so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest near me, KFF-1234 or whatever the reference number is. had been meaning to do it for months and just never got around to it. anyway i threw the end-fed in a tree, ran 25 watts on the KX3 and just started calling CQ WWFF on 40m. honestly didnt expect much but i ended up with like 47 QSOs in about 2.5 hours which felt pretty good for a first attempt

couple things im not sure about though. first, the minimum is 44 QSOs to count as an activation right? i kept seeing different numbers mentioned on different sites and got confused. also do all those contacts need to be with different callsigns or can you work the same person on multiple bands and count them separately

also noticed there were a few people calling me that had WWFF in their exchange which i think means they were activating another reference at the same time? i logged them but wasnt sure how that works exactly. feels like theres a lot of little rules i dont fully understand yet but the actual operating part was really fun, way more enjoyable than i expected sitting in the woods with a thermos of coffee

congrats on the first activation, 47 contacts is a solid start especially on a first go. and yeah you're right to be confused about the numbers, the 44 QSO minimum gets mentioned a lot because its the same as SOTA but for WWFF it's actually 44 as the baseline to have the activation count toward your own tally. unique callsigns is what matters for that count, so working the same person on 40 and 20 only counts once for your activation total. they still get the credit on their end for hunting the reference though so log everything

the people calling with WWFF in the exchange were probably park to park contacts, sometimes called P2P in the logs. those are a nice bonus and yeah log them normally, there's a separate award track for those on both ends. the wwff.world site has all the upload info and the log format is pretty straightforward once you look at a sample. adif works fine, i just export straight from my logging software

oh man i just did my second activation a few weeks ago and had the same confusion about the 44 contacts thing lol. ended up just making sure i had way more than 44 just to be safe. the park to park thing is cool though i didnt even realize that was a thing until someone explained it to me after the fact. what end-fed were you running? im still trying to figure out the best portable antenna situation