so i finally did my first parks on the air activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house. been wanting to do this for months but kept putting it off because i wasnt sure if my setup was good enough or whatever. ended up just throwing the KX2 and a random wire antenna in a backpack and driving out there

got 12 contacts in about an hour and a half which i know is just barely over the minimum but hey it counts right. mostly 40m, tried 20m for a bit but conditions werent great that afternoon. spotted myself on the POTA app and things picked up after that, had a little pileup for maybe 10 minutes which was fun and kind of stressful at the same time

couple questions for people who do this regularly -- when you upload your log do you just use ADIF straight from your logger or is there something else i should know about. also i noticed some hunters were sending their grid squares in their exchange, is that standard or just something some folks do. and is there a good way to know ahead of time if a park has already been activated a bunch of times vs one that hasnt been done much, does that even matter

congrats on the first one, 12 contacts is solid especially if conditions werent cooperating. the ADIF upload is pretty straightforward, just export from whatever logger you used and drop it into the POTA website. the only thing that trips people up sometimes is making sure your park reference is in the right field -- it needs to be in the SIG_INFO field as like US-1234 or whatever your park number is. if your logger doesnt do that automatically you might have to do a little manual editing but honestly most of the popular ones handle it fine now

the grid square thing is just some hunters being helpful, not required at all. some guys like to collect grids for other awards so they throw it in. you dont need to log it or anything if you dont want to

as for the activation count, yeah you can see that on the park page on the POTA website. a park with zero or very few activations is kind of a bigger deal for hunters since they need it for their county or whatever, but honestly just go to whatever park is fun for you. rare parks do tend to bring out more hunters though if you want a bigger pileup

oh man i had the same exact feeling my first time, that little pileup moment is such a rush. i kept second guessing whether i was doing the exchanges right lol

one thing i'd add is check out the POTA subreddit and also there's a really active facebook group where people post about upcoming activations and stuff. i learned a ton just from watching how other people log and operate from their posts and videos. also if you can ever go out with someone who's done a bunch of activations it really helps, i tagged along with a guy from my club before i tried solo and it made a huge difference