Two-fer Candidates and Rove Routes in EM50 and EM60

Which park combinations people around here actually repeat in a day — and a short list of pairs close enough to be worth checking as a genuine two-fer. Both come out of POTA’s own activation logs rather than anybody’s opinion. If the same operator logged two references on the same date, that happened, and it is in the public record.

A two-fer is one operating position inside two overlapping park boundaries, so one setup earns both. A rove is driving between parks and activating each in turn. In the log they look identical — same call sign, same date, two references — so this page ranks what people repeat, and shortlists the pairs close enough that a real two-fer is worth checking on the ground.

As of 2026-08-25T07:50:38Z — built from 10,383 logged outings across 57 parks. Refreshed overnight.

Everything below is repeated behaviour, not geometry. A combination appears only if one operator logged it on at least 3 separate days. That is evidence people do it — never proof two park boundaries overlap, which only the managing agency's map can settle. How this is worked out is at the bottom.

Two-fer Candidates — Published Points Within 2 Miles, Repeatedly Worked Together

4 pairs in these two grids clear both filters. Candidates, not confirmed two-fers — the distance is between two published points, and a point is not a boundary.

Columns: Points apart = straight-line miles between the two published coordinates. Days = separate dates both parks were logged by one operator. Operators = how many different call signs have done it.

Where they are. Every pair above is in Florida. If you are operating from further west, the nearest candidate is a drive — worth knowing before you plan around one.

Three-fers: none here. The largest group of parks all sitting within 2 miles of each other in EM50 or EM60 is 2. No three parks in either grid are mutually that close, so a genuine three-fer is not available in these two squares — the three-park days below are roves, which is a different thing and a good thing.

Rove Routes People Actually Run

These are roves, not n-fers, and the difference is the whole point of the section above: an operator drove between these parks and activated each one. Counted as an exact set — a day of five parks is one five-park day, and does not also count toward the three-park set inside it. That keeps a route a route, and it means these day counts are a floor: a popular three-park core buried inside longer days is undercounted here.

Span is the widest gap between any two parks in the set, straight line. It is not a driving distance and not a sum of legs — the order somebody drove them is not in the record, so inventing one would be inventing data. Use it for rough scale only. On a coast cut by four bays it does not track drive time reliably, which is why nothing here is sorted by it.

3 parks · 3.4 mi across · run on 24 separate days by 6 operators
US-1841 Blackwater River State Park · US-8335 Yellow River Water Management Area · US-4614 Blackwater River State Forest

3 parks · 22.8 mi across · run on 11 separate days by 11 operators
US-0025 Fort Morgan National Historic Site · US-0136 Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge · US-1042 Gulf State Park

5 parks · 10.7 mi across · run on 7 separate days by 2 operators
US-3608 Blackwater Heritage State Trail · US-8327 Blackwater River State Conservation Area · US-1841 Blackwater River State Park · US-8335 Yellow River Water Management Area · US-4614 Blackwater River State Forest

4 parks · 10.0 mi across · run on 7 separate days by 2 operators
US-8327 Blackwater River State Conservation Area · US-1841 Blackwater River State Park · US-8335 Yellow River Water Management Area · US-4614 Blackwater River State Forest

3 parks · 9.0 mi across · run on 7 separate days by 6 operators
US-0661 Gulf Islands National Seashore · US-8333 Garcon Point State Conservation Area · US-3670 Yellow River Marsh Preserve State Park

3 parks · 3.4 mi across · run on 7 separate days by 7 operators
US-1875 Grayton Beach State Park · US-4636 Point Washington State Forest · US-1861 Eden Gardens State Park

6 parks · 25.6 mi across · run on 6 separate days by 1 operator
US-8332 Escambia River State Conservation Area · US-3608 Blackwater Heritage State Trail · US-8327 Blackwater River State Conservation Area · US-1841 Blackwater River State Park · US-8335 Yellow River Water Management Area · US-4614 Blackwater River State Forest

