so i finally stopped saying i was gonna do it and just did it. drove out to the state park about 45 min from me, threw my end fed up in a pine tree, and ran 20w with the KX2 for about 2 hours. ended up with 32 contacts which i know isnt a lot but for my first time trying to do this for real i was pretty happy. 40m was kind of slow at first but then it just opened up and the pile was actually fun to work through. had one guy call me like 6 times even after i confirmed him, not sure what that was about. anyway my antenna situation was kind of a mess, i need a better throw line system cause i spent probably 20 minutes just trying to get the wire up in the tree

32 contacts on your first activation is solid man, dont let anyone tell you otherwise. i remember my first one i barely got 10 and called it a day. the throw line thing is real, i use one of those arborist bags with paracord now and it makes such a difference. once you get that sorted out you'll have more time to actually operate. what park was it if you dont mind me asking

yeah the repeat callers are just part of it, some of them are hunting multiple programs at once and get confused or whatever. anyway congrats on getting out there, SOTA is even more of a workout if you ever want to try that lol, literally hauling everything up a mountain