So ive been chasing for about 8 months now and finally decided to stop being a wimp and actually go activate something. Picked out a summit near me, W4C/EM-064 if anyone's familiar with it, supposed to be about a 4 mile round trip which honestly doesnt sound too bad but ive never done this with a full radio kit on my back so who knows how that'll go.

My plan is to bring the FT-818 with a linked dipole, probably set up on 40m first and then 20 if I can get some DX chasers. I already posted on the SOTA reflector and sotawatch so hopefully i'll get some spots. Planning to hit the summit around 10am local which should be decent timing I think.

Main thing I'm nervous about is just... what if nobody answers? Like I know thats a silly worry but I've seen some activations on the alerts that just seem to sit there for a while. Should I self spot more aggressively or just keep calling? Also wondering if 5 watts is enough or if I should bring my KX2 instead, my buddy keeps telling me I'm overthinking this.

Any tips from people who've actually done this would be great, leaving in the morning so kind of last minute I know.

Your buddy is right, you are overthinking it haha. 5 watts is fine, I've done hundreds of activations with 5w and a wire antenna and rarely struggle to get the 4 contacts you need. The chasers are hungry, trust me, once you self spot on sotawatch you'll have a pileup going before you even get your logging sorted out.

One thing I would say — don't wait too long to spot yourself. Some activators get up there and kind of fiddle around getting set up and by the time they call CQ the early morning chasers have moved on. Just get the antenna up, make sure you're roughly on frequency, and get your spot in. Even if you're not 100% ready it gets people tuning to you. Oh and bring more water than you think you need, learned that one the hard way on a warm day last spring. Good luck tomorrow, hope the propagation cooperates.

I just did my first activation back in March so I can maybe help from a beginner perspective. honestly the hardest part for me was just staying calm when the pileup hit because I was not expecting that many people to call at once. I was using a KX2 by the way and yeah it's nice but the 818 will do fine. the main thing i wish someone had told me is to write down your summit reference somewhere physical like on a piece of paper, not just in your phone, because when you're up there and people are asking for the reference you dont want to be fumbling around. also SOTAgoat or the SOTA spotter app is handy for checking if anyone spotted you. have fun with it