so i finally did my first activation last weekend, took about 2 hours to hike up W4T/SU-017 with a 10lb pack and i thought i was prepared but wow there were things i just did not account for at all. wind was insane up there, kept knocking my linked dipole around and i spent probably 20 minutes just trying to get the thing to stay put before i made a single contact. i had my kx2 and a 5ah lipo and in theory should have been more than enough power and battery but the wind was eating up so much of my time that i only ended up with 6 contacts before i had to pack up and head down before dark.

technically i got the 4 contacts needed to activate so it counts, and i did log it on SOTAwatch already, but i just feel like there was so much i did a poor job with. especially the antenna situation. i was trying to set up an inverted vee off a 20ft mast and it just kept tilting over in the wind. do people use guy wires or something? also i spotted myself via the app before the hike and still had chasers waiting when i got up there which was cool but i also panicked a bit because i felt pressure to go fast and made some logging mistakes i had to fix later.

anyway if anyone has done a bunch of activations and has advice on antennas in wind or just general tips for being more efficient up there i would really appreciate hearing it. im hooked on SOTA despite the rough start, planning to try again next month on a different summit in the same range

oh man the wind thing is real, that catches almost everybody on their first few activations. what a lot of people end up doing is just ditching the tall mast for windier summits and going with a lower wire antenna that you stake closer to the ground, like a simple end fed halfwave strung between rocks or trees if you have them. not as efficient maybe but it stays put and that matters a lot more when you're racing daylight.

for the mast situation, some folks do use three or four guy lines staked out with landscaping stakes, pretty lightweight and makes a huge difference. i use cheap nylon cord from the hardware store. also there's no shame in leaning the mast against a rock or fence post if one is handy, summit infrastructure is your friend haha.

6 contacts is an activation, dont let anyone tell you different. and the fact that you spotted ahead of time and chasers were waiting, that's exactly how it should work. keep at it, it gets way smoother after a few times when you stop second-guessing every little thing and just operate

yeah i had basically the same experience on my first one, spent way too long messing with gear and almost missed the window. one thing that helped me a lot was switching to a random wire with a little tuner instead of a linked dipole just because theres one less thing to fiddle with when you're cold and your fingers arent working right. the kx2's built in tuner handles a lot of random wire situations pretty well anyway.

also the sotawatch app has that self-spot feature which you probably already know but if you put your frequency in the alert the day before a lot of chasers will already be looking for you which takes some pressure off. good luck on the next one, what summit are you thinking?