so i finally did my first parks on the air activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, K-4857 if anyone knows it, and yeah it was a bit of a mess but in a good way i think

i brought way too much stuff, like i packed up my whole station basically, the KX2, a bunch of feedline, my big tripod, snacks for three days even though i was only going for maybe 3 hours, my wife thought i was moving in lol. set up a linked dipole on the tripod which took forever because i kept getting the legs tangled and then a family stopped to ask me what i was doing and i ended up spending 20 minutes explaining amateur radio to them which honestly was fun but yeah

anyway i got on 40m around noon and started calling CQ POTA and within maybe 5 minutes i had a small pileup going which completely caught me off guard, i expected crickets honestly. ended up with 23 QSOs which i know is not a lot but for a first time out i was pretty happy. didn't make it to 10 which is the minimum for a valid activation so i switched to 20m and got 8 more there. logged everything on paper because i didnt trust myself to use an app while also trying to operate

main question i have is about logging after the fact, do i just upload my ADIF to the POTA website directly or is there something else i need to do first? i converted my paper log to an ADIF using ham2adif and it looks right but i dont want to mess anything up

congrats on the first activation, 31 QSOs is solid especially for a first time out and on a random weekday i'm guessing. the upload is pretty straightforward, you just go to pota.app, log into your account, and there's an upload section right there. just drop the ADIF in and it'll parse everything and show you a preview before it submits. double check that your park reference is in there correctly, sometimes ham2adif doesn't pull that in automatically and you'll need to add it to your log or the website will ask you for it.

one thing i'd mention is make sure the date and times are in UTC in your log, that trips people up sometimes when they first start. the system is pretty good about flagging issues before you finalize so you'll see if something's off. and yeah paper logging is totally fine, plenty of people still do it, i just use the notes app on my phone which is probably worse than paper honestly

oh man the overpacking thing is SO real, my first activation i brought like a full sized folding table and two chairs and a cooler and my wife's portable canopy thing for shade. ended up leaving half of it in the car because i had to hike like a quarter mile to the operating spot and just said forget it. now i basically do QRP with a KX3 and a wire in a bag and that's it. less is definitely more for POTA once you get the hang of it

also 40m at noon can be hit or miss depending on where you are, sounds like propagation was cooperating for you. i usually try to get on 20 first just to see what's happening and then drop down to 40 later in the afternoon when it starts opening up more locally. not saying that's the right way just what works for me