so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 40 minutes from my house. been putting it off for months because i kept telling myself i needed better gear or more practice or whatever, just excuses honestly. anyway i threw the KX2 in a backpack with my EFHW and a little collapsible fishing pole for the mast and just went for it.

made 12 contacts in about an hour which i know is not a huge pile but the park was qualified so im pretty happy with it. mostly 40m SSB, tried 20m for a bit but was having a hard time hearing responses to my CQ. i think my antenna placement was kind of off because i was near a lot of trees and it was a weird sloped setup.

couple of things im not sure about though - when i log it on the POTA website do i need to upload an ADIF or can i just enter contacts manually? i used a paper log in the field and havent set up any logging software yet. also is there a way to let hunters know youre activating in advance, like do people actually use the spots page or is that more for when youre already out there?

also someone on the air told me i should try to do a selfspot but i was fumbling with the radio and didnt really have a way to do it easily. is there an app for that or do people use a second phone or something

congrats on the first activation, 12 contacts for a first time out is totally solid especially if you were just winging the antenna setup. dont stress about that.

for logging you can upload an ADIF from pretty much any logging program but yeah if you only have paper you can also enter contacts manually on the POTA site, its a bit tedious but it works fine. a lot of people use HAMRS or Log4OM for field logging because they export clean ADIF files, but plenty of folks still do paper and enter it later.

for spotting - the POTA spots page at pota.app is where most hunters are watching, and yeah most people use the POTA app on their phone to self-spot while theyre operating. you just pick your park reference, enter your freq and mode and it pushes the spot out. signal gets way better once youre spotted, like night and day sometimes. some guys set it up so their logging software spots automatically but the app is dead simple once you get the hang of it. if you dont have signal at the park you can also ask someone on the air to spot you, just say something like asking for a spot and usually someone will help out

yeah the spots page is huge, i hunted my first few dozen parks before ever activating and i just kept that page open all day whenever i was home near the radio. honestly the community aspect of POTA got me way more into HF than anything else did. once you get comfortable activating you kind of get addicted to it

one thing i'd add - for your antenna placement, try to get the feed point a bit higher if you can and make sure the counterpoise is laying out flat and not bunched up. made a big difference for me on 20m. and dont worry too much about 20m at first, 40m is more forgiving for short wire antennas in my experience