so i finally did my first parks on the air activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, K-4832 if anyone knows it, pretty small park but had a decent clearing to set up in. been hunting for a while and figured it was time to stop watching from the sidelines and actually go do one.

i brought my FT-891 and a linked dipole i built a few months ago, threw it up between two trees with some paracord, maybe 25 feet up at the apex. conditions on 40m were decent enough and i managed 12 contacts in the first 20 minutes which i was pretty happy about for a first timer. ended up with 47 contacts total over about 2 hours, got the 10 minimum easily which was a relief because i was genuinely nervous i'd get skunked.

couple things i wasn't sure about though -- when i spotted myself on the POTA site, should i have been doing that more frequently? i spotted once at the start and then again maybe 45 minutes later when i moved to 20m. also i'm still confused about the whole hunter-activator thing when you're at a park that's in a county that might also be a different reference somehow? saw something about that but couldn't figure out if it applied to my park. and one more thing, can you log the same contact for a hunter if they call you on two different bands or is that considered a dupe?

anyway overall it was a blast and i'll definitely be doing more of these, already looking at a couple parks nearby

congrats on the first one, 47 contacts is a solid debut honestly. don't stress too much about the spotting frequency -- i usually re-spot myself whenever i change bands or if i've been quiet for more than 20 or 30 minutes and the pile starts dying down. the hunters are watching the spot page constantly so a fresh spot def brings in a new wave. some activators spot every hour or so religiously, others just do it once and ride it out, both approaches work depending on conditions.

on your dupe question -- yes you can log the same hunter on multiple bands and it counts as separate contacts for both of you. so if W3ABC works you on 40m and then follows you to 20m, that's two valid qsos in the log. that's actually one of the fun parts of POTA compared to contesting where dupes are frowned on. hunters love chasing the same activator across multiple bands to build up their counts.

the county / multiple reference thing you're probably thinking of is when a park spans more than one entity, like if a park crosses a state line or falls under both a state and federal designation. you'd want to look up your specific park on the pota.app website and see if it shows multiple references listed. if it does you can log them all in one activation which is pretty sweet. if it only shows one reference then you're fine and dont need to worry about it.

yeah i remember my first activation, i was so worried about the 10 contact minimum that i basically announced my callsign wrong twice because i was nervous lol. 47 contacts is way better than i did my first time out.

one thing i'd add is get yourself on the POTA Spots app if you haven't already, way easier than refreshing the website and you can see when hunters are commenting on your spot which is kind of fun. also some people use the self-spotting feature through their radio if they have a TNC or JS8Call setup but honestly just doing it manually from your phone is totally fine and what most people do.