Greetings and Happy New Year to our friends in the Florida amateur radio community! We are pleased to announce that the next Florida State Parks on the Air event will take place the weekend of April 3-4, 2021.

Last year, we made the difficult decision to indefinitely postpone the event due to COVID-19 and the temporary closure of all Florida State Parks. Today, most state parks and campgrounds have reopened for normal use and we have decided to proceed with this year’s event with a few recommended modifications:

• All activators should adhere to CDC guidelines to mitigate COVID-19 exposure risk.
• Participating clubs are highly encouraged to limit the number of participants and/or use smaller groups to activate separate parks simultaneously.
• Shared equipment should be sanitized between operators.
• Anyone who is unable to safely participate in the field is encouraged to help this year’s Activators by hunting from home.

The planned rule revisions for 2020 will now be effective this year. These changes include the addition of a QRP category, revision of the scoring system, and simplified entry categories. These changes are covered in greater depth in this post.

We thank everyone for their understanding and we look forward to getting you in the log this April! As always, please send your activation plans to activations@flspota.org so we can publish them.

The FLSPOTA team – Matt NJ4Y, Corey N4FQ, and Ben N4BLH