so i finally did my first activation last weekend, drove out to a little summit about an hour from home, nothing crazy like a 10 pointer just a 2 point hill basically. brought my kx2 and a end fed half wave i built from a kit, figured id be up there for maybe 2 hours tops.

well the wire kept catching in the trees on the way up and i ended up with a pretty bad kink in it near the feed point, still worked but the swr was reading kinda weird. managed to get my 4 contacts to qualify but it took way longer than it should have, had one guy just not come back after i sent his callsign twice which was annoying. also forgot my notepad and had to log on my phone which i hate doing.

anyway i qualified the summit so thats what matters i guess. anyone else have a disaster first activation story

haha yeah my first one i got to the trailhead and realized i left my coax at home. had to literally jury rig something with a piece of wire i had in the car. still made my contacts though so i count it as a win. you learn real fast what you actually need vs what you think you need when you gotta carry it all uphill

the phone logging thing bugs me too but i've been using hamlog on my iPhone for POTA stuff and its actually not terrible once you get used to it. still prefer paper on a summit though, less stuff to go wrong. congrats on the activation, 4 contacts on a kinked wire is pretty solid honestly