so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, K-4567 for anyone curious. ive been hunting for about 6 months and kept telling myself id do an activation eventually and i just decided to stop overthinking it and go.

brought my KX2, a 40m end fed, and just threw it up in a tree with a fishing pole. made my 10 contacts in maybe 25 minutes which honestly surprised me, i was expecting to struggle a lot more. ended up with 23 QSOs total before the battery started getting low and i called it.

couple things i wasnt sure about though - when i was logging i had a few people come back to me with parks they were activating and i wasnt sure if i needed to do anything special for that, like is that a park to park automatically or do i need to log their reference number somehow? i did write down what they said but wasnt totally sure. also someone asked if i was going to spot myself and i just kind of fumbled through that answer, i had cell service so i couldve done it but i spotted myself once at the start and then forgot about it. should i be re-spotting throughout?

overall though it was a really good time, way more relaxing than i thought it would be sitting out there in the woods with a little radio. probably going to try a harder park next time, maybe one with no cell service just to see if i can manage.

congrats on the first one, that feeling after you hit 10 contacts is pretty great right? park to park yes you do want to log their reference number, just add it in the comments field or wherever your logging software puts it - if youre using HAMRS or Log4OM there's usually a spot for it. when you upload to the POTA website both you and the activator get credit for the P2P which is a nice bonus. definitely worth going back and adding those if you wrote them down.

on the spotting thing, yeah re-spotting every so often helps a lot especially if you change bands or frequency. a lot of hunters are just watching the spots page and if your spot goes stale or falls off they might not find you. i usually re-spot if things go quiet for more than 5-10 minutes, sometimes thats all it takes to get a little pile going again. sounds like you did great for a first time honestly, 23 contacts without even trying to hustle is solid.

nice work getting out there. i did my first activation last spring and was terrified nobody would hear me lol. the no cell service parks are actually kind of fun because you have to use the self-spotting options like the POTA app can do via SMS i think, or you just rely on someone hearing you and spotting you which happens more than you'd expect if you announce yourself on a freq. some hunters will spot you for you which is really nice of them.