so i finally dragged myself up to a local summit last weekend for my first real SOTA activation. been putting it off forever because i wasnt sure my setup was good enough but figured i'd just go for it. threw the KX2 in my pack with a 40m end fed and some paracord, took me way longer to hike up than expected and by the time i got to the summit i was sweaty and kind of out of breath and then spent like 20 minutes trying to get the wire up in a tree which honestly did not cooperate at all.

finally got on the air and made my four contacts but barely, band conditions were rough and one of my contacts was super weak, not sure they actually copied my grid correctly. also my phone battery was dying so i was trying to log on paper which i havent done in ages and my handwriting under pressure is apparently terrible.

anyway qualified the summit which i guess is the whole point but man it was way more chaotic than i imagined. does it get easier or is every activation kind of a scramble like this

haha yeah the first few are always a mess, dont worry about it. i remember my first one i forgot to bring a pen and had to log contacts in my phones notes app while simultaneously trying to hold the antenna wire off the ground with my foot. its kind of part of the charm honestly. once you do like five or six activations you get a system down and it starts feeling a lot smoother. the wire deployment thing gets way easier when you figure out what works for your specific antenna, i switched to a linked dipole and just use a fiberglass mast now instead of messing with trees every time.

four contacts is four contacts man, summit qualified. i did a POTA activation at a state park last month and had a similar vibe where everything felt slightly wrong the whole time but still ended up with like 30 QSOs so i mean it works out. the paper logging thing though, i really should practice that more, i rely on my phone way too much for portable ops and one of these days its gonna die on me at the worst moment