sorry to all the chasers that wanted to contact me today on Hochrettelstein OE/ST-057 but I had to go QRT only five minutes after I gave out my first CQ call.
The weather forecast promised rain and thunder in the afternoon, so I started my tour early. During the ascent it was very hot, sunny with a lot of humididy. This picture was taken before the first clouds appeared:
Earlier than expected and within 15 minutes the weather changed completely, when I arrived at the summit at 07:45 UTC the view was completely gone (sight less than 50m). A quick look at the rain radar promised rain and thunder within the next hour so after 10 QSO’s I decided to start going back. Actually I was almost running
Shortly before I was back at the car it started to rain heavily. A good decision to abort the activation, a thunderstorm in an height of 2200m is no fun for sure.
Sorry again … but probably I will do another activation tomorrow (hoping for the thunderstorm to arrive later).
I’m sure regular readers of this reflector - if not chasers in general - will appreciate the myriad of circumstances that can force an activator to quit suddenly, or not to do all the bands/modes in his alert.
I was just fine this morning doing 30m CW with the summit of G/LD-043 more or less to myself when loads of tourists suddenly appeared - not surprising: it’s July, Hallin Fell summit is an easy 25-mins walk with great views. Some had dogs some off-lead and some wandering over to see my dogs. I had the leads to my dogs wrapped round each of my boots. My 10-year-old spaniel (left boot) doesn’t like most other dogs invading ‘our space’ and my daughter’s excitable 1-year-old sprocker (right boot) loves them. So all hell let loose. I’m trying to manage a load of CW chasers and the dogs are going crazy all round my rig, etc.
i had the image in my head of you being dragged around the summit on your backside by two wildy excited dogs attached to your boots, and a very confused chaser thinking where did the qso go i didnt quite understand that last over?
Yes, a rapid change in weather in the mountains can happen quickly and not to forget the temperature differences. Even with our activations, it happened that we had to break off within a short time and could not make all frequency bands that we had set an alert for.
This was always a topic of conversation at HamRadio 2023 at the SOTA-Stand so I think all hunters understand it.
73
HB9HBV & HB9HBU
Jean-Pierre and Anita
i had the image in my head of you being dragged around the summit on your backside by two wildy excited dogs attached to your boots, and a very confused chaser thinking where did the qso go i didnt quite understand that last over? 
