so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, K-4829 if anyone knows it. went out with my KX2 and a 40m end fed that i strung up between two trees and honestly it went way smoother than i expected for a first time out. got 12 contacts in maybe 35 minutes which i know is just barely over the 10 minimum but hey it counts right

couple things im confused about though. i spotted myself on the POTA app before i started and got a few hunters calling pretty quick which was cool, but then the pile kind of dried up after like 8 contacts and i had to just call CQ for a while to find the last few. is that normal or was i doing something wrong with the spot. also i noticed some people on the cluster were spotted on multiple bands during the same activation, do you just re-spot yourself each time you QSY or does the app handle that

anyway it was a blast and i already picked out three more parks within an hour drive so i plan to do this a lot more. just want to make sure im doing the spots right before my next one

congrats on the first activation, 12 contacts is totally solid especially for a first time out. yeah the pile drying up is completely normal, once the hunters who saw your spot work you theres not a huge pool waiting around unless youre at a rare or popular park. what a lot of activators do is wait maybe 15-20 minutes and then re-spot yourself, a fresh spot bumps you back to the top of the list and you'll usually get another small wave of callers. some guys spot on multiple bands too which helps, and yeah you do have to manually re-spot each time you change bands, the app doesnt do that automatically. some people use the self-spot feature built into the KX2 if they have the right cables set up but honestly just doing it from your phone works fine

one other thing that helped me early on was trying to get on the air a little earlier in the morning on weekends, seemed like more hunters are active then. good luck with the next ones, once you get a few under your belt it becomes kind of addictive

oh man same experience here when i did my first one last spring, that moment when the pile dries up and youre just calling CQ into the void is a little nerve wracking lol. what park is K-4829 i dont recognize that one offhand