so i finally did my first summit activation last weekend, W6 something up in the sierras, took the yaesu 818 and a random wire i threw together the night before and honestly i was not prepared for how windy it was up there. spent like 20 minutes just trying to get the wire up in a tree and then gave up and just held the end of it with a stick i found. probably not ideal.

managed to get 4 contacts on 20m SSB which i guess counts as a valid activation but i really thought itd be easier to find people calling CQ. do you guys usually spot yourself on sotawatch before you start calling or do you just start calling and hope someone hears you

yeah you definitely want to self-spot before you start, otherwise you're basically just yelling into the void. most people monitoring the sotawatch clusters will come find you once they see a spot pop up. i usually text my wife who's back home and she spots me on the app since i dont always have cell signal on the summit. the 4 contacts thing is all you need so congrats on the activation, first one is always a mess

i had the same wind problem on my first one, ended up just draping the wire over a rock which worked surprisingly ok. also POTA might be worth trying if theres a park near you, way easier terrain usually and you can just sit in the parking lot if you have to haha