3 parks · 18.5 mi across · run on 6 separate days by 6 operators
US-6445 St. Tammany Wildlife Refuge · US-0300 Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge · US-4071 Pearl River Wildlife Management Area

4 parks · 5.8 mi across · run on 5 separate days by 5 operators
US-1875 Grayton Beach State Park · US-4636 Point Washington State Forest · US-1861 Eden Gardens State Park · US-1854 Deer Lake State Park

3 parks · 6.7 mi across · run on 5 separate days by 5 operators
US-1910 Perdido Key State Park · US-1837 Big Lagoon State Park · US-3662 Tarkiln Bayou Preserve State Park

7 parks · 24.9 mi across · run on 4 separate days by 4 operators
US-1876 Henderson Beach State Park · US-1873 Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park · US-3664 Topsail Hill Preserve State Park · US-1875 Grayton Beach State Park · US-4636 Point Washington State Forest · US-1861 Eden Gardens State Park · US-1854 Deer Lake State Park

5 parks · 24.1 mi across · run on 4 separate days by 1 operator
US-0384 Grand Bay National Wildlife Refuge · US-3691 Grand Bay Savanna Complex Wildlife Management Area · US-12996 Fowl River Access Site BLM Recreation Management Area · US-3692 Heron Bay and Portersville Bay State Fish and Wildlife Area · US-0042 Fort Gaines National Historic Site

5 parks · 31.0 mi across · run on 4 separate days by 4 operators
US-1042 Gulf State Park · US-1910 Perdido Key State Park · US-1837 Big Lagoon State Park · US-3662 Tarkiln Bayou Preserve State Park · US-0661 Gulf Islands National Seashore

5 parks · 13.5 mi across · run on 4 separate days by 4 operators
US-3664 Topsail Hill Preserve State Park · US-1875 Grayton Beach State Park · US-4636 Point Washington State Forest · US-1861 Eden Gardens State Park · US-1854 Deer Lake State Park

4 parks · 16.3 mi across · run on 4 separate days by 4 operators
US-1042 Gulf State Park · US-1910 Perdido Key State Park · US-1837 Big Lagoon State Park · US-3662 Tarkiln Bayou Preserve State Park

Parks are listed west to east because that is how this coast is driven. It is a display order, not a recommended sequence — the record does not say which way anybody went. A row with one or two operators is one person's habit rather than a proven local route; the Operators column is there so you can tell. 32 repeated multi-park sets were found; the 15 most-run are shown.

The Biggest Days on Record

The table above collapses a route that has been repeated. This one does the opposite and keeps every day as its own event — because what is interesting about the record is that one operator did it, once, on a single Friday. There have been 1,165 multi-park days in these grids altogether.

Columns: Parks = references logged that day. QSOs = contacts across all of them. Span = widest straight-line gap between any two, for scale only. Grids = which of the two squares the day touched.

The record: N4MTE, 16 parks, 2025-09-19

16 parks and 228 contacts in one day, spread over 96.5 miles of coast and across both squares — EM50 and EM60. Listed west to east, which is the shape of the drive whichever way it was actually run:

16 references is not 16 stops. 3 of the 4 candidate pairs from the top of this page sit inside that day — so the drive may have been as few as 13 places, with the rest earned by parking once and claiming two. Which is the whole argument for knowing where the candidates are.

Read these as logging records, not biographies. A call sign is not always one person — club and multi-operator stations log under a single call, so "one operator" is how the record reads, not something the log can confirm. Park count is references claimed, not stops made or miles driven. And a day appears here because somebody uploaded it; anyone who never sent the log in is not in this table at all. Whatever you are planning, somebody has probably already gone further, and their log is public, which is the only reason this table can exist.

POTA Rover Awards Earned Here

POTA gives an award for activating a set number of references in a single UTC day. Six tiers:

Warthog 5 · Rhino 10 · Cheetah 15 · Ostrich 20 · Leopard 25 · Lion 30 references.

