so i finally did my first activation last weekend, took the KX2 and a end fed up to a local summit here in the Appalachians, W4V/SH-001 if anyone knows it, nothing super high but enough to qualify. got my 4 contacts pretty quick actually which surprised me, had a couple chasers call in almost immediately after i spotted myself on SOTAwatch which was cool to see how that whole system works in practice.

few things i wasnt sure about though. when im logging do i need to record the exact time in UTC for every contact or is approximate okay? i know for awards and stuff the logs get cross checked with the chasers but wasnt sure how strict it is. also i was running 10 watts and had no trouble but i saw some guys activating with like 1 watt QRP, is that just for the challenge or does it matter for any specific award?

overall it was just a really fun day out, the combo of hiking and radio is kind of addictive honestly. already looking at a few more summits in the area for this spring.

congrats on the first one, that feeling when the first chaser comes back to you on a summit is pretty great. to answer your questions, yes UTC times should be as accurate as you can make them, the database does cross reference with chaser logs and if times are way off it can cause issues getting the S2S points or confirming contacts. doesnt have to be second perfect but within a few minutes is good practice, i usually just have my phone set to UTC before i head out.

the 1 watt thing is just personal challenge mostly, there is a QRP category on some of the leaderboards but it doesnt change whether an activation counts or not. some guys just enjoy the extra difficulty. i activated a 10 pointer last fall with 5 watts and a dipole and worked 20 stations so power really isnt the limiting factor most of the time, antenna and location matters way more. W4V has some great summits by the way, youre gonna have fun this spring.

oh man i just did my first chase last month and from the chaser side it really is exciting when a new activator spots and you can hear them working through the pile. your timing question is something i wondered about too when i started logging chaser contacts. i just use the SOTA spotter app and it timestamps everything automatically which helps a lot.

also side note if you havent found the sotadata.org.uk site yet its worth poking around on there, you can see all your contacts already matched up with chaser logs which is kind of satisfying to look at after a trip.