so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend, drove up to a summit about 45 minutes from the house, figured it would be easy since ive done plenty of portable ops before. yeah no. wind was absolutely brutal up there, kept knocking my end-fed wire around and i could not get a decent SWR to save my life. ended up just running a few contacts on 40m SSB before my fingers went numb and i packed it in. still counts as an activation i think since i got 4 contacts but man i was not prepared for how exposed it gets up there. also my kx2 battery was at like 60% when i left which i thought was fine but running 10w in the cold drains it way faster than i expected. gonna try again next month with a better antenna plan and maybe gloves this time

yeah the wind thing is real, i lost an activation on a summit in colorado because i just couldnt get the wire to stay where i needed it. now i carry a slinky dipole as backup, not perfect but it holds together better when its gusty. and yeah 4 QSOs counts, dont let anyone tell you otherwise. the 4 contact rule is 4 contacts period.

cold weather battery drain caught me off guard too my first time out. lithium cells handle the cold way better than the lipo packs, made a huge difference for me. also maybe look into the linked dipole if you havent, bit more setup but at least its not flapping all over the place in the wind like a random wire does