so i stumbled onto WWFF kind of by accident a few months ago, was reading about POTA and then someone mentioned WWFF and i figured they were basically the same thing but they're really not, or at least not exactly. anyway i finally got off my butt and drove out to a state wildlife management area near me last weekend that has a KGFF reference number and set up my little portable kit.

ran about 40 contacts over a couple hours on 40 and 20, mostly SSB with a bit of FT8 near the end when the band went quiet. conditions were kind of rough honestly but i got my 44 contacts which i think is what you need to count as a full activation in WWFF. the logging side of things is a bit confusing to me still, like i uploaded to wwff.us but im not totally sure if that automatically syncs to the global database or if i have to do something else.

also noticed there are hunter awards too which i didnt really know about before. does anyone here actively chase WWFF references or is most of the activity in north america still kind of POTA-focused? just curious what the community is like compared to POTA which feels massive now.

congrats on the first activation, 44 contacts in rough conditions is solid especially if you're running QRP or a compromise antenna. the logging thing tripped me up too when i started. wwff.us is the north american log aggregator basically, and yeah it does push to the global WWFF database but sometimes there's a delay of a day or two before it shows up on your profile over there. just give it a bit and check wwff.world to see your reference get logged.

as for the community, honestly i find WWFF skews a bit more international than POTA. lot of european activity, german and polish operators especially seem very active. you'll also find that some references have a lot of history attached to them, national parks and biosphere reserves that have been activated hundreds of times going back years. the hunter side is real too, ive been chasing references for about two years and its actually become my main operating motivation. working someone from a nature park in finland or a wildlife reserve in australia on 20m is just a different feeling than regular DX somehow, i dunno theres context to it.

oh man i didnt even know WWFF was a thing until like three weeks ago lol. i'm still working on getting enough POTA activations to feel comfortable but now you've got me looking up what references are near me. this hobby just keeps expanding