63 operators have had a day in EM50 or EM60 that met one of those bars. All of them are listed — biggest day first, no cut-off — because a top-ten would answer "who has rover awards here" with a sixth of the answer.

Read every figure as a floor. POTA counts references worldwide in that UTC day and this page sees only these two grids, so somebody who took three parks here and two elsewhere qualified and is invisible below.

N4MTE — best day here 16 parks (Cheetah), on 2025-09-19
4 days at the Warthog bar (5+) · 2 days at the Rhino bar (10+) · 1 day at the Cheetah bar (15+)

KE8SZL — best day here 15 parks (Cheetah), on 2023-10-28
5 days at the Warthog bar (5+) · 2 days at the Rhino bar (10+) · 1 day at the Cheetah bar (15+)

K4AA — best day here 14 parks (Rhino), on 2023-04-03
46 days at the Warthog bar (5+) · 3 days at the Rhino bar (10+)

KC1YL — best day here 14 parks (Rhino), on 2026-03-17
2 days at the Warthog bar (5+) · 1 day at the Rhino bar (10+)

KG5YMI — best day here 11 parks (Rhino), on 2023-01-14
5 days at the Warthog bar (5+) · 1 day at the Rhino bar (10+)

W6ZD — best day here 11 parks (Rhino), on 2022-05-06
5 days at the Warthog bar (5+) · 1 day at the Rhino bar (10+)

W8WZ — best day here 11 parks (Rhino), on 2024-10-29
4 days at the Warthog bar (5+) · 1 day at the Rhino bar (10+)

KN4MQR — best day here 11 parks (Rhino), on 2019-07-20
2 days at the Warthog bar (5+) · 1 day at the Rhino bar (10+)

N4CWB — best day here 10 parks (Rhino), on 2023-02-05
2 days at the Warthog bar (5+) · 1 day at the Rhino bar (10+)

N5VJX — best day here 10 parks (Rhino), on 2024-12-01
2 days at the Warthog bar (5+) · 1 day at the Rhino bar (10+)

K3CBK — best day here 10 parks (Rhino), on 2026-03-13
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+) · 1 day at the Rhino bar (10+)

KD4NGA — best day here 10 parks (Rhino), on 2023-11-11
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+) · 1 day at the Rhino bar (10+)

KQ4TPD — best day here 9 parks (Warthog), on 2025-08-15
3 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

KZ4YP — best day here 9 parks (Warthog), on 2022-11-25
3 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

K4AOQ — best day here 9 parks (Warthog), on 2025-03-30
2 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

W1WC — best day here 9 parks (Warthog), on 2025-05-22
2 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

KQ4VVQ — best day here 9 parks (Warthog), on 2025-08-15
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

WC9B — best day here 9 parks (Warthog), on 2025-07-20
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

K4BOS — best day here 8 parks (Warthog), most recently 2026-08-23
10 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

KY4BX — best day here 8 parks (Warthog), on 2025-11-09
2 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

W5DUI — best day here 8 parks (Warthog), on 2023-09-12
2 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

NN4JM — best day here 8 parks (Warthog), on 2021-10-10
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

K4WSD — best day here 7 parks (Warthog), on 2023-02-25
2 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

AB4WL — best day here 7 parks (Warthog), on 2021-10-10
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

K0GYP — best day here 7 parks (Warthog), on 2021-03-13
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KI4JJB — best day here 7 parks (Warthog), on 2025-10-09
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KN4SWS — best day here 7 parks (Warthog), on 2024-07-10
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KO4FHS — best day here 7 parks (Warthog), on 2024-07-10
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

NQ5A — best day here 6 parks (Warthog), most recently 2026-05-04
2 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

K5DZR — best day here 6 parks (Warthog), on 2026-03-17
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

NG5E — best day here 6 parks (Warthog), on 2023-04-20
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

NJ9L — best day here 6 parks (Warthog), on 2026-06-03
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

