so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend, took the FT-818 and a end fed half wave up summit W6/NC-449 and honestly i was kind of nervous about the whole thing because i had never done anything like this before. set up took maybe 20 minutes which was longer than i wanted but the antenna was cooperating at least. got 12 contacts in about 40 minutes, couple of them were S2S which was pretty cool. signal reports were way better than i expected running 5 watts into that antenna. only issue was the wind kept knocking my mast around and i had to hold it with one hand for like the last 15 minutes which made logging kind of a mess. gonna try POTA next, anyone have tips for which parks are easy to activate around socal?

congrats on the first one, it gets addictive fast. for POTA in socal i'd say any of the state beaches are pretty chill, easy parking, you're basically operating out of the car if you want. Bolsa Chica is one i keep going back to. wind is still gonna be a problem near the coast lol, but at least you dont have to hike with all your gear. the S2S contacts are the best feeling, especially when you're both running QRP.

nice one. what were you using to log, paper or an app? i've been using hamrs for pota and its pretty decent but crashes on me sometimes. also 12 contacts QRP on a first activation is solid, i only got 6 on mine and i was pretty disappointed at the time haha