so i finally did my first Parks on the Air activation last weekend, been hunting parks for about 3 months and figured it was time to stop being scared and just go do it. picked a state park about 45 minutes from my house, US-3421 if anyone's curious, and set up my KX2 with a random wire antenna thrown up in a tree.

the good news is i made my 10 contacts and got the activation in the log. the bad news is it took me almost 2 hours to do it because i kept fumbling around with the sota watch spotted frequency thing - i guess i wasnt putting my spots in right or something because i had like nobody calling for the first hour. finally figured out that i had the wrong band listed in the spot and once i fixed that things picked up pretty quick.

also didnt realize how noisy that park was going to be. there was some kind of family reunion going on about 50 yards away and i swear i could hear it on the recording i made. oh well, first one is done. already planning the next one. any tips from experienced activators on getting spotted correctly and just generally not being a mess on your first few activations?

congrats on getting that first one done, the hardest part really is just going out and doing it. the spot thing trips up almost everybody at first. what most people dont realize is you can also just call CQ POTA on a clear frequency and self-spot through the POTA app on your phone - it'll grab your GPS location and auto-fill the park reference which saves a lot of the fumbling around. i usually do that now instead of trying to type everything manually while also watching the rig.

for noise, honestly just part of activating popular parks. ive had a motorcycle rally, a wedding, and one very memorable youth soccer tournament all happen near my operating spot. you just kind of tune it out. if it gets really bad just move deeper into the park, most parks are big enough that you can find a quiet corner somewhere. the hunters are pretty patient folks as long as they can hear you clearly enough to pull the call.

yeah the spotting stuff confused me too when i started. one thing i do now is pre-fill everything in the POTA app before i even leave home so i dont have to mess with it when im already at the park trying to set up the antenna and remember where i put my log sheet lol. also 10 contacts in 2 hours is totally fine for a first activation, ive seen people take longer and ive seen people blast through 50 contacts in 20 minutes, just depends on conditions and band and time of day honestly.