so ive been doing SOTA for about a year now and someone at the club mentioned WWFF and honestly i kind of fell down a rabbit hole reading about it this past weekend. looks like there are a bunch of parks and nature reserves near me that qualify as references and ive been wanting to do something a bit different anyway since theres not a lot of summits in my area worth activating.

i registered on the wwff.cc site and claimed one of the local references which is a state forest about 20 minutes from my house. planning to run QRP with my KX2 and a wire antenna thrown up in a tree, same setup i use for SOTA mostly. do i need to do anything special with logging compared to SOTA, like do i still upload to ADIF on WWFF logbook? and is 44 contacts still the threshold for a full activation or did that change? i saw some conflicting info online and couldnt tell if it was outdated.

also wondering if anyone has tips on spotting yourself for WWFF specifically, does the POTA app work or do i need to use a different spotter

welcome to wwff, its a great program and honestly i like it more than SOTA sometimes because you dont have to haul yourself up a mountain haha. yes 44 QSOs is still the threshold for a full activation, that hasnt changed in a while. some folks aim for 44 SSB and then throw in some digital if theyre having a slow day but it all counts.

for logging you can upload to the WWFF logbook directly via ADIF, pretty straightforward. the site has instructions but basically just export from your logging software and upload. i use HAMRS in the field on my tablet and it works well. as for spotting -- the POTA spotting system is different from WWFF technically but in practice a lot of wwff activators use wwff.cc/spots or just post on the wwff facebook group before they go out. some people self spot on dx cluster too which works fine. you might also check if there is an activators group for your country since the program has national coordinators who can be really helpful with local stuff.

have fun out there, the nature references add a really nice reason to just go sit in the woods for a few hours with a radio

oh man i just did my first one last month at a wildlife refuge near me and it was so much fun. i was nervous about getting 44 contacts but ended up with like 67 in about two hours which surprised me. there seem to be a lot of hunters on the wwff frequencies who are looking for new references so once you get spotted the pileup comes pretty quick. i was on 40m SSB mostly.

one thing i wasnt expecting -- some chasers will ask you to confirm the exact reference number like KFF-xxxx so have that handy. i fumbled it the first couple times and had to look it up on my phone mid-qso which was a little embarrassing but everyone was patient about it