Remnants of RaDAR: Origins of the POTA Rover

August 2026

This morning in the South Alabama POTA Posse group chat, K4BOS posted a certificate he came across while going through his POTA awards. A Warthog, dated 26 July 2025.

He spotted something in it I would have scrolled straight past. Up in the corner is the orange RaDAR logo, and the wording underneath reads:

has submitted proof of two RaDAR transitions at or between parks during a 24 hour period

His words were “That’s interesting. Had no idea.”

His mention of it reminded me of a half-finished article about the history of RaDAR sitting in my drafts. It turned into the article you are reading now.

Where RaDAR came from

RaDAR stands for Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio. It started with Eddie Leighton, ZS6BNE, in South Africa.

Before it had that name it was something else. A group of South African hams wanted a portable station you could genuinely carry – radio, battery, mast, antenna, and your refreshments – and called it “Shack in a Sack.” On Eddie’s own history page, the next step is dated plainly:

August 2009 – RaDAR – “Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio” initiative was launched. SiaS was a concept and needed a name.

The first SARL RaDAR Contest followed in April 2010, with over a hundred stations logged. And on the same page is the line that still defines the whole thing, because it sets a physical standard rather than a category:

the entire station equipment, radios, batteries, mast, antennas and refreshments must be easily portable and hence the need to carry the equipment for at least 1 km prior to setting up

Carry it a kilometre, then set it up. That was 2009 — seven years before the ARRL ran National Parks on the Air, and eight before POTA started.

How it became a POTA award

Around 2019, POTA added a set of awards built on real RaDAR movement. Eddie wrote about it in a May 2019 post and listed the tiers:

Warthog Award: two RaDAR transitions at or between entities during a 24 hour period. Rhino Award: three RaDAR transitions… Cheetah Award: five RaDAR transitions…

In the same post he credits the two operators who brought it in — “something that was initiated by Greg N4KGL and Jason.” That is Jason Johnston, W3AAX, POTA’s founder. These were not automatic awards; you applied, and you sent your park numbers in.

On 8 October 2022, POTA announced the change:

POTA RaDAR awards simplified as POTA Rover system!

The animals survived; the transitions did not. Today’s Rover awards count unique parks activated in a single UTC day — Warthog 5, Rhino 10, Cheetah 15, Ostrich 20, Leopard 25, Lion 30. And POTA still prints the credit. The current awards page carries this line today:

(Inspired by South African operator, ZS6BNE, Eddie Leighton [RaDAR])

What the certificates recorded

K4BOS’s Warthog carries the orange RaDAR logo and the transition wording. So does mine, from December 2023. KQ4TPD’s Rhino, from August 2025, carries it too — but his Warthog three weeks later is a different document. The RaDAR logo is replaced by a green POTA ROVER badge, and the sentence reads “has submitted proof of activating 5 POTA entities within one UTC day” — the rule POTA applies today.

Certificates shown with KQ4TPD’s permission.

I wrote to POTA support and asked what decides which form a certificate gets. W7RTA, on the support desk, replied the same day:

The Radar logo is a mistake. I brought that up to the development team to let them know. Someone on the team was working on a new awards backend process and inadvertently put that on some of the awards.

No second rule, no rollback — a mistake, already flagged to POTA’s development team. K4BOS’s certificate carries the leftover RaDAR endorsement: the orange logo, the transition wording, and one more line in small type beneath, “Created by Eddie Leighton, ZS6BNE.”

What it looks like when you do it

On Saturday 4 April 2026 our N4MZ club POTA day doubled as the RaDAR Rally, at Historic Blakeley State Park, US-11292. KQ4TPD and I ran it together — five deployments on foot, four transitions in between, 31 QSOs in my log.

Eddie’s “carry it at least 1 km” standard sounds harder than it is once you see what people actually carry. This is K4BOS’s pack — a Xiegu G90, battery, coiled feedline and a whip, all in one shoulder bag:

The rules fit in your head. Pick four hours in the UTC day. Make five contacts, tear down, and move — at least 1 km on foot, 2 km by bicycle, 6 km motorized — then set up and do it again.

N4KGL walks the whole thing through on one diagram in under three minutes, which is a better explanation than I am going to write:

Watch: N4KGL, Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio RaDAR Rally (2:45)

His line about it is the one that stuck with me — “this isn’t just sitting at a picnic table all day.”

Here is our path for the day. KQ4TPD and I walked it together:

4.10 km in 1:53:19, on foot, carrying the stations between every stop. That is what four hours of deploy-operate-move looks like on a map, and it is the part a log entry doesn’t show you.

Here’s a short about the event:

Watch: N4MZ Amateur Radio Club POTA and RaDAR Rally, April 2026

KQ4TPD and I both finished on 212 points, second and third in N4KGL’s posted results. M0TRT took it with 249. We might have pushed harder, but KQ4PJM had the grill going over on the club side of the day, and we chose to delay our start. Worth it.

Greg N4KGL, who coordinates the Rally, puts it plainly: “This is not a contest; it is just for fun!”

The next one is 7 November

The RaDAR Rally runs the first Saturday of April and November. The next is Saturday, 7 November 2026, with the following Sunday as a backup date if Saturday doesn’t work. Rules and registration are at radarrally.info; you register by emailing N4KGL, whose address is on QRZ.

Parks work well for it, and the same activations count for POTA on the same day.

If you have been meaning to lighten your kit, this is the reason to. Mine came down to a Xiegu G90 and a Buddistick Pro in a pack — no mast to carry, no tree to find, nothing to throw a line over. That combination is most of why five deployments on foot was even possible.

Eddie has not stepped back from any of it. N4KGL’s announcement of the Rally’s spotter and logger thanks “Eddie ZS6BNE, the founder of RaDAR, for using his IT skills to provide us with a RaDAR Rally-Specific Spotter/Logger,” and the Community Online Open Logbook the Rally scores against is his as well. He named the thing in 2009 and is still building the tooling for it.

And if hauling a station down a trail is not your idea of a Saturday, there is a job for you anyway. The rules put it better than I can: RaDAR operators “bounce between operating and moving, often with low power and compromise antennas, they are like rare DX. Please chase them. The QSO will make their day and yours.” That is the easiest thing on this page to act on. Listen for them on 7 November and give somebody their fifth contact.

Thanks to K4BOS for posting the certificate, to KQ4TPD for digging out two more, and to W7RTA at POTA support for tracking down the actual answer. I walked five deployments in April without knowing that the warthog on a POTA certificate traces back to an operator in South Africa in 2009. Worth knowing whose shoulders that one is standing on. 73 de AE4JC