so i finally did my first activation last weekend, summit was only like a 2 mile hike but still took me forever to find a decent spot with enough clearance for my end fed. ended up just throwing the wire over a branch and it worked fine. ran 10w on 40m SSB and got my 4 contacts pretty quick, even had a guy in colorado come back to me which i was not expecting at all from ohio.

only thing that sucked was my kx2 battery was lower than i thought and i was watching the voltage the whole time stressing out. made it through but barely. gonna start bringing a small lipo backup i think. anyone else just wing it the first time or did you actually plan yours out properly lol

yeah my first one was a total mess, forgot my coax adapter and had to jury rig something with electrical tape which absolutely did not work. ended up just doing CW on a whip which honestly saved me. but thats kind of the fun of it right, you figure out what you actually need pretty fast once youre up there and cant just grab something off the shelf

the battery thing is real though. i now carry a small 3ah lipo just for peace of mind and it weighs almost nothing. worth it

Colorado checking in, might have been me haha. 40m has been surprisingly decent in the afternoons lately. congrats on the first activation, once you do a few you kind of get a system going and it stops feeling so stressful