so i finally got off my butt and did my first summit activation up on W4T/SU-031 last saturday. been wanting to do this for like two years and just kept putting it off. threw the KX2 in my pack with the 49:1 EFHW and a fiberglass mast, maybe 12 lbs total which honestly felt like way more by the time i hit the summit lol

conditions were kinda rough, 20m was a mess but i scraped together my 4 contacts in about 20 minutes mostly on 40m. the antenna tuning was a pain because there were trees everywhere and i couldnt get a clean run for the wire so it ended up at kind of a weird angle. still worked. honestly the hardest part was the log submission after, the sotawatch interface confused me for a bit

anyway if anyone else is on the fence about trying it just do it, its way more fun than sitting in the shack

congrats on the first one, it gets addictive fast. i remeber my first activation i was so nervous about getting the 4 contacts i was basically calling CQ every 30 seconds like a maniac. once you get that first one in the log everything relaxes. 40m is almost always more reliable for summit to summit stuff in my experience, 20 can be real spotty depending on what the sun is doing. whats your next summit?

yeah the sotawatch log thing threw me off too the first time. also fwiw a weird angle on the EFHW usually doesnt matter as much as you think, ive had contacts into europe with mine draped over a pine tree at like a 30 degree slant. the radio doesnt really care