so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend, W4T/SU-something up near the smokies, took forever to find the actual summit area and by the time i set up it was already getting windy. brought my elecraft kx2 and a linked dipole i made from that sotabeams wire kit. got the antenna up in like 20 min which felt good but then realized i forgot my antenna stake and had to improvise with a stick i found lol

ended up with 8 contacts on 40m which i think is enough to qualify? i was shaking the whole time trying to work the pile a little and a guy kept coming back to me asking for a signal report and i kept losing him in the noise. used sota watch to spot myself from my phone which worked great actually. overall pretty stoked but man the wind was something else, my notepad was blowing everywhere trying to log

8 contacts definitely qualifies you, you only need 4 so you had plenty of cushion there. the wind thing is real, ive lost paper logs off cliffs before so now i just use a small clipboard with a binder clip. also for the stakes thing i keep a couple of those orange plastic tent stakes rubber banded to my mast bag, saved me so many times

the kx2 is a great choice for sota btw, mines been up probably 40 summits now and never had a problem with it. next time try 20m too if conditions are decent, sometimes you can snag some chasers in europe in the mornings which is a nice surprise

yeah 4 contacts is all you need for the points. nice work getting it done on a windy day, i bailed on an activation once because the weather turned and i always regret it. what part of the smokies was it? ive been wanting to do a few in that area