My First POTA activation

Well I finally did it.

My first POTA activation happened on May 10 2023. This post is way later but here’s the details.

My closest park to my home is K-7465 Flat Creek Fishing Lake in Perry, GA. So I took my Xiegu G-90, two piece of speaker wire (26ft for the radiator and 17ft for the counterpoise), some paracord and SCUBA trim weight (1 lbs), a battery, and chair.

I took some time to make sure the tree I found was inside the park bounds. Unfortunately it was not very shady but I went ahead anyway. I threw my rope in an unsuspecting tree:

Setup my G-90, key, paper log, and a chair. I broke my nerves by hunting some activators at other parks on SSB and then CW. Afterwards, I finally started calling CQ on CW.

Band conditions this day weren’t great but I got enough QSO’s in the log to activate the park.

Here’s a map of all the contacts:

I consider this a success, especially for my very first POTA activation.

I’ve since been back to the park a handful more times and have found a better spot to setup with more shade (thanks to AE4XO for that tip). And even got some amazing DX to Indonesia from the park.

I really need to take some more pics but every time I get started I forget to take pictures.

I also desperately need a memory keyer. Hahaha.

-73 Cainan KQ4DAP