Hospitals and chocolate were the themes of our February first-Saturday hunt. April WA6OPS did most of the work by getting permissions/approvals to put T-boxes at four Orange County medical facilities, all of which are supported by the Orange County Hospital Disaster Support Communications System (HDSCS). This ARES group, which April started over 20 years ago, provides emergency Amateur Radio communications to all of the major hospitals in the county, plus other important medical facilities like the ones where T1 and T4 were located.

Chocolate treats were courtesy of the Nestle Company, which is one of the "unofficial corporate sponsors" of HDSCS. More info on HDSCS is at www.hdscs.org

Locations and treats were:

T1 (MOE) Fairview Developmental Center, Costa Mesa, Crunch bars

T2 (MOI) Los Alamitos Medical Center, Los Alamitos, Chocolate Caramel Treasures

T3 (MOS) Brea Community Hospital, Brea, Coffee Nips

T4 (MOH) HealthBridge Childrens Rehabilitation Center, Orange, Baby Ruth bars

All T's were vertically polarized and were copyable by beam or quad in the FM mode at the starting point. But the Doppler teams had big problems with T1 and T2.

The most efficient route was 3-4-1-2. The N6AIN team followed that sequence, but took some detours en route, giving them higher mileage than the KK6ME team, which found T2 before T1 but won the hunt anyway.

TEAM           SEQUENCE   CUMULATIVE MILES



KK6ME/KD6LOR    3-4-2-1   ?-27.2-61.5-82.9

N6AIN/WA6PYE    3-4-1-2   12.7-29.1-49.4-87.8

KF6DBJ/W6DEK    3-4-1     ?-32.0-55.4

K6SNE/KC6WGR    3-4-1     13.9-46.8-59.8

N6SAP/KD6JTD    3-4-1     Broken Odometer

KC6SEP/KG6USN   3-4       10.0-42.8



Thanks for hunting!



73,

Joe Moell K0OV