As another beginner, I’m in a similar spot as you are @MW7PAJ. After getting my license last May, purchases were made… mistakes were made…
Too many kilos. I don’t even want to weight it. Currently using EFHW, but carrying a tuner too because it saved the activation when I had my antenna mishap on Mullaghanattin. Similarly to yours, my feed line is too long probably.
So now that I am on a forced hiatus from SOTA, I’m working on bringing the weight to reasonable minimum.
- Ordered a QMX.
- Need to order some small battery for it.
- Need to order a light mast or fishing rod.
- Probably will replace the Chameleon EFHW with a home-brew center-fed thin wire dipole (pictured), but need to make sure it works on SSB (for now it worked well on FT8 for me).
But another problem is the above is only the radio gear. I carry a ton of photographic gear. I love my 200mm lens. But it is so heavy, I need to think of a compromise and buy some kind of pocket camera with a reasonable quality zoom… that’s a totally different topic though.
Not to mention food, water, first aid kit, etc., etc.