so i finally did my first park activation last weekend at a state park about 40 min from my house. been putting it off forever because i kept thinking i needed more gear or a better antenna situation but honestly i just threw the KX2 in a bag with my end fed and a fiberglass pole and drove out there

set up on a picnic table near the trailhead, got 10 contacts in maybe 25 minutes on 40m which i guess counts, and then spent another hour just goofing around on 20m trying to work some of the SOTA guys. it was genuinely more fun than sitting in the shack and i dont know why i waited this long

the only issue was the EFHF kept drooping because i didnt bring enough cord to tension it properly and the wind was doing weird things to my swr. ended up just holding the pole with one hand and keying with the other which was ridiculous but it worked. anyone else do dumb stuff like that on their first activation

haha yeah my first one i forgot the counterpoise entirely and spent like 20 minutes wondering why everything sounded terrible. ended up clipping a random wire to a tree root and it sorta helped. you learn fast when youre out there with no bench to work on

congrats on the activation though, 10 contacts is solid especially if conditions werent great. 40m is usually pretty reliable for that kind of thing

the drooping antenna thing is real, i use a cheap bungee from the hardware store to keep tension on mine and it made a huge difference. also if youre doing more POTA stuff look into a linked dipole, way easier to tune for different bands without the swr drama