Award Rules and Update Times

Everything on the awards page is generated from the same public POTA record the EM50/60 leaderboards are built from. Nothing is hand-picked, there is nothing to join, and no form to fill in.

The two things on that page

Award of Excellence. First place on a board, for a month that has finished. Nothing else earns one.

Board Standing. A record of where an operator sat when the sheets were last cut. Everyone on a published board has one.

The two answer different questions. An award records a month that is over, so its figures are settled. A standing records a live ranking, so it is only true as of the date printed on it.

Ties. Equal first is equal first. If two operators finish level at the top of a board, both receive the award and both sheets say so.

Who gets a sheet

The leaderboards print roughly their top ten in each window, and sheets are cut from the rows the boards show. That is a limit of what fits on a page, not a judgement about the operating: far more operators have activated in these grids than appear on any board. The live counts are on the leaderboards page, which regenerates nightly — repeating them here, where nothing refreshes them, is how the previous version of this sentence came to state a sheet count that was three short.

Which boards award

Three boards award, so a normal month issues three. Fewer if one operator wins two of them, more if a board is tied at the top. Year-to-date and all-time are cumulative and never finish, so a first place on them can be true the day it is printed and false a week later. Leading the sweep chase is the same: someone else can pass you next weekend.

Hunters and park-to-park are left out for a plain mechanical reason rather than a judgement about the operating: the tool that builds those boards cannot be asked for a specific past month, so it cannot produce a closed period. If that changes, they become eligible.

What this rewards, and what it does not. Awards go to monthly activation, QSO and different-park totals, which favours operators who get out often in a given month. Long-run totals cannot be awarded because those boards never close — a first place all-time is a larger achievement than a first place in any single month here; it just is not a thing that can be finished and framed. Club and event callsigns appear as themselves, so a station several operators share is ranked alongside individuals.

The All Parks Award

There is one award here that is not a monthly placement at all, and it lives on the leaderboards page rather than this one.

Activate every park in EM50 and EM60. That is the whole rule. It is not a ranking, so it cannot be tied, cannot be lost to somebody having a better month, and does not move when the boards move. It is the only thing on this site that closes permanently.

Why it can be awarded when “all time” cannot. A first place all-time is a comparison against everyone else, and everyone else is still operating. A completed set is a comparison against the map. Once the last park is logged, nothing another operator does can change it.

The park count is fixed at the date earned. Parks on the Air adds parks. If a fifty-eighth park appears in these grids tomorrow, an operator who has already finished has not stopped having finished — so each award records the number of parks in the grids on the day that operator closed the set, and the sheet says so. A later finisher may face a larger number. An award already earned is never taken back, and the figure on it is never quietly recounted to match today’s map.

Only 10-QSO activations count, the same standard Parks on the Air itself uses, and the same one every other board here uses. A park visited for fewer than ten contacts does not fill its slot.

Verification. Each award is checked against POTA’s own public log record before it is issued — park by park, activation by activation — and recorded in a ledger with the date it closed. Nothing here is issued from a report, including a report from the operator concerned.

Why only closed months

A leaderboard is supposed to move. A framed sheet is not.

The monthly board is labelled “August 2026 so far” while August is running, and the numbers behind it change every night. An award taken from it would be accurate the morning it was printed and could be wrong by the end of the month — with the sheet already on a wall, still saying first place.

So an Award of Excellence is only issued for a month whose figures are settled, and the sheet shows only that month’s figures. A Board Standing is a snapshot of the boards on the date printed on it, and shows as many of an operator’s placements as fit the sheet, best first. Any that do not fit are named as a count and stay on the leaderboards.

Every figure carries its window

A month, a year to date and an all-time total are three different numbers, and the same operator can rank differently in each — so a total printed without its window is not a result, it is a claim. Each figure on a sheet is printed beside the window it was measured over and cannot be separated from it.

Field size, where the field is known

First of 57 is a result; first on its own is a boast. The activation, QSO and different-park boards publish how many operators were in the running, so those ranks are always printed with it.

Three are not like that. Park-to-park, P2P inside the grids, and parks hunted from a home grid all come from a source that does not publish the size of the field, so those ranks appear without a denominator rather than with an invented one. A cohort figure that is really how many operators we happened to look at would be worse than none — it is a made-up number wearing the authority of a real one.

When things update

The boards therefore move overnight. The sheets do not: they are images, and they show the boards as they stood on the date printed on them until they are cut again. An Award of Excellence is fixed to a month that is over, so regenerating it does not change it — unless a late log upload reaches POTA and moves that month, in which case the sheet is recut and the change noted here.

Corrections and removal

These are built from POTA’s public record, and that record occasionally contains an operator’s typo. A log carrying a date that cannot exist is counted out rather than guessed at, and the leaderboard page says how many were set aside. A mistyped callsign cannot be detected from the outside and will appear as it was entered.

If a figure here is wrong, or you would rather not appear at all, mail AE4JC@ae4jc.com and you will be removed — no reason needed.

em5060.com is an independent site. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a publication of Parks on the Air, and these are not POTA awards — they are this site’s own summary of POTA’s public record, built for non-commercial use. If POTA would rather this worked differently, say so and it will.

Two different things live on this page. An Award of Excellence is first place on a month that has finished, so its figures are settled. A Board Standing shows where an operator sat when these sheets were cut, which all 40 listed operators have. Board Standings come from the same figures as the EM50/60 leaderboards; Awards come from the same source data for a month the leaderboards no longer display. The rules and the update times are written down.

These are a snapshot, cut 2026-08-13 and stamped 2026-08 — not a live board. The leaderboards update overnight; these do not move until they are cut again.

Every number on a plaque carries the window it was measured over — this month, the year to date, or all time — because the same figure means different things across those windows and a total presented without one is not a result, it is a claim. Ranks on the activation, QSO and different-park boards also carry the size of the field they were won against: #1 of 22, not a bare #1. Park-to-park and parks-hunted ranks appear without one, because POTA publishes no operator count for them and an invented denominator would be worse than none.

Park-to-park and parks-hunted counts are floors, not totals: POTA publishes only a rolling window of each operator's recent hunter contacts, so tracking here is what has been captured since 2026-08-07 and cannot see everything before it.

Operators are attributed exactly as POTA's public record shows them, so a club or event callsign appears as itself rather than as whoever was at the key. Rankings are automatic — nobody is added or moved up by hand. The one manual step is taking someone off at their own request.

Would you rather not be here? These are built from POTA's public record and nobody opted in. Email AE4JC@ae4jc.com and your callsign comes off this page and the leaderboards — no reason needed.

em5060.com is an independent site. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a publication of Parks on the Air, and these are not POTA awards — they are this site's own summary of POTA's public record, built for non-commercial use. If POTA would rather this worked differently, say so and it will.

Awards of Excellence — July 2026

First place on a completed month. There are exactly as many of these as there were boards to win, and they are only issued once a month has closed and its figures can no longer move — how this works.

Board standings — August 2026 so far

Everyone listed on the boards, in alphabetical order — the position of a tile means nothing. Each caption shows an operator's three best placements; the full sheet has the rest.