so i finally did my first activation yesterday, W4V/SH-001, been wanting to do this one for a while since its only like a 2 mile hike in. packed my KX2 and a 40m EFHW with a little 9:1 unun i built last month. got up to the summit no problem, winds were calm, thought it was gonna be perfect.

spent like 20 minutes trying to get the wire up in a tree and kept snapping it back on myself. finally got it strung up in kind of a sad sloper configuration, maybe 25 feet off the ground at the high end. SWR was all over the place at first but eventually got it trimmed down enough to work. called CQ for probably 10 minutes on 40m and nothing, switched to 20m and immediately got a pile up which was wild. got my 4 contacts no problem after that but man i was stressed for a bit thinking i wasnt gonna make it.

anyone else have activation jitters the first time? i kept second guessing whether i was actually in the activation zone and had to check the map like 3 times on my phone

haha yeah the first one is always a little rough. i remember mine i forgot to bring a way to hang the antenna and ended up just propping it on my trekking poles at like a 45 degree angle, still worked but barely. 40m during the day can be hit or miss depending on the time, sounds like you figured it out though. the activation zone thing gets easier once you do a few, i usually just pull up the summit page on sotl.as before i leave the parking lot and screenshot it

congrats on the first one. dont stress too much about the antenna being perfect, ive worked people running a random wire just thrown over a branch and got good signal reports. the KX2 is a great rig for this stuff. did you log it on the SOTA database yet? make sure you do it while you still remember the exact time, i always forget and have to guess later