N5BO — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), most recently 2025-03-27
6 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

K4GDJ — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), most recently 2026-03-20
3 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

N4UPX/SK — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), most recently 2022-10-07
2 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

WS4Y — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), most recently 2024-02-26
2 days at the Warthog bar (5+)

AC3AV — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2025-05-22
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

AE4JC — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2023-12-17
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

K4ELI — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2023-11-12
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

K5DGR — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2020-08-06
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

K9STV — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2024-04-02
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KA5ZHG — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2024-04-29
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KB0SOX — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2023-09-10
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KB1ZZU — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2026-04-08
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KC1JHL — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2026-04-08
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KC9RF — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2026-02-21
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KD5UYZ — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2025-10-10
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KG5LRB — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2025-02-18
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KI5OVG — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2026-07-02
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KN4VTX — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2025-11-29
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KO4KOG — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2022-10-29
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

KR4LW — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2024-05-09
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

N4MZ — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2024-04-07
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

N4YLA — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2025-11-07
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

NC2H — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2025-05-22
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

W0ADL — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2023-03-16
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

W1INE — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2022-05-31
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

W4CLW — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2022-10-29
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

W4ER — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2026-04-15
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

W9RWG — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2024-12-27
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

W9TNC — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2026-02-23
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

WW5TX — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2024-03-21
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

WY7BW — best day here 5 parks (Warthog), on 2025-01-31
1 day at the Warthog bar (5+)

Two things this cannot tell you, both deliberate. These are days that met a bar, not awards held. Whether one sixteen-reference day also counts toward the smaller tiers is POTA's rule to state, not ours to guess, so the count is given per bar and left at that. And these use POTA's own activation standard — ten contacts — so a park worked for four QSOs is a park visited but not a reference activated, which is why these numbers can sit below the roving tables above. Check your real awards on your POTA profile; this page only ever sees EM50 and EM60.

Where three of these names came from. Warthog, Rhino and Cheetah were POTA's RaDAR awards from around 2019, counting RaDAR transitions at or between parks rather than parks activated. Greg N4KGL and POTA founder Jason Johnston, W3AAX, brought them in from Eddie Leighton ZS6BNE's Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio, named in South Africa in 2009. POTA simplified them into the Rover system in October 2022, and its own awards page still credited ZS6BNE by name in August 2026. No source consulted here says where Ostrich, Leopard and Lion came from. The full lineage, with dates and sources, is in Remnants of RaDAR.

Who Roves Here

Every call sign with three or more multi-park days in EM50 or EM60, ranked by how many. Parks touched is distinct references across all their rove days — a second angle rather than a better one, since a handful of big varied days and ninety repeats of the same three parks are different achievements and the columns let you see both. Same caveats as above: a call sign is not always one person, and a reference is not a stop.

Columns: Rove days = dates that call sign logged three or more of these parks. Biggest day = the most in any one of them. Parks touched = distinct references across all of them. Most recent = their latest rove day here.

A "rove day" is a date on which that call sign logged three or more of these parks. Two-park days are not counted — there are far more of them and most are not roves. Call signs link to POTA's own profile page.

Roving Grounds — Building Your Own Route

Everything above is what people have already done. This is what is available: the parks with the most other published park points within 25 straight-line miles. A combination nobody has run yet will be somewhere in these lists.

Straight-line, and on this coast that matters more than usual. Mobile Bay, Perdido Bay, Escambia Bay and Pensacola Bay all sit inside this window, and two parks twelve miles apart across water can be a forty-mile drive. So this is a count of nearby points, not a claim about what fits in a day. Treat a high count as a place to start planning and check the crossings yourself.

Yellow River Marsh Preserve State Park — the most park points in reach

14 other parks sit within 25 miles of US-3670, nearest first:

Straight-line distance from the base park, so real driving is further — sometimes much further where a bay or a river is in the way. On this coast that is the rule rather than the exception.

