so i finally did my first activation last weekend, been chasing for about 6 months and figured it was time to actually get up on a summit myself. picked W4T/SU-072 because its only like a 2 mile hike and the trail is pretty well marked. brought my KX2 and a 20m EFHW that i've used in the backyard a bunch of times, figured no problem.

well. the antenna situation was a disaster. i forgot the actual wire was still sitting on my workbench at home, only had the feedline and the 9:1 unun in my pack. so im standing up there thinking ok what do i do now. ended up just throwing a random length of speaker wire i had in the bottom of my bag over a branch and tuning across like 40 and 20. somehow got 4 contacts including a guy in germany which i still cant believe. logged them in the SOTA spotter app and the alerts went out and people were actually calling me it was kind of wild.

my question is does it count even though my setup was basically garbage? i submitted the log and it seems like it went through but i feel like i cheated somehow lol. also the summit reference i used, is SU the right designator for that region or did i mess that up too

It absolutely counts, 4 contacts is 4 contacts and the rules dont care what antenna you used to make them. The whole point is getting up there and operating, not having a perfect setup. Honestly the fact that you worked a DX station with speaker wire is kind of legendary, that would be a great story to tell at the club meeting.

As for the reference, W4T is Tennessee and SU is the subregion for the Unaka Mountains if I'm remembering right, so that sounds correct. You can double check on sotadata.org.uk and search the reference directly, itll show you the full name and point value and everything. If the log went through without an error it probably validated ok.

Dont sweat the antenna thing. Half the fun of SOTA is improvising when stuff goes wrong. I once activated a 6-pointer in the rain with a wet coax shield acting as my counterpoise because my radial fell down a cliff. We all have those days.

yeah it counts lol welcome to the addiction. also working a european station from a summit on a random wire is honestly impressive, what time of day was that? i've been trying to get more dx contacts on my activations and im never sure when to try for europe from the eastern US