so ive been chasing SOTA for about 8 months now and finally decided to actually get off my butt and do an activation. im doing W4T/SU-031 this saturday, its only a 4 pointer but its close to home and the trail isnt too bad. already got my callsign registered on sotadata and picked my summit reference, just want to make sure im not missing anything obvious before i head out.

my plan is to bring my KX2 with a 40m EFHW strung up in a tree or between a couple poles if i cant find a good branch situation. also bringing a 2m HT as backup. my question is mostly around the spotting side of things — do i need to self spot on SOTAwatch before i start calling CQ or can i just get on frequency and hope chasers find me? ive seen some activators post alerts days ahead but i also see people spot themselves right when theyre on the air. not sure which matters more. also how long do you typically need to stay on a summit to make the 4 contacts? is there any time minimum or just the 4 contacts and done?

sorry if these are dumb questions, still figuring out the whole system

not dumb at all, everyone starts somewhere with this stuff. okay so the alert vs spot thing — alerts are just you telling chasers in advance "hey i plan to be on this summit around this time" and they're super helpful because dedicated chasers will literally schedule their morning around your alert. you post those on sotawatch3 or through the app. but the spot is what actually gets people running to the radio, thats the real-time "im on the air right now" notification. you can self spot through the sotawatch site, the SOTA Goat app if you have it, or if you have cell service just text the SOTA SMS spotter. no cell? you can ask someone on the frequency to spot you, most chasers are happy to do it.

as for time minimum, theres none. just the 4 QSOs and you qualify the summit. could be done in 5 minutes on a good day. i'd still hang around a bit though because sometimes the pile slows down and then picks back up 20 minutes later when a new batch of chasers sees the spot. good luck saturday, 40m EFHW is a solid choice for that kind of activation

oh man W4T/SU-031 is a nice one, i chased somebody off that summit maybe two years ago. you're gonna have a great time. one thing i'd add — bring more wire than you think you need for the EFHW, trees never cooperate the way you imagine they will at home lol. also if you have time check the recent activation logs on sotadata for that summit before you go, gives you a sense of what bands people have been using and roughly when they got their contacts. sometimes thats more useful than anything else