so i finally did my first ever SOTA activation last weekend, been wanting to do it for about a year now and kept putting it off. picked W4T/SU-001 because its relatively close to me and the hike isnt too bad, about 2 miles each way with maybe 800 feet of elevation gain.

anyway i brought my FT-818 and a homebrew end fed wire that i've been using at home, figured it would work fine. got to the summit, wind was absolutely brutal up there, way worse than i expected, had a really hard time getting my antenna up with just a 20 foot fiberglass pole. eventually got it sort of working but it was leaning at like a 45 degree angle the whole time.

managed to get 4 contacts on 20m SSB which i think is the minimum for a valid activation right? but it took me almost an hour to do it because i wasnt self-spotting properly and i think my signal was pretty weak with the antenna all bent over like that. one guy gave me a 55 and that was the best report i got.

for the people who do this regularly — whats your go to method for antenna support in wind? and do most activators use SOTA Goat or SOTLAS to spot themselves or is there something better now. also curious if anyone activates with just QRP or if most people bring like 50 watts portable.

congrats on the first one, 4 contacts counts and you're in the log. honestly my first few activations were pretty rough too so dont be discouraged.

for wind, the thing that helped me most was guying the pole. i use three pieces of paracord about 15 feet each, tie them to the pole maybe 3/4 of the way up and stake them out with tent stakes. takes maybe 5 extra minutes but the difference is huge, pole stays rock solid even in pretty serious gusts. i also carry a small sandbag thing i made that i can hang from the base of the pole to add weight at the bottom.

as for spotting, i use SOTLAS on my phone mostly, its got a really clean interface and the map view is nice for seeing whos on what summit. SOTA Goat works great too, a lot of the chasers use it to see incoming spots. the key is you gotta spot yourself before you start calling CQ otherwise nobody knows youre up there and you're just yelling into the void basically. i usually spot, wait about 90 seconds, then start calling.

and yeah most serious activators run QRP, the 818 at 5 watts is super common. some people do bring a bigger rig for harder summits where they need more points or want to make sure they get the 4 contacts in bad conditions, but honestly QRP works fine if the antenna is decent and you're spotted properly.

nice work getting it done. i've been chasing SOTA for about 8 months and from the chaser side, honestly self spotting really is the most important thing. i've sat there watching SOTLAS and seen activators pop up and within like 2 minutes they already have a pile calling them. if you dont spot you basically dont exist to most chasers unless someone happens to stumble across you which almost never happens on a busy band day.

also just curious what frequency did you call on? 14.285 is pretty crowded and noisy, some people have better luck on 14.310 or just hunting around for a clear spot. and have you thought about adding 40m to your kit, sometimes when 20 is being weird 40 is way more productive especially for closer in contacts.