Be a POTA Ninja with Ham Alert
I recently shared a video on YouTube regarding the use of Ham Alert and POTA Parks Page to receive automatic notifications when a park is activated. Due to my busy schedule in the past few months, I have found it difficult to keep up with the spotting page, which has made it challenging to chase down the last three states for "Worked All States" - Alaska, Hawaii, and DC. However, I discovered that Ham Alert now allows trigger filters for "multiple lists" of parks, and I created a tutorial video on how to set this up. Furthermore, I have documented the process in a blog post that may be helpful for those interested in using Ham Alert.
Here are the steps for setting up Ham Alert for State Reference Notifications
What you’ll need:
The list of States you need to complete WAS
A login for POTA.APP and HamAlert.org
Steps:
From the POTA.APP page, go to the Curtain Menu on the left of the site and click Park Lists
From the search box, enter the state you want the park list from and select that reference.
After viewing the list, click on the right-hand side “download” and select CSV.
Once you download the CSV file, open it up in your favorite spreadsheet editor.
You will now select all rows in the first column titled “reference,” as these will be all the active parks for that state. You should copy them into your memory.
Now open up Ham Alert and click the “+” to create a new trigger.
From the trigger window, select the source from the dropdown.
Click the dropdown and select POTA from the list of Sources
Then click out of the box and click the next trigger and select “POTA Reference list.”
Paste all the park references into the box and click outside. It will sort and organize the list with the proper spacing and commas.
Next, you choose the action you want to be notified of. Note: This will generate more alerts than you used to be so prepared if you use SMS or email. I prefer using the App option.
In the comments field, use a clear and concise description, as the report will be in the details of the notification. You’ll use this reference to determine why you got this Ham Alert.
Click save and “rinse, lather, and repeat” with all the other states you need to create triggers for.
Conclusion
This process is a great way to understand how Ham Alert can be the tool to notify you in real-time that a contact is waiting for a QSO.