Just for the halibut, I asked "Canva" an AI image generator to capture the spirit of POTA. I asked it to generate an image of "A young Ham Radio operator, sitting at a picnic table in a park, sending Morse Code on his radio".
This is what I got:
Not bad, actually, right? But for some reason, AI always seems to get human hands wrong, and I labeled them in the image. In this case, this poor guy seems to have three! Two at the radio, one on the table. I've noticed this on a lot of AI generated images where people are part of the scene. Weird, very weird. If it wasn't for the third hand, which I guess some of wish we had sometimes, it wouldn't be a bad image. Kind of nostalgic in a way. I like the guy's hat!
Speaking of the spirit of POTA, someone was complaining on the Facebook POTA page that the admins don't keep track of who first activates an entity. They don't - you can look up how many times a park has been activated, and who has activated it, how many times a person has activated a particular park etc. but not who first activated it. (EDIT - actually as one of the commenters below pointed out, they DO keep track of who first activated a park - but there's no award or certificate for it. That's a more accurate description of what triggered the complainer - mea culpa for getting that wrong! And thank you Mark AI4BJ for pointing that out)
That seemed to crumble the cookies of the poster. "If my friend takes a day off from work and drives 1/2 way across the state to be the first one to activate a new park, he doesn't get recognition for it? Why do we do POTA then?"
"Maybe just to have fun and and enjoy doing radio in the great outdoors?", I answered.
Does everything need to be a competition? Does everyone need to have a trophy? Has the concept of doing something just for the fun of it become a relic? Sadly, I guess it has.
Heavy sigh.
72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!
Huh? That's not true. Look up US-9756 and it clearly shows "First Activation : AI4BJ on 2023-09-09".
ReplyDeleteYou are correct. I zhould have been clearer that his complaint seemed to be that there was no specific award for first activation.
DeleteBut the "First Activation" means nothing in POTA. The loophole in POTA: if someone has activated that park ages ago, even before POTA existed, they can simple upload the log and then they are listed as "First Activation".
DeleteYou know what? I've been to Washington Rock State Park many times for QRPTTF and QRP Afield, I guess I could go back into my logbook and potentially upload those logs . Never thought of that.
DeleteLooks like a scene from a horror movie. Three hands and what is that sitting on the rock in the background?
ReplyDeleteMy guess would be a dog.
DeleteIsn't competition what it's all about? I think the xxOTAs, SKCCs, bumblebees, mosquitoes, the flights, runs, walks, tests, sprints, trips have made CW a video game using radios instead of computers. Spotting and instant internet logging have also contrbuted. An op answers my CQ and already knows my name and QTH. What happened to just talking with each other?
ReplyDeleteI use ham radio to relax and lower my stress. I'm not gonna use special numbers, go to an approved park or get a certain number of contacts to make someone else happy. I don't log anything. The park down the street wirks fine. It's just me and the radio.
Please don't promote "game radio" and then lament the lack of " real conversation"!
There's room for both .... "game radio' as you call it and real conversation. It's a "both/and" and not an "either/or", and one doesn't need to suffer exclusively for the other. Isn't one of the Amateur Radio codes, "Balance"? Besides balancing Amateur Radio within the other things in life, the Radio Amateur should be able to balance the activities within the hobby itself.
Delete