All posts by John Myers

Ohio State Parks On The Air 2024

The 17th annual Ohio State Parks On The Air (OSPOTA) contest will be held on Saturday – September 7, 2024.
This contest as always held on the first Saturday following the Labor Day holiday.

The OSPOTA contest was conceived with three main goals in mind:
   1. To promote public awareness of amateur radio and Ohio’s beautiful state parks system
   2. To contribute to the recognition that Ohio has a very diverse and wonderful ecology
   3. To promote camaraderie within the ranks of Ohio’s Amateur Radio Operators

Your participation has allowed these goals to be achieved. We agree it is a lot of fun to get out in a natural setting with your radio and see how well you can do at working operators in the beautiful Ohio State Parks.

The contest hours will be from 1400 UTC to 2200 UTC (10 am to 6 pm ET).

The contest committee has been busy going over the rules and information about the contest, please check the rules and other documents available in the “Files” section.

Please be aware only Electronic (Cabrillo files) will be accepted for entries. No text, pdf, csv, adif, bin, photos of logs, paper, etc. Comparing contest logs is somewhat automated and we need your log file in standard Cabrillo format.

At this point, there are 75 Ohio State Parks open for 2024. ODNR reports the new Great Council Ohio State Park (76th Ohio State Park) located between Xenia and Yellow Springs should be opening in 2024. Per OSPOTA rules, it will not be considered as an active park for the contest until 2025.

As in the past – you can let us know which State Park you plan on activating and we’ll keep everyone informed.
Send your planned park info to: PlannedParks@ospota.org and please include the call to be used.

If you have questions or comments, please email to: INFO@OSPOTA.org