Hi Sara,
Sorry that I didn’t hear you on Sunday, since the conditions were pretty good and I was using also 10W RF power.
This was my second activation on Sunday, and since something was wrong with my standard EFHW antenna, I was using the shorter backup EFHW that works very well on 20m and 10m and reasonably well on 40m.
Further down in this thread I read that you were using an AX1 antenna, I assume with a counterpoise. When I started SOTA more than two years ago, I also tried such compromise antennas, but finally gave up because of bad results. They may work, but they’re simply not efficient.
I recommend that you’ll start with some kind of wire antennas, like center-fed or end-fed dipoles. Since you have a KX2 with an internal tuner, you could also follow the “random wire with counterpoise” route.
Have fun and I hope for a future S2S with you!
73 Stephan