So i finally did my first parks on the air activation last weekend at a local state park, K-4556 i think it was. Been a ham for about 8 months now and kept reading about POTA and figured why not give it a shot since the park is literally 20 minutes from my house.

I brought my FT-891 and a random wire antenna i threw together, figured id just string it up in a tree and see what happened. The whole setup took way longer than expected, like almost an hour just messing around with the feedline and getting a decent SWR on 40m. by the time i was actually ready to call CQ it was almost noon and the bands felt kind of dead to me, or at least deader than i expected.

I did eventually get my 10 contacts which i know is the minimum for a valid activation, but it took probably 45 minutes of calling and waiting which felt like forever. A couple hunters were really patient with me when i fumbled around with my logging and i appreciated that. One guy even slowed way down when i couldnt copy his callsign, just a real nice experience overall despite the rough start.

Anyway just wanted to share. Any tips for making the process smoother next time? Especially curious if theres a better time of day to activate or if 40m is even the right band to start on.

Congrats on the first activation, getting that first one done is honestly the hardest part. 10 contacts in 45 minutes is totally respectable for a first go, dont be too hard on yourself.

For time of day, i generally try to get on the air by 9 or 10am local if im doing 40m, the morning greyline can be really good and you get the east coast hunters before they wander off. Midday on 40 in summer is rough because the skip gets long and you kind of fall into a dead zone where you're too far for local contacts and not far enough for the big DX stations to bother. Some activators switch to 20m around midday and that can really open things up, especially if you want spots from hunters across the country.

Also check out the POTA spotting page before you go out, you can self-spot from your phone once you're on frequency and that makes a huge difference. Seriously the pile up starts almost immediately once you're spotted. Just have your logging sorted before you key up or it gets chaotic fast, ask me how i know lol.

yeah what he said about self spotting is huge, i didnt know about that for my first couple activations and i was just sitting there calling into the void wondering if anyone could even hear me. the pota.app site has a spot button and once you use it youll wonder how you ever activated without it

also dont stress too much about the antenna situation, ive seen people validate with a mag loop in a parking lot so whatever works. your random wire setup sounds totally fine, maybe just practice deploying it at home a couple times before the next one so the setup goes faster on the day