Toilets on the Air at 39C3 (TOTA)
You might have heard of Parks on the Air (POTA), Summits on the Air, or maybe even Bunkers on the Air. Radio amateurs love combining the hobby with an excuse to go and visit somewhere. But what about Toilets on the Air? Yes. Toilets. Let me set the scene Picture this: around 16,000 people in Hamburg, Germany, all packed into a massive conference centre for the 39th Chaos Communication Congress (39C3), a four-day hacker conference running 27–30 December 2025. It’s the middle of winter. The venue is huge. There’s reinforced concrete everywhere. You can be walking for ages just trying to get from one hall to another… and if you have a handheld radio in your pocket, you’ll start wondering how well anything is going to get through all that building. Which brings us to… TOTA — Toilets on the Air TOTA is a small (and slightly ridiculous) activity that’s been running at 39C3 for a few years now. The idea is simple: it’s a gentle “contest” / training exercise to help new radio amateurs (and anyone curious) learn basic operating. https://totawatch.de/ And don’t worry, you’re not asked to make contacts from inside the toilet itself. The rules are pretty clear: stand a few metres from the door, don’t block anyone, and always respect privacy. It’s meant to be good fun, not weird. Modes FM: 430.200 MHz SSTV: 430.200 MHz CW: 432.032 MHz DMR: Brandmeister TG26223 Activators, Hunters, and T2T Like the other “on the air” things, you’ve got: Activator — the person at the reference (in this case, a toilet location) who calls CQ. Hunter / Chaser — the person answering. And then there’s Toilet-to-Toilet (T2T) , when two activators manage to work on each other while both are at their own reference locations. Ridiculous, maybe. My bit of TOTA (DL/EI7IRB) I was busy giving three workshops during the first few days of the congress, so I only got in on the action on the last day. I took on the role of a hunter, answering plenty of calls as I wandered around the conference with my Quansheng. But only making voice contacts… where’s the fun in that? Of course, there was SSTV. So there I was, operating as DL/EI7IRB , with a handheld radio and a smartphone held up to the speaker, trying to decode images from the tones. It’s a very “CCC” way of doing it with minimal setup, lots of messing, and it somehow kind of works. There’s a Mastodon bot collecting the SSTV images people received during the event. If you want to go down the rabbit hole and see loads of them, here’s the link: https://social.darc.de/@tota Closing Thoughts I was nowhere near the top of the leaderboard, but I had a great time. TOTA isn’t really about big numbers or fancy stations. It’s about getting people comfortable on the air, having a laugh, and learning a few things without anyone taking it too seriously. Maybe you will see TOTA at the next conference you go to. For more photos from 38c3 check out our gallery https://www.tog.ie/gallery/nggallery/album/39c3