It's raining again

I tried to traslate the word Graupel by using a web based traslator without success. Then I tried to find it in my Merriam Webster dictionary, but didn’t succeed either.
Thanks for showing me that Wilkipedia had the answer.
Now I understand that graupel is what I actually had today at Mt. San Cristobal summit as well as last weekend when I had to abandon my attemp to activate M. Intzako Dorrea.
I had called it sleet in my activation reports and I’ve seen on wilkipedia that the word sleet seems to describe about the same thing as graupel in the US but it has a different meanning in the UK, being for the British a mixture of snow and melting ice liquid water, what we call in Spanish “aguanieve” (agua = water; nieve = snow).
Best 73 de Guru

Meanwhile, here just south of the Equator, I think we’ve probably had something like 200mm of rain in the last 30 hours. I’d quite like to get my antennas down in the dry before I fly home tomorrow, but at the moment that isn’t looking likely. Take the rain, the HF radio conditions, and the other stuff, and it all added up to an “interesting” kind of “holiday”… Oh well.

73, Rick 5Z4/M0LEP

Sorry to cause confusion with the word play Guru. Whereas hail is balls of ice, Graupel is balls of snow. Hence my dislike of this while activating as it bounces around which makes it difficult to avoid.

I am hoping the poor weather will soon disappear and stay away until next winter as my next outing is soon coming up… no doubt to be replaced by the infamous Scottish midge.

73, Gerald G4OIG

No problem at all, Gerald. Thanks to your post I’ve learnt a new word and the differences between hail, sleet, graupel, ice pellet, etc about which I’ve been reafing on the web as a result of this thread.
Languages have always interested me, so this is higjly interesting to me.
Regarding midges this is another word I learnt last year thanks to this reflector. I knew the word mosquito, which is in fact the Spanish word but didn’t know midge until someone used it here and I found it in my dictionary.
By the way, give me cold, rain, hail, graupel, sleet and snow by Tons instead of one of those unbearable clouds of midges.
I can’t bear them.
Best 73 de Guru

Best

1 Like

Hi Guru,

the pleasure was also on my side. Interesting that you had such a good short skip with Ignacio EA2BD on 20m. I first thought he would call a SOTA station far away from spain.

73 Stephan, DM1LE

Hi Stephan,
Ignacio EA2BD, Jorge EA2LU, Santi EA2BSB and Manuel EA2DT, all of them chasing SOTA from the city of Pamplona, are all less than 2 or 3 Km South of me when I’m activating Mt. San Cristobal, so no skip intervention at all between us. It’s pure direct antenna to antenna contact and that’s why we always copy each other 59+++
Almost the same situation applies when activating any of the several (nearly 20) SOTA summits surrounding Pamplona by the North, South, East and West.

I was very pleased with our S2S contact because I usually have such a short time -about 15 minutes only- for these weekly activations of Mt. San Cristóbal EA2/NV-119 that I know it’s really hard to catch me and chasing me from a summit is even harder.
Thanks again and best 73,

Guru

Hi all,
After beautiful blue skies and warm temperatures around noon particularly in the beginning of this week (MO, TU, WE), the sky started to change colour from blue to grey yesterday afternoon (THURSDAY) and it’s fully packed with grey clouds right now (FRIDAY) while I’m writing this post.
This is the WX forecast for the weekend:

It doesn’t look too bad but the risk of getting wet during the activation is there again.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed and I’ll try to activate tomorrow for sure and possibly on Sunday too.
We’ll see how it goes.
Keep an eye on Sotawatch and have a nice weekend.
73 de Guru

Hello at all!
Here the weather seems to be better now.
As someone said " It can’t rain all the time".

Tomorrow, I will try to activate a virgin summit.
Guru, I’ll keep an eye on your spot.

73

We have a violent thunderstorm and torrential rain in the G/WB area at the moment.
:frowning:

73,
Walt (G3NYY)

The met office shows five currently active between Hereford and just south of Derby, just rain here at present - all radios off, all antennas earthed!

Brian

Hello,
Now i’m back home from activation,

I’m looking radar rain in UK… this isn’t good
http://www.accuweather.com/en/gb/national/weather-radar
it’s comming to Birmingham.

73

Oh it came all right, Roberto! It rained so hard I couldn’t hear myself think!

Brian

It has just arrived in Shrewsbury.

Hoping it will pass before charity walk begins at 10:00 pm local :smile:

Adrian

Hi all,
After a week with mainly very cloudy skies, rain and heavy rain at times, it looks like there will be a good chance to activate this Sunday.

I’ll try my 50th activation of Mt. San Cristobal tomorrow morning and something else on Sunday which I’ll decide in the next coming hours.
I’ll be looking forward to copying you all very soon.
Have a nice weekend.
Best 73 from Guru

Guru,
Lately, it seems that the rain in Spain falls mainly on EA2IF!
Good luck tomorrow; be listening for you

Ken

73

Hi Ken,
Yes, it’s true. Spring season is usually rainy here and so it is this year indeed.
I finally haven’t been able to go out in the mountains this Sunday morning due to family duties and the propagation conditions don’t seem to be great for chasing from home.
I may try to activate from a nearby drive on summit this afternoon-evening but it’s not sure at all, as my wife is out and I don’t know yet how I’ll manage to arrange things with my 3 young kids.
Although we are having some sunshine right now, this is what the sky looks like from my shack towards the drive-on summit Erreniega EA2/NV-092 I’d try if planets get well aligned. Not very promissing though…

This must be what the forecast understands for mostly sunny :wink:

Best 73 from Guru

Sorry Guru (well not really :smile:). I think I got a bit of sun burn today in Northern England! 2 hours on the bike this am then about 3 hours playing SOTA. It was so nice I forgot to take a piccy - must have been sun stroke!

After a week of bad weather. Today, looks like that

from Lario Lake

Thanks Guru for this afternoon, it’s been a pleasure to speak to you.
73!

Hi Guru,

it seems that our both SOTA areas share at the moment a similar fate concerning the weather:
Here, todays weather forecast wasn’t very inviting neither. Therefore, I went out to the mountains not for a SOTA activation but for a trail-running event with some friends: In the morning at the start at abt. 550m ASL it was ‘just raining’ at a temperature of abt. 5 - 7°C :umbrella:. A little bit later, at abt. 1100 - 1200m ASL it began slightly to snow :snowflake: . And at the finish at abt. 1450m ASL snow height grew in just 1 hour to 5-10cm and temperature, I guess, was around freezing point :snowman::. Nevertheless it has been a funny event, even without radio :slight_smile:

Now looking eagerly forward to the summer season :sunglasses:

Thanks for explaining the activation conditions concerning the summits around Pamplona. It seems to be a very nice region for SOTA activations, especially with so many nearby passionate chasers and activators.

73 Stephan, DM1LE