so I finally did my first activation yesterday at a local state park, K-4829 if anyone knows it, and honestly it was kind of a mess but i think i still pulled it off. I was running my FT-891 off a 20ah lifepo4 battery and brought my end fed halfwave up in a tree maybe 25 feet which honestly was harder than expected because the branches were all super high and my throw bag kept getting stuck.

anyway i got on 40 meters around 2pm local and started calling CQ POTA and... nothing. like 10 minutes of nothing. I wasn't sure if i was doing the callsign format right or if my antenna was actually working. eventually spotted myself on the POTA app and within like 2 minutes the pile started. nobody told me how much difference that makes. I ended up with 14 QSOs which i know barely qualifies but hey it counts right? logged it when i got home and uploaded the adif and it shows as pending. fingers crossed.

for anyone else doing their first one — bring more rope than you think you need and get yourself spotted early. i wasted like half my battery just sitting there calling into the void before i figured that out.

14 QSOs absolutely counts, activation is activation. I remember my first one I was so nervous I forgot to write down the park reference on half my log entries and had to go back and fix everything before uploading. what a pain that was.

the self-spotting thing is huge and I wish someone had told me sooner too. some guys are religious about not self-spotting but honestly for a new activator just trying to get the 10 contacts and learn the process, just spot yourself. the hunters are out there waiting, they just dont know youre on the air. once you get comfortable you can try working without a spot and see how long it takes, kind of a fun challenge actually.

also 40m at 2pm local can be rough depending on where you are, propagation gets weird in the afternoon. might be worth trying 20m next time especially if youre trying to pull in hunters from farther away. welcome to the POTA rabbit hole, it gets expensive from here lol

yeah that pending status can take a little bit just be patient it'll go through. I had one sit for like 3 days once before it processed but it showed up fine eventually.

nice work getting it done though, i keep saying im going to do my first activation and keep chickening out honestly