so i finally did my first activation last weekend, went up to a local summit that only qualifies by like 200 feet of prominence but hey it counts. took my ft-818 and a linked dipole i built from a kit a while back and just kind of winged it. wasnt sure how the spots would work out but i threw myself on sotawatch before i left the car and by the time i got to the top i already had a couple chasers waiting which was honestly kind of surreal.

worked 6 contacts on 40m SSB which i know is the minimum but the band was doing weird things and i had to fight some QRM from what sounded like a net that wasnt paying attention to the dx window situation. anyway got the 4 points for the summit and i already want to go back and try it on CW because i think the QRM situation would have been way better. also somebody spotted me on a second cluster i didnt even know about so that helped. anybody else find that 40m gets really crowded around lunch time on weekends or is that just my area

congrats on the first one, that feeling when you see chasers already waiting is something else isnt it. yeah 40m on a weekend afternoon is basically a warzone especially if theres any contest running, even a small regional one will just eat up chunks of the band. i usually try to get to the summit early and be on the air by like 9am local, bands are quieter and the chasers in europe are still active if you're in north america which is a nice bonus for the dx points.

CW is absolutely worth trying if you can, not just for the QRM thing but the chasers you work are incredible operators and you'll fill your log way faster than SSB once word gets around. some of the regulars on the SOTA reflector can work you in under a minute flat. also make sure you're using the summit reference correctly on your spots, ive seen people post the wrong association prefix and then the chasers cant find them in the log later which causes headaches for everyone.

nice work getting it done. i did my second one a few months ago and im still figuring out the sotawatch stuff, kept forgetting to put my frequency in the spot and people were hunting around for me. 40m yeah its crowded but i had good luck dropping down toward the bottom of the phone portion and just calling CQ SOTA a bunch of times. some people will find you even without a spot if you're persistent enough i think