This weekend I took my g90 and buddistick out for the first time and activated my first park. To be honest I wasn’t expecting much, but within 2 minutes of spotting myself I had people calling me. I was really blown away at the positivity of the hunters, I think I may have gotten thanked more than if I was a veteran. I have a ton to learn, and the small pileup was certainly panic inducing, but everyone on the other end was really cool. Made 25 contacts with a few 2fers and P2P. My only regret is waiting as long as I did. To any other new hams like me, get out there and do it, there’s so much you gain from it. A secondary bonus is that I learned how much QRM I really have at my home base, I bet I heard 5x the signals from the beach…every frequency was full. At home I’m lucky to have 5 signals on the waterfall. It really helped me realize what a good radio environment should look like.