so i finally did my first activation last weekend, took me forever to actually get off my butt and do it after chasing summits for like 6 months. went up W4T/SU-001 which isnt the hardest hike in the world but still felt good to finally be on the other side of it. brought my KX2 and a 20m EFHW wire, just threw it up in a tree near the summit and started calling CQ SOTA on 14.285 and had a pile up within maybe 3 minutes which honestly caught me off guard

the contacts were great and i hit the 4 QSO minimum easy, ended up with like 22 contacts including a couple S2S which were really cool. logged on paper and transferred to SOTAwatch later that night

my questions are kind of dumb but here goes -- do i need to be exactly on the summit or just within the activation zone (i was definitely within 25m vertical but not right on the top)? and also i saw some activators post their spot before they even start, how do they do that if theres no cell service? is everyone just using satellite or something? and does 2m fm count the same as HF for points, i have a little handheld i brought just in case

congrats on your first one, the pile up feeling is pretty addictive isnt it. to answer your questions -- yep the activation zone is the whole area within 25 vertical meters of the true summit, you dont have to be standing on the actual highest rock or whatever. most summits have a pretty generous zone, some of the bigger mountains you can literally be hundreds of meters away horizontally and still be valid

for spotting without cell service, a lot of people use the SOTA Goat app and just pre-write the spot then send it when they get a bar of signal on the way down, or some folks have a friend at home watching for them and you call them on 146.52 or something before you start. there are also people using Garmin inReach to self-spot through satellite but thats a bit of a setup cost. honestly just posting on SOTAwatch when you get back down is totally fine too, chasers are forgiving

and yeah 2m FM counts just fine, same points, though youll generally get fewer contacts unless there's a repeater or someone specifically watching for SOTA activity on simplex. HF just has more reach obviously

nice work on the S2S contacts those are always fun to log. i'm still chasing for now and havent activated yet but i've been reading everything i can about it. one thing i noticed is that a lot of activators post an alert on SOTAwatch the day before so chasers know to listen for them, might be worth doing that next time so you get even more in the log. some of the regular chasers set up alerts on their phone for specific summits or bands