So i've been chasing summits on the air for about 6 months now and finally decided to stop being a couch potato and actually do my first activation. picked out a local 6-pointer (W4T/SU-001 area, not gonna say which one cause i dont want a crowd lol) and im planning to head up saturday morning.

My setup is pretty minimal right now — just an FT-818 and a random wire antenna i threw together from some info i found online, maybe 40 feet of wire with a 9:1 unun. planning to run 5 watts on 40 and 20 meters mostly. is that actually enough to get 4 contacts or am i setting myself up to fail? ive heard some activators have trouble on low summits if the takeoff angle isnt great but i dont really understand all that yet.

also the self-spotting thing through SOTAwatch — do i need cell service for that or is there another way? i know some guys use APRS somehow but i dont have that set up. figured id just pre-announce on the cluster before i leave the trailhead.

5 watts and a wire will absolutely get you 4 contacts, dont stress about that. honestly once you're self-spotted the chasers will find you pretty fast, its almost surprising how quick the pileup starts even on a relatively quiet summit. the pre-announcing on the cluster is totally fine, just post your planned frequency and time in SOTAwatch as an alert the day before if you can — chasers check those alerts all morning and will be waiting for you.

the cell service thing is real problem on some summits. what i usually do is bring a backup plan — get a friend to watch SOTAwatch and spot you if you call them from the summit. or just call CQ for a few minutes and someone will eventually spot you themselves, the chasers are really good about that. some guys run a little APRS tracker and have it configured to auto-spot via APRS-to-SOTAwatch but thats a whole other rabbit hole. one thing to definitely do though is log your contacts in real time even if its just pencil and paper, dont trust your memory, trust me on that one.

yeah i did my first activation like two months ago and was so nervous about the contacts thing. ended up with 11 in the log so it was fine. the chasers are super friendly on there, way more patient than contest ops lol. good luck saturday, post how it goes