so i finally did my first solo activation last weekend at a state park about 45 mins from my house, K-4881 if anyones curious. ive been hunting parks for a few months and kept telling myself id do an activation eventually and just kept putting it off because honestly i was nervous about the whole thing.

brought my KX2 and a 40m end fed halfwave just thrown up between two trees with a telescoping pole in the middle, nothing fancy. got there around 10am and it took me maybe 20 minutes to get set up which felt like forever at the time. spotted myself on the POTA app and the pile up was... not what i expected. like actually had to slow down and work people one at a time for almost 45 minutes straight. ended up with 34 QSOs which is way more than the 10 you need to count it as a valid activation.

the only thing that went wrong is i forgot to bring a pen that actually worked lol, had to use a piece of charcoal from an old fire pit to scribble callsigns in my log which was a disaster to decipher later. got most of them uploaded to POTA.app though.

anyone else do their first activation recently? also curious if people think 40m is usually enough or should i be running 20m too, i felt like i was leaving contacts on the table

congrats on getting it done, that first one is always the hardest because you build it up so much in your head. 34 QSOs is a solid activation especially solo with modest gear.

on the 40m vs 20m question -- honestly both if you can swing it. i usually run a linked dipole so i can drop down to 40 later in the day when 20 starts to get long. mornings 20m is usually great for reaching hunters across the country and you'll get a lot more spots from people who hear you. 40m is more local but thats not a bad thing either, lots of dedicated hunters monitoring it. if you're running an endfed you might just try cutting it for 40 and see how it loads on 20 with your tuner, a lot of people get away with that.

also get a fisher space pen or just tape a backup pen to your log clipboard, that charcoal thing is hilarious but i guarantee youll forget the pen again otherwise

dude the pen thing happens to everyone at least once, i showed up to an activation once with my whole station and realized i left my coax at home so you're not alone in the gear fail department haha

i've only done a few activations myself and im still pretty new to pota but what helped me was just watching a few youtube videos of people doing activations beforehand so i knew roughly what the pile up rhythm felt like. also the POTA slack community is pretty active if you want feedback on logs or whatever