so i finally did my first parks on the air activation yesterday at K-4562, a state forest about 45 minutes from my house. been meaning to do this for months and kept putting it off because i wasnt sure i had the right setup or whatever. ended up just throwing the gear in the car and going for it.

brought my ft-891 and a random wire i made from some instructions i found online, fed it with a 9:1 unun and just kinda draped it over some branches maybe 15 feet up. SWR was a little ugly on 40m but the tuner handled it. i was honestly not expecting much but i ended up getting 12 contacts in maybe an hour and a half, which i know isnt a lot but the minimum is 10 so it counts as an activated park right?

the weird part was i had no idea how busy the POTA frequencies actually are. i spotted myself on the POTA website using my phone and almost immediately had people calling me which was kind of overwhelming at first. i fumbled through a few exchanges and probably sounded like an idiot but everyone was super patient. one guy even slowed way down when i was obviously struggling with logging on paper.

anyway just wanted to share because ive been lurking here forever and this community kinda pushed me to finally go do it. already looking at parks near me for next weekend.

12 contacts absolutely counts, yes. the 10 QSO minimum is the threshold and you're over it so that park is activated, upload your log to the POTA website and youll see it show up in a day or two. congrats on the first one.

the chaos of calling CQ and then getting piled on is real and it catches almost everyone off guard the first time. you'll get a rhythm going after a couple more activations. one thing that helped me early on was keeping the exchange super tight — just their callsign, 59, your park reference, and done. some hunters just want the contact logged and will move on quick if you keep it moving. also dont be afraid to say QRZ after each contact to signal youre ready for the next one, it helps manage the pileup a bit.

the random wire over branches setup honestly works great for portable ops. ive done probably 40 activations now with basically the same kind of antenna and rarely have trouble making contacts. sometimes the simple stuff just works.

dude same thing happened to me on my first activation lol, i spotted myself and then just stared at the radio for like 10 seconds because i didnt expect anyone to actually call. got flustered and gave my callsign wrong twice in a row. the hunter on the other end was really cool about it though.

which state forest was K-4562? im always looking for parks in driving distance to hunt from home, sometimes i can work activators from my attic antenna setup if theyre not too far out.