So i finally did my first ever POTA activation yesterday at a state park about 45 minutes from the house. Been listening to other people talk about it for months and kept putting it off because i wasnt sure i had the right setup or whatever. Finally just threw the stuff in the car and went.

Running a Xiegu G90 into a random wire antenna i tossed over a tree branch, fed with a 9:1 unun. Total mess of coax on the ground, nothing pretty. Got there around 10am, spotted myself on the POTA website and within maybe 3 minutes i had a pile up going. Wasnt expecting that at all. Ended up with 47 QSOs in about an hour and a half which i think qualifies the park? You need 10 right? So yeah way more than enough.

The hunters were so patient with me, i was fumbling around trying to log on paper and keep the frequency and give signal reports all at the same time. A few people slowed down and sent their calls real deliberate when they could tell i was struggling. Really appreciated that. One guy even came back after i lost his call and just waited for me to catch up.

Anyway just wanted to share because if youre on the fence about doing one just go do it. The setup doesnt have to be perfect at all.

47 contacts for your first activation is really solid, congrats. And yeah 10 is all you need to count it as activated. Some parks take people multiple trips to get there depending on propagation and how remote the spot is.

The hunters really are a great group. Ive done probably 60 or 70 activations at this point and its still one of my favorite things to do on a weekend. The paper logging thing gets easier, or you can try something like HAMRS on a tablet if you want to eventually go digital. Works great in the field and exports to ADIF for uploading to the POTA site after. But paper is totally fine too, plenty of people still do it that way.

Whats the park reference number? Might have been in the pile up and not even realized it was you haha.

this is super encouraging to read because ive been doing the exact same thing, just kind of waiting until everything feels ready and then never going. what freq were you running on? 20 meters? and did you pre-spot yourself before you left the house or wait until you got there and set up