[robear]

Contesting or radiosport has been around for a long time in amateur radio. There are lots of contests throughout the year. Contests essentially involve making contacts with other amateurs. There is usually some sort of exchange that validates that a contact has been made. Different contests have different scoring. Amateur radio has a lot of aspects to it and some people love the contesting aspect. Some aren't into it at all.

Summits-on-the-Air, Parks-on-the-Air, and others involve going out and operating a portable station (the activator). The reason why parks are a good place to operate is that they have open spaces, trees, etc that are good for deploying antennas. You also don't generally need permission like you would with a school field for instance. Operating portable is great for people that live in an apartment or condo where they can't put up an antenna.

The emergency aspect is having the gear and practice for operating portable like one might have to do in an emergency.

In the end, it is about fun and using your equipment and skills in different ways.