so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend, W4C/EM-001, took forever to hike up and by the time i got to the summit the wind was absolutely brutal. spent like 20 minutes trying to get my end fed up in a tree and the paracord kept tangling. eventually just tied it to my trekking pole at a terrible angle and called it good enough.

got my 4 contacts though so it counts, first two were S2S which was cool, didnt even realize the guy was on a summit until he said so. ran the KX2 on 40m mostly, tried 20 but conditions werent great or maybe my antenna was just garbage at that point who knows. whole thing felt chaotic but i wanna do it again, already looking at the next one

yeah the first one is always a little rough, you're figuring out your system while also trying to actually operate and not die on a mountain. gets way easier once you do a few and figure out what you actually need vs what you thought you needed. i trimmed like 3 lbs out of my kit after my second activation just from learning what i never touched.

also 40m end fed at a bad angle is still an end fed on 40m, it works, dont overthink it. the contacts prove it

S2S on your first one thats actually pretty lucky, ive done like 6 activations and only gotten two S2S total. what time were you up there? i feel like morning activations on weekends catch more chasers and other activators