Yesterday during my activation of the Wildspitze (OE/TI-002) I had a funny experience:
Generally, when I activate a summit I try to stay away from the crowd in order not to disturb the other people. But yesterday this wasn’t possible. I was aware that this summit is steep and has only a very small activation area. In addition this summit is, despite of its high alpine nature, a favourite destination for ambitious mountaineers and therefore I even expected that I would not find a suitable place for doing my activation. Fortunately when I arrived at the summit, a small group of 3 people left their place on a steep ridge and I got a chance to set up my equipment.
I started my activation on the alerted frequency on 17m in SSB at abt. 09:30 after a couple of unsuccessful CQ calls I decided to change to 14.285 - 14.287. But here also only QRM and absolute no replies. After abt. 20 - 25 minutes unsuccessfully calling CQ SOTA in SSB, I finally changed to 20m CW and then happend something very funny:
While I tried to work the small pile up in CW I heard in the background two nearby sitting mountaineers (without radio) repeating all the time the following singsong: “CQ SOTA CQ Summit on the Air CQ SOTA …” Of course they did not realize the meaning of their own singsong 
Only a couple of times they interrupted their repetitions with “Oh my god, it’s like an earworm, we cannot get rid of this catchy sound”. I assume they proceeded with their singsong all the way down from the summit
For me, it was on the one hand quiet funny to hear people calling CQ without any radio, but on the other hand it mades it difficult for me to concentrate on CW. But it was absolutely my own fault. Next time I will choose a summit with a larger activation zone 
Thank you very much for all QSO’s and for your patience with my yesterdays a bit clumsy CW operation.
73 Stephan, DM1LE
