so i finally did my first parks on the air activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, K-2830 if anyone knows it, and honestly it went way better than i thought it would. i was super nervous about the whole thing because ive been licensed for about 8 months and mostly just do local repeater stuff and the occasional HF contact from home.

i brought my IC-705 and a wire antenna i threw together from some stuff i had laying around, just a basic end fed half wave thing i hung between two trees with a piece of paracord and a slingshot. got it up maybe 25 feet at the high end which i know isnt ideal but whatever. set up on 40m SSB because thats what most of the youtube videos i watched said to start with and within maybe 10 minutes i had my first pile up which was honestly kind of overwhelming? i didnt realize hunters would spot me that fast once i got on pskreporter and threw my callsign into the POTA website.

ended up with 32 contacts in about an hour and a half which i think is decent for a first time. one thing i wasnt prepared for was people calling on top of each other, im used to pretty polite repeater QSOs so the whole pile up management thing was new. any tips for next time? also does anyone know if you have to stay within the actual park boundary the whole time or can you set up just outside the entrance

congrats on the activation, 32 contacts is a solid first run honestly. and yeah the pile up thing catches everyone off guard at first. what helped me was being really deliberate about saying the last two letters of who i want after every contact, like "going back for stations ending in romeo tango" or whatever. slows things down a bit but you stop the chaos of everyone just screaming their callsign at once.

on the boundary question — you do need to be within the official park boundary for it to count. the POTA rules are pretty clear on that. most state parks are fine because the trailheads and picnic areas are obviously inside, but its worth pulling up the park map beforehand just to be sure. ive seen people get caught out when the parking lot is technically outside the designated park area. the POTA website has the reference maps linked for most parks which helps. also try 20m if 40 is noisy, sometimes mid morning 20 is wide open and youll pull in contacts from way further out which is fun

nice work. i just started hunting a few months ago and guys like you doing activations are the reason its so fun to chase parks. one thing i noticed from the hunter side is that activators who give their callsign and park reference number every few contacts are way easier to log correctly, sometimes the spots on the website have typos and hunters are guessing at the park number if you dont say it. just a small thing but it helps us on the other end keep the log clean