so i finally did my first park activation last weekend at a state park about 45 mins from my house. been putting it off forever because i kept telling myself i needed better gear or more practice or whatever. finally just threw the KX2 and a random wire in a backpack and drove out there.

set up near a picnic table, got the antenna up in a tree maybe 20 feet or so, nothing fancy. fired up 20m and within like 10 minutes i had my 10 contacts and was way more relaxed than i thought id be. ended up staying two hours and worked maybe 35 QSOs total including a couple on 40m before the noise floor got bad.

the whole thing was just... fun? like i forgot how fun radio can be when youre not sitting in the shack overthinking everything. already planning the next one

yeah that first one is always the hardest just because of the mental block. once you do it you realize how forgiving pota hunters are, they WANT you to succeed so they keep calling. i remember my first activation i was so nervous i forgot to log half the contacts and had to reconstruct it from memory later lol. kx2 is a great little rig for this by the way, ive been eyeing one for a while but cant quite pull the trigger on the price

what antenna setup were you using exactly, just a random wire end-fed or like a linked dipole or what. trying to figure out what to bring for my first one next month