Pick One and Go

The simplest start is the top row of the candidates table: two references, one short drive at most, and dozens of people have already made a day of it. Pull up the managing agency's boundary map before you go and you will know whether it is a real two-fer or a five-minute hop — either way the trip works. If you want a bigger day, take a route above rather than designing one: a three-park afternoon somebody has run twenty times beats a 16-park marathon nobody has. Work ten contacts at each, upload when you get to it, and the overnight refresh picks you up.

Every park here is in the full list on the Parks page, with its grid-line caveats. Rankings are on the POTA Leaderboards page, and who is on the air right now is on Active Now.

How This Is Worked Out

One rule runs through the whole page: a combination appears only if people have really repeated it. Two parks being near each other proves nothing on its own, and two parks logged together once could be a mis-picked reference. Everything below has been logged on at least 3 separate days.

Two columns carry the weight. Days is how many separate dates the combination was logged. Operators is how many different people did it — and that is the one to read first. One person repeating something a hundred times is a habit. Forty people doing it is a stable fact about how these references get used, which is not the same as a fact about where their boundaries run.

What the same-day signal cannot separate. A day showing two references can be a genuine two-fer, a five-minute hop between two trailheads, an ordinary all-day rove, or a repeated logging habit. Distance narrows it and never settles it. Repetition and a high operator count make a combination more popular, not more likely to be an overlap — a well-liked pair of neighbouring parks produces exactly this pattern.

So read the shortlist as a shortlist. POTA requires you inside each park's boundary to claim it, and nothing on this page relieves that. What is here is a ranked place to start looking — the boundary check itself belongs to the managing agency's map, not to a log.

Notes on Sources

What the evidence actually is. POTA's public activation record for each park carries the activator's call sign and the date. A pair or a route here means one call sign logged those references on the same date, counted across every date it happened. An "outing" in the header count is one logged park-activation row, so a five-park day is five outings. Grid membership is POTA's own answer from its per-grid endpoint, not something worked out here from coordinates. Two different set rules are in play and it is worth knowing which: a pair counts any day those two references both appear, whatever else was worked; a route counts only days matching that exact set. Neither means the boundaries overlap, that the operator stayed in one spot, or that the parks can be claimed together — POTA's rules govern that and they require you inside each park.

The two thresholds, and that they are choices. 2 miles and 3 days are chosen, not derived. 3 days drops one-offs and coincidences without needing much of a filter. 2 miles is roughly walking-and-short-hop scale on this coast — near enough that one position covering both is worth going to look at. Neither is a boundary test, and a different cutoff would give a different shortlist. The counts are published beside every row so you can judge them rather than take the filter's word.

Distances. Great-circle miles between POTA's published coordinates. Straight line, so every figure is a floor for real driving. A park's published coordinate is one point and POTA never publishes the outline, so these describe points rather than parks — the same limit the Parks page is built around. A park with no published coordinates is left out of the distance tables rather than guessed at. Where the real boundaries are: POTA does not publish outlines, but the agencies that run these places generally do — the National Park Service, US Fish and Wildlife, and the state park, forest and conservation services all publish boundary maps. That, not this page, is what answers whether two parks genuinely overlap.

Call signs, and what is still absent. Call signs are FCC public record and POTA publishes these logs itself, so the roving tables name who and when — the same standard the leaderboards have always used here. Operators' names are not published anywhere on this site, and a call sign is not a name. Also absent: any pair or route done only once or twice, which is noise rather than a pattern. You can be taken off — mail AE4JC@ae4jc.com and your call sign comes off these tables and everywhere else it appears here, no reason needed. The list is read before any table is built, so it holds on every future rebuild; the full statement is on the privacy page. Worth saying plainly: a whole day's park list and a roving roster with career totals and a most-recent date is a tighter spotlight than POTA's own per-park view, even though every atom in it came from there. That is exactly why the removal path exists and why it is applied before each rebuild rather than after. Stats via POTA.app.