so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest near me, KFF-something, i have to look up the exact number. been meaning to try this for months and just kept putting it off. anyway i packed up the FT-891 and a random wire antenna, found a nice spot away from the trail head and just started calling on 40m around 14:074 - wait no that's 20m, i always mix those up - yeah 20m. anyway got my 44 contacts and then some, ended up with like 67 i think before the battery started getting low.

question is about logging. im using HAMRS on my tablet and it seemed fine but when i went to upload to the WWFF database i got confused about the reference format. also does the 44 contact minimum reset if you go back to the same park another day or does it count cumulatively? i read the rules page twice and it was a bit ambiguous to me at least.

also someone spotted me on the POTA cluster (i know its not technically POTA) and i got a nice little pileup for about 20 minutes which was honestly really fun. didnt expect that. the nature side of it was great too, had a woodpecker going absolutely nuts in a tree like 10 feet away the whole time

congrats on the first one, those pileups are addictive arent they. to answer your logging question - yes the 44 contacts has to happen within a single outing/activation, they dont accumulate across visits. each activation stands alone. so if you go back next week thats a whole new activation and you need 44 again from scratch. at least thats how it worked last time i checked the WWFF rules, they did update some stuff a while back so worth double checking on the wwff.net site.

for the reference format in the database upload it should be like KFF-XXXX where the numbers are zero padded to four digits. HAMRS usually handles that but sometimes it gets weird depending on how you entered the reference in the first place. if you exported an ADIF just open it in a text editor and check the SIG_INFO field, you can fix it manually before uploading if it looks off.

the woodpecker thing made me laugh, i had a whole family of geese basically staging a protest 30 feet from my operating position once. nature doesnt care about your QSO rate

yeah the POTA cluster picks up WWFF spots too, lots of overlap in the hunter community so you'll get spotted there even if its technically a different program. not a problem at all, more contacts is more contacts. some references are even in both programs simultaneously which is nice.

im kinda curious what state forest you were at if you dont mind sharing, always looking for new references to activate around here. also 67 contacts on a first activation is really solid, mine was pretty rough, i think i barely scraped 50 and my antenna kept wanting to fall down