so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house and honestly i was kind of nervous going in because ive been licensed for about 8 months and most of my operating has been just ragchewing on the local repeater and some FT8 stuff at home. figured POTA would be a good excuse to finally take the radio outside and do something with it.

i brought my IC-705 and a random wire antenna i built from instructions i found online, threw it up in a tree using a tennis ball and some paracord which worked better than i expected. took me maybe 20 minutes to get set up which was longer than i wanted but whatever. spotted myself on the POTA website and within like 2 minutes i had people calling me. i was not ready for that honestly, the pile up wasnt huge but for me it felt like a lot and i fumbled through the first few contacts.

ended up with 23 contacts in about 90 minutes on 40m, which is more than the 10 you need to count as an activated park. only thing that tripped me up was i forgot to log the park reference number in my head before i started so i had to look it up mid-operation which felt embarrassing but nobody on the air knew that.

anyway if anyones been sitting on the fence about trying this, just go do it. bring more coax than you think you need and maybe practice your exchange before you go so you dont freeze up like i did the first few calls.

congrats on the first one, 23 contacts is a solid debut honestly. a lot of people struggle to get to 10 on their first outing especially if conditions are rough or the park is in a weird spot with a lot of trees blocking take off angle. the IC-705 is a great little radio for this kind of thing, i used one for about a year before i switched to a KX2 just for the weight savings since i started doing more hiking activations.

one thing that helped me early on was writing the park reference on a piece of tape and sticking it right on the radio. sounds dumb but when youre nervous and trying to manage a pile up its really easy to blank on stuff like that. also get in the habit of announcing it on air every few contacts, the hunters appreciate it and it keeps you honest about logging it correctly. welcome to the rabbit hole by the way, my park count is embarrassing at this point

yeah i had almost the exact same experience on my first one lol. i was so focused on remembering the RST exchange format that i totally forgot people would also want the park reference and my state. had to ask the third contact to repeat their callsign twice because my brain just wasnt keeping up. it gets way easier after a few times though, now it feels pretty natural. which park did you activate if you dont mind me asking, always curious to see what references people are working