so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend, W4T/SU-001, and man i was not prepared for how much i'd be fighting the wind up there. had my kx2 and a homebrew EFHW strung up between two trees but one of the trees was way closer than i expected and the angle was terrible. spent probably 45 minutes just getting the antenna sorted out before i even turned the radio on.

ended up making 4 contacts which i know is the minimum so it counts, but two of them were S2S with guys who were also activating so that was kinda cool. my signal reports were not great, 57 59 mostly, which i think was the antenna situation. anyway just wanted to share since ive been talking about doing this forever and finally did it

4 contacts is 4 contacts man, it counts. honestly the first one is always a mess, you spend so long fussing with the antenna and by the time youre on the air youre already exhausted lol. S2S on your first activation is actually pretty solid though, some people never bother chasing those.

the EFHW angle thing is real, i ruined a couple activations early on trying to get a perfect inverted V and just wasting time. now i just throw it as sloper and call it good enough. signal reports from a summit are rarely going to be bad enough to matter anyway, everyone knows youre probably running 10 watts from a hilltop.

which kx2 setup are you running, internal tuner or external? asking because im planning my first activation and cant decide if i should bother bringing the mx-P50M or just trust the internal tuner with an EFHW