I thought I’d throw together a quick little post based on part of an article I wrote for our local club’s newsletter…
What do you do when you have a radio related activity that you would possibly like others to participate in and your club doesn’t have an activity planned for it? Pick a time to do it, pick a place to do it and invite others to join you. You don’t need to wait for anyone else to start an activity, you can do it yourself. That’s what I recently did with portable operations.
I love portable ops, whether it is POTA or just sitting in the parking lot at work during lunch, or just going to one of the municipal parks in my area. I love being outdoors. I love building a portable station and improving it over time, adding new things and removing those that may not work so well for me. New power sources, new antennas, new accessories, etc. I just thoroughly enjoy it.
One day I decided that I was going to go out on the second Saturday of each month do some portable operations and I let my club know when and where, this was in November, 2023, and basically said, “If you want to come out and join me, you’re more than welcome.” I didn’t really have any idea if anyone else would show up, but I decided I would be out there anyway and they were welcome to come along. That first Saturday there were two stations setup, mine and one another club member brought along. We were out there for about 3 hours and had a good number of the club members come by, some to operate a little, some just to visit and socialize with us.
I had to cancel the second outing, December 2023 due to weather, and now we are set to go out again, January 2024, the weather is looking better and several more people have expressed interest in joining me. One of the guys has even started arranging a potluck style lunch for the gathering/event. And all because I said, “Hey, I’m going out, come and join me if you’d like.” That’s really all it takes to get an activity going, you don’t need to wait for someone else, just set a time, place and activity, one that you plan to do regardless, invite others and see what happens.
— 73 de KG6ECW