ and you didn't hear the QSO close with 73 EE, don't transmit.

Don't tail-end. Waiting for the pile to finish calling and then slipping your callsign in at the end feels clever, and most activators deliberately refuse to reward it — answering one tail-ender teaches the whole pile to do it, and everything slows down. Call with the pile, offset 50–100 Hz from the activator's frequency, and let your pitch do the standing out (see §VI). Send your call once, then listen.

Never tune up on the frequency. Even a couple of watts of tuner carrier on or near an activator's frequency is enough to wipe out the station they're copying — and it's one of activators' most common complaints. Match your antenna well off frequency, then come back and call.

Holding back costs you nothing. If the activator busted your call and hears no reply, they'll send it again — and if there's still no reply, they'll drop back to a partial (KK7?). That is your invitation to send your full callsign again. The system self-corrects, but only if the frequency stays clear enough for it to work.

The DX Code of Conduct

None of this is new wisdom. DXers distilled it years ago into the DX Code of Conduct, written for DXpedition pileups — swap "DX station" for "activator" and it maps onto POTA word for word:

1. I will listen, and listen, and then listen again before calling.

2. I will only call if I can copy the activator properly.

3. I will not trust the spot blindly — I'll be sure of the activator's callsign before calling.

4. I will not interfere with the activator nor anyone calling, and will never tune up on the frequency.

5. I will wait for the activator to end a contact before I call.

6. I will always send my full callsign.

7. I will call and then listen for a reasonable interval. I will not call continuously.

8. I will not transmit when the activator calls another callsign, not mine.

9. I will not transmit when the activator queries a callsign not like mine.

10. I will not transmit when the activator requests geographic areas other than mine.

11. When the activator calls me, I will not repeat my callsign unless I think it was copied incorrectly.

12. I will be thankful if and when I do make a contact.

13. I will respect my fellow hams and conduct myself so as to earn their respect.

Hunters don't wander the bands hoping for luck. They watch the spots.

Open pota.app in a browser and click Spots. Every active CW station in a park shows up there, with their frequency, callsign, park reference, and how fresh the spot is. Filter by mode = CW and you have a live list of people calling you to work them. Click a row, tune the radio, wait for them to finish their current QSO, and answer.

One activator can be worth more than one QSO. POTA gives credit once per band, per mode, per park, per UTC day — so when the activator you just worked on 20 meters moves to 40, work them again. Regulars hunt the same daily activators for months on end; POTA's Repeat Offender awards exist precisely for that.

A second channel runs in parallel: the Reverse Beacon Network (reversebeacon.net). Skimmers around the world decode CW CQs automatically. Activators who self-spot via RBNgate also land on pota.app within seconds. If you're an activator running QRP from a new park, the RBN is how the hunters find you.

CW operators tend to congregate around these frequencies. Of these, 20 meters is the undisputed center of gravity for POTA — it's where the most activators run, the most hunters listen, and the most contacts happen. If you have time for only one band, make it 20.

Don't zero-beat the activator

When you answer a CQ, the obvious move is to tune your transmit frequency exactly onto the activator's — to zero-beat them. With nobody else calling, that works fine. In a pileup it's a quiet disaster.

CW is binary: the carrier is either on or off. When two or three hunters all transmit on the same frequency at the same instant, their dits and dahs arrive at the activator's ear as a single audio pitch — overlapping, mashing, indistinguishable from a single garbled signal. Even just two simultaneous zero-beat callers can be impossible to copy.

The fix. Offset your transmit frequency by 50–100 Hz from the activator using your radio's XIT (transmit incremental tuning) or split mode. Stay within about ±100 Hz so you remain inside the activator's narrow CW filter (often 200 Hz wide). Each hunter then arrives at a slightly different audio pitch — say 520 Hz, 620 Hz, 680 Hz — and the activator can pull individual callsigns out of the pile by tuning between them.

When does it matter? Mostly in pileups. If an activator has called CQ to crickets for three rounds, zero-beat is fine — even helpful, since they may be tuned tight on themselves. But the moment more than one hunter is calling, your offset is what makes you copyable.

Claiming a frequency

CW signals are narrow — about 500 Hz wide with typical receiver filters. That means two stations can coexist just 500 Hz apart without interference, and a 30 kHz calling area fits dozens of simultaneous activations. Here's how to pick your spot:

1. Tune around the calling area

   Spin through the POTA range on the band you want. Try to leave 1–2 kHz between you and other stations. If the calling area is full, move anywhere else in the CW portion of the band — there's no rule that says you must be inside these ranges.

2. Listen for 10–15 seconds

   A frequency that sounds empty might belong to someone in between CQs or working a station you can't hear. Patience here saves you from landing on top of someone.

3. Send QRL?

   "Is this frequency in use?" If someone responds — usually R, YES, or C (confirmed) — move on. If silence, the frequency is yours.

4. Start calling CQ

   Once you're satisfied the frequency is clear, begin your CQ POTA call and self-spot on pota.app.

POTA runs on log submissions. Activator credit requires a file upload; hunter credit is automatic once the activator uploads theirs. Here is the minimum each operator needs to capture.

Every QSO needs six fields: the other operator's callsign, the date and time in UTC, the frequency or band, the mode (CW), the RST you sent, and the RST you received. Activators additionally need to tag the whole session with their park reference (e.g. US-0802) and, if the park is in more than one POTA entity, each reference gets logged separately.

1. Pick a logger

   A few good options, depending on platform and taste:

   • Carrier Wave — native macOS/iOS app purpose-built for POTA and contest CW. Integrates with pota.app spots, handles park references automatically, and syncs across your devices.
   • Ham2K Portable Logger (POLO) — iOS / Android / desktop. Excellent field UX. Popular with activators who log on a phone.
   • HAMRS — free cross-platform desktop app. POTA-aware out of the box.
   • N3FJP — Windows. Well-established. The choice if you already live in a Windows logging ecosystem.
   • Paper — a waterproof notebook and a pencil. Transcribe to ADIF when you get home. Never runs out of battery, never crashes, never asks for an OS update. Thomas K4SWL has run paper logs for years and makes a compelling case that it keeps you focused on the radio instead of the screen.

   All of them (except paper) export .adi (ADIF), which is what pota.app wants.

2. Log in real time, not from memory

   Write down the callsign as you copy it. The exchange is short but you will forget the third QSO by the time the fifth finishes. Times are UTC — set your logger to UTC once and never think about it again.

3. Export to ADIF

   After the activation, export the session to a .adi file. Double-check that every record has STATION_CALLSIGN (you), MY_SIG_INFO or POTA_REF (the park), and CALL (the hunter). Most POTA-aware loggers fill these automatically.

4. Upload to pota.app

   Sign in. Click My Stats → Submit Logs. Pick the park reference, the UTC date, and drop in your .adi. The system parses the file, shows you a preview, and posts the activation within minutes. Hunters get their credit the moment your upload is processed.

5. Hunters: do nothing

   Seriously. POTA doesn't want your log. Hunter credit comes from the activator's submission matching your callsign. You can still track personal stats by exporting your own log to LoTW or QRZ, but that's for you — not for POTA.