so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest near me, KFF-something i looked it up on the wwff.us site. been meaning to do one for ages and kept putting it off because honestly the whole logging and upload process looked confusing from the outside.

ended up making 47 contacts in about 2.5 hours on 40m and 20m SSB, which i was pretty happy with for a first attempt. had a few hunters calling in from europe which i was NOT expecting, apparently the dx side of WWFF is a whole thing i didnt fully appreciate until now. one guy from germany called me three times because i wasnt copying him well through the qsb and he was very patient about it, really nice experience.

my questions are -- do i need to upload to both the WWFF logbook AND eqsl/lotw separately or does the wwff upload cover everything for the hunters awards? and also i noticed some references have multiple designations like a state park that also has a KFF number, do you just log it once or does it count for both programs somehow? im using HAMRS for logging in the field which worked great by the way, exports adif just fine.

also is there a minimum contact requirement to have the activation count, i remember reading 44 somewhere but wasnt sure if that was still current

congrats on the first one, always a good feeling when it comes together. yes 44 QSOs is still the magic number to have it count as a valid activation for the program, though you can still upload anything under that it just wont count toward your activator score.

for the uploads -- you want to upload your adif to the wwff logbook directly at wwff.us, that handles everything on the WWFF side for both you and the hunters automatically. lotw and eqsl are separate and honestly up to you, plenty of hunters want the lotw confirmation too so its worth doing if you can. i usually just upload the same adif to all three, takes maybe 10 minutes total.

the dual designation thing with state parks is a good question and it depends. if the park is listed as both a POTA reference and a WWFF reference they are technically separate programs with separate logbooks, so you upload to each program's system. for the actual operating you only do it once obviously but both can count simultaneously which is why a lot of people try to find references that qualify for multiple programs, gets you more bang for your effort. some of the bigger state parks here are KFF, K- pota, and even a SOTA summit nearby so you can really stack things up if you plan it right.

the european hunters thing is real, i was shocked my first time too. WWFF is huge over there, way more active than it feels from the US side. there are guys in germany and italy who chase these references constantly and they have serious ears, they will pull you out of noise that i would never even attempt.

hamrs works well, ive used it too. only thing id say is double check your reference number format before you upload because i had one rejected once because i had a typo in the KFF number and it was kind of annoying to sort out after the fact