so i finally pulled the trigger and tried my first activation on Saturday. been chasing for about 6 months and figured how hard can it really be right. picked a 1 point summit close to home, W4T/SU-099 if anyone knows it, the hike wasnt bad at all maybe 45 minutes up. brought my KX2 and a linked dipole i built from the sotabeams kit and my phone for the reflector.

everything was going fine until i got to the top and realized i forgot to spot myself before losing cell service about halfway up. so im up there calling CQ on 40 and 20 for like 20 minutes getting nothing. a couple QRM situations but no actual contacts. eventually someone came back to me on 20 but i couldnt pull their call out of the noise at all, was really frustrating. ended up sitting there for almost an hour and only got 2 contacts total, didnt qualify the summit.

not giving up though. i think i need to either prespot before i lose signal or figure out the SMS spotting thing. also wondering if my dipole was even resonant up there, i tuned it at home but the feedpoint height was way different on the actual summit. anyway just wanted to share, felt like a bit of a failure but i know these things happen

oh man been there. my first couple activations were rough too and i think most peoples are honestly. the spotting thing is huge — what i do now is spot myself on the reflector like 15-20 minutes before i expect to reach the summit, then chasers are already tuned in waiting when you start calling. you can also preload an SMS spot through SOTAwatch if your carrier supports it, i use a shortcut on my phone so its like 3 taps.

the dipole thing is probably fine, linked dipoles are pretty forgiving and a bit of mismatch isnt gonna kill you especially with the KX2's tuner. i'd bet the no-spot situation was most of your problem. 40 meters in the afternoon can be tough too depending on where you are, 20 was probably your better bet. dont get discouraged though, once you qualify your first one its kind of addictive

I was actually on 20m Saturday afternoon chasing and worked a few summits, wish I'd caught your CQ. The SMS spotting via APRS2SOTA is what I use when I'm somewhere with no data — you basically send a text to a specific number with your callsign, frequency, and mode and it auto-posts to the reflector. Took me a minute to set up but works great now even in pretty marginal cell areas.