so i finally did my first parks on the air activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house. been wanting to do this for months and kept putting it off for one reason or another. anyway i loaded up the car with my KX2, a 40m end fed, some bungee cords, a folding chair, and way too many snacks and headed out saturday morning.

setup went fine, got the wire up in a tree maybe 20 feet which i thought would be fine. spotted myself on the POTA website and started calling CQ. first like 20 minutes nothing. i mean crickets. started to wonder if i had the wrong park reference or something was wrong with my signal. finally checked and realized i had the antenna connector only half seated on the tuner, so yeah that was fun to figure out.

once i fixed that the pile up came pretty fast actually, got my 10 contacts in about 25 minutes on 20m and then worked another 30 or so before the battery started getting low. ended up logging 43 QSOs which i hear is pretty decent for a first activation. the whole thing was just a great time honestly, being outside in the park with the radio just felt right. already looking at my next park to hit, thinking about doing a 2-fer if i can find parks that are close enough together. anyone have tips on picking parks that work well for a 2-fer situation?

43 contacts on your first activation is really solid, a lot of people just barely squeak by with 10 so you did well. the half-seated connector thing happens to everyone at least once, i had the same issue with my 857 at a park last spring and spent way too long trying to figure out why my SWR was through the roof.

for 2-fers just look at the POTA maps and zoom in on your area, sometimes state parks share borders or there are two different designations for the same area like a state forest that overlaps with a national forest boundary. those are gold because you can activate both references without even moving. the POTA.app site has a decent map layer for this. also check if your state has any linear parks like rail trails because those can sometimes get tricky with what counts as within the park boundary but its worth understanding before you drive out there.

oh man the half connector thing is such a classic mistake lol. i did something similar on my second activation, had the antenna plugged into the wrong port on my tuner entirely and just kept scratching my head at the SWR readings. anyway congrats on getting it done, 43 is great. i still get excited when i crack 50 on a single band.