so ive been chasing SOTA for about 8 months now and finally decided to stop being lazy and actually do an activation. planning to hit W4T/SU-001 this saturday, its not the most exciting summit but its close and i figure a good first one to not embarrass myself on.

my plan is to bring the KX2 with a 40m link dipole, probably set up around 10am local and run 10 watts. ive been watching other peoples spots on SOTAwatch and i know i need to self-spot or have someone alert ahead of time. my question is more about the logging - do i need to log during the activation or is it okay to reconstruct from memory after? i know you need 4 QSOs to qualify and im not worried about that part, just wondering if there's a strict rule about contemporaneous logging or if writing it down on a napkin counts lol

also does the summit reference go in the comments field on ADIF or is there a specific field for it? i use HAMRS for portable logging and i cant figure out where to put W4T/SU-001 in there

congrats on taking the plunge, first activation is always a little nerve-wracking but you'll do fine. on the logging question - theres no rule that says you have to log in real time, plenty of people just jot callsigns on a notepad or even their hand and enter it properly when they get home. the 4 QSO rule is really just about making the contact, not how you record it. that said writing it down as you go is way easier than trying to remember who called when you had a pileup.

for HAMRS i believe theres a MY_SOTA_REF field or something close to it in the ADIF export settings, but honestly i think for sota.database.sota.org.uk the import wants SOTA_REF for the chaser side and MY_SOTA_REF for the activator. might be worth posting in the HAMRS facebook group because that comes up a lot. good luck Saturday, post how it goes

W4T/SU-001 is a solid first pick actually, ive driven past it a few times. just make sure you post an alert on SOTAwatch the night before if you can, you'll get way more chasers tuning in if they know youre coming. i skipped the alert on my first activation and basically had to beg for contacts lol. also 40m around 10am on a weekend should be decent, maybe also string up something for 20m if you can, theres a lot of chasers in Europe that are specifically hunting for US summits on 20 and it adds up for your activator score faster than you'd think