so i finally did my first activation last weekend, took the ft-818 and a linked dipole up to a local summit that was only about a 2 mile hike. wasnt sure what to expect but i got 12 contacts in maybe 25 minutes which i guess is more than enough to count. the hardest part was honestly just finding a decent spot to throw the antenna wire up, ended up just draping it over some scrubby little trees which was not ideal but it worked fine.

one thing i wasnt prepared for was how cold it got once i stopped moving. brought gloves but they made tuning the radio kinda awkward. also my phone signal was garbage so spotting myself on the app was a pain, had to wait til i had a tiny bit of LTE to get a spot out and then the pile sort of happened all at once which was fun chaos.

already looking at the next summit on the map, anyone done much SOTA in the northeast? wondering if the summits out here are mostly worth the drive or if some are kind of underwhelming

yeah the northeast has some decent ones, depends on the state really. i've done a bunch in the Catskills and some of the New England ones and honestly the views make it worth it even if the activation itself is uneventful. the linked dipole is a solid choice, i keep telling people to skip the end-fed transformer nonsense when they're starting out but nobody listens lol

the cold thing is real btw. i started keeping a pair of thin liner gloves specifically for operating, still awkward but way better. also get the sotawatch alerts set up ahead of time if you can, self spotting on the summit is always a crapshoot with the signal

12 contacts on your first one is pretty solid honestly, some people struggle to get the 4 minimum especially if they dont get a spot out. i had a disaster on my second activation where my feedline connector just came apart in the cold and i spent like 20 minutes fixing it with numb fingers so you're already ahead of where i was