so i finally did my first activation last weekend, took the ft-818 and a linked dipole up to a local summit here in the Appalachians, W4V/SH-001 i think it is. managed to get 10 contacts which i know is the minimum so i was sweating a bit near the end there. had a couple no-answers and one guy who came back to me but then just disappeared mid-qso which was frustrating but whatever.

my question is about the spots -- i used sotawatch before heading up and self-spotted from the summit using my phone (had barely any signal but it worked). i noticed some chasers were on me almost immediately which was cool, but then like 20 minutes in the pile kind of dried up. is that normal? do i need to keep re-spotting or do people just move on to the next activation? also not sure if i logged it right on the sota database, i entered the summit reference and date but wasnt sure if the grid square thing was mandatory. anyone done a bunch of these?

congrats on your first one, that feeling when the pile hits you is pretty addictive honestly. yeah re-spotting is totally a thing and a lot of activators do it especially if you want to work another band or if the pile dies down. just spot yourself again on sotawatch and mention the frequency, youll usually get another wave of chasers. some guys also post on the SOTA reflector or even just text other activators they know to spread the word if its a harder summit that doesnt get activated much.

the grid square on the database i dont think is mandatory, at least i never fill it in and my activations have all gone through fine. the important parts are the summit ref, date, band, mode and callsigns of the contacts. make sure you have at least 4 unique callsigns by the way, not 10 total -- wait actually it IS 10 points of contacts not 10 unique calls... hmm actually i might be misremembering, check the general rules document on the sota website because i dont want to steer you wrong on that one.

the pile drying up happens to me every single time lol, i think once youre off sotawatch's front page the chasers move on. i usually spot twice, once when i get set up and again about 15-20 min later on a different band if i have one set up. 2m fm can sometimes pick up local chasers too if your summit has line of sight to any decent population areas, might be worth throwing a handheld in the pack next time just for a few extra contacts when hf slows down.