so i finally did my first activation last weekend, went up to a local summit that was only about a 2 mile hike, nothing crazy. brought my FT-818 and a homebrew EFHW i built a few weeks ago. the antenna took forever to get into the tree but once it was up i was getting out pretty well i think.

ended up making 6 contacts on 40m and 3 on 20m so i qualified the summit which i was pretty stoked about. one of the chasers was in germany which kinda blew my mind considering i was running like 5 watts from a hillside in vermont.

anyway a couple things i wanted to ask — first, when i log the activation on sotadata do i need to enter every QSO or just the ones that count toward the 4 minimum? and second, does it matter what mode i used, i was just doing SSB but i see people talking about CW and FT8 and i wasnt sure if there were bonus points or something for different modes. still pretty new to all this, got my general about 8 months ago.

congrats on the first one, that germany contact on 5w SSB is no joke especially from a New England summit. those EU chasers are serious about SOTA and they have big antennas pointed this way constantly.

for the logging question — yeah you want to log all your QSOs, not just the four minimum. the database tracks everything and chasers need to see the full log to claim their points. i think technically you can submit with just four but its kind of considered bad form and you'll get emails from people wondering why their contact isnt showing up. just log em all, its not that much extra work in sotadata once you get used to the interface.

on the mode stuff, there used to be CW bonus points back in the day but they got rid of those a while back, so its all the same points now regardless of mode. some people still do CW because the contacts come faster and you can work more summits in a day if youre doing s2s stuff, but for qualifying a summit it doesnt matter at all. sounds like you had a great first outing, whats the next summit?

nice work on the activation. im kind of in the same boat, only done two activations so far and the logging part confused me at first too. one tip i got from someone here was to download the VK port-a-log app before you go out, makes logging in the field way easier than paper and then you can just export the file and upload it directly to sotadata when you get home. saves a lot of headache.