Hi Paul,
Thanks for elaborating about your last activation and welcome to this addictive hobby!
For a comparison, I used as well the TX-500 and SSB, but made the following contacts one day before you did, by using a different antenna.
First I activated DM/BW-348 on 40m and 20m (54 contacts during 48 Minutes):
Afterwards I activated DM/BW-854 on 20m, 40m and 17m (48 contacts during 50 Minutes):
On this second summit, Sara @MW7SRA tried to chase me like you with an AX1 antenna on 20m but unfortunately, I couldn’t hear her. Since the same happened to me when I started more than two years ago with SOTA, me and others proposed Sara to use a more efficient antenna (see my comment).
Don’t get me wrong, I think the AX1 for its size is great and may be the only feasible solution on a very small summit, but definitely can’t be comparable with a bigger (wire) antenna.
In my case, I was using both times my compact 12m long backup EFHW antenna, because the usual 20m long full size EFHW antenna was faulty (still have to check it out). The setup time of both antennas is usually below five minutes, as can be seen on one of my YT videos.
There are so many different antennas to use and the current propagation condition is probably the most important success factor. I just want to propose to play and build different antennas, since you learn a lot and to me it’s great fun to experiment with the component that radiates your RF. Enjoy the hobby!
73 Stephan