so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest near me, KFF-something i had to look up the reference number on the website beforehand. i was honestly pretty nervous because ive done a handful of SOTA summits but this felt different somehow, maybe because i wasnt sure how much interest there would be from chasers.

set up my endfed on some branches, ran 25 watts on 40m and got about 18 contacts in maybe 40 minutes which i think is enough to log the activation as valid? i kept seeing different numbers thrown around, some people say 10 contacts some say 44 for the full activation award thing. anyway the park itself was gorgeous, creek running through it, nobody else around. made it onto parksnpeaks and spotted myself through the app which helped a ton.

my question is mainly about logging — do i need to submit the log to WWFF separately from whatever i upload to LOTW? and is there a specific adif field for the nature reference that i should be filling in? my logger on the phone didnt seem to have a dedicated spot for it. also curious if anyone activates these regularly, seems like theres not as many activators in my area compared to SOTA.

congrats on the first one, those are always fun. so yeah the 44 contacts thing is for the full Flora Fauna Diploma credit, but 10 is all you need to count the activation as valid for the reference itself. you did fine with 18.

for logging you basically upload your adif to the WWFF log submission — there's a spot on the wwff.us site or the global one depending on which program you're working through since there's a North American group too. the field you want in the adif is SIG and SIG_INFO, so SIG would be WWFF and then SIG_INFO is the actual reference like KFF-1234 or whatever yours was. a lot of the standard logging programs have added this but phone apps can be hit or miss. i usually just edit the adif manually in a text editor before submitting, takes like two minutes once you know what youre looking for.

LOTW is separate and doesnt really handle the WWFF references natively so that upload is mostly just for regular qsl purposes. the WWFF database is its own thing.

nice work, 40m is usually pretty solid for those if you get on mid morning or early afternoon. i find WWFF a bit more relaxed than SOTA honestly, like theres less pressure about the summit window and you can just hang out and make contacts at your own pace. some of the references out here in the midwest are huge state forests so you could technically be anywhere in like 50,000 acres which is kind of amusing.

one thing i'd add is worth joining the WWFF facebook group or at least checking the spots page regularly because there are more activators out there than you might think, they just dont always publicize it. also some parks overlap with other programs like POTA and the contacts count for both which is nice for the chasers chasing multiple awards at once.