so i finally did my first activation last weekend, took the ft-818 and a linked dipole up to a summit here in VT and managed to get 4 contacts on 20m before the weather turned ugly and i had to pack up. officially activated it which felt pretty good honestly. i'd been chasing for about 6 months before finally getting off my butt and doing one myself.

couple things im not totally sure about though. when i logged it on sotadata later i put in the summit reference as W1/GM-xxx (i looked it up on the sota mapping project beforehand) but i want to make sure i did that right - the reference on the map said W1/GM-001 so i just used that. also one of the guys who called me was S2S with me which was super cool, i gave him the summit-to-summit points but im not sure if i logged that part correctly on my end.

anyway the whole thing was a blast even setting up in the wind was kind of fun in a miserable way. already looking at my next one, there's a W1/GM summit about 45 min from me that looks more accessible. anyone done a lot of activations in the northeast?

congrats on the first one, that feeling when you hit 4 contacts and qualify the summit never really gets old even after you've done a bunch of them. you logged it right - the summit reference format is exactly association/region-number so W1/GM-001 is correct. for the S2S contact just make sure you put his summit reference in the comments field or the S2S field depending on which logging tool you used, the database should handle the points automatically once both sides upload their logs.

northeast activations are great this time of year but yeah weather can go sideways fast up there. i usually check the summit forecast on mountain-forecast.com specifically rather than just the regular weather app, it accounts for the elevation difference which matters a lot in VT especially. what linked dipole are you running? i've been debating whether to build one or just stick with my vertical for portable ops.

nice work getting that done, S2S contacts are honestly the best part of SOTA in my opinion. i get weirdly excited every time one rolls in. dont stress too much about the logging, if you used the sotacsv format or the sotadata entry form directly it pretty much walks you through it. the reflector (SOTAwatch) is also worth bookmarking if you havent already - spotting yourself before you go up makes a huge difference for getting chasers to find you quick instead of calling CQ into the void for 20 minutes.