so i've been watching videos about WWFF for a while now and finally pulled the trigger on activating a local nature reserve near me last saturday. KFF reference, took me forever to figure out the whole reference lookup process on the wwff.us site but i got there eventually.

ended up making 23 contacts on 40m with my kx2 and a wire thrown up in a tree, which i think is enough to count as a valid activation? i read somewhere you need 44 but also saw something about 10 being the minimum and now im confused. the park was beautiful though, set up near a little creek and had the whole place to myself for like 3 hours.

anyway my main question is about logging — do i need to upload to both LotW AND the wwff logbook separately or does one feed the other? and is there a specific adif tag i need to include so it shows up correctly in their system. i didnt tag my contacts with the sig/sig_info fields and now im worried none of it will count.

congrats on the first activation, those are always memorable. to answer your question — 44 QSOs is the threshold to qualify the reference as a full activation (what they call a valid activation for the hunters to count), but 10 is enough for what some programs consider a participation credit. depends a bit on which program you're logging it toward, WWFF international vs the domestic POTA-style tracking. for WWFF specifically i'd aim for 44 if you can.

for the log upload, yeah you do need to upload separately to the wwff logbook at wwff.link or wherever your region is handled — LotW doesnt talk to them at all. the sig and sig_info fields are pretty important, sig should be WWFF and sig_info is the reference number like KFF-1234 or whatever yours was. if you dont have those in your adif some log managers let you do a bulk edit before export, ADIF Master is decent for that kind of thing. worst case email the wwff log manager for your region, they're usually pretty helpful about sorting out first-timer uploads.

oh man i remember being totally lost on the logging stuff my first time too. i actually just manually added the sig fields in a text editor which sounds scary but adif is just a text file really. just did a find and replace basically.

also 23 contacts on 40m with a kx2 is pretty solid for a first go, what antenna did you use? im always curious what people throw up when theyre out in the field like that