Busy week. Got the batteries charged in the four transmitters at my disposal. (one I own, three on loan from Jim AF6O). Couldn’t take off of work at all. Left the house 6:30 Sat AM to plop these four somewhere useful. My original dream was to place one on Mt R, just south of Running Springs, at 6500 ft; one directly below it on 1N09 ( the road that Scott hid on last summer); one somewhere in the complex of new construction around the Seven Oaks Dam squirting back up the canyon toward Mt. R. The fourth would be at the same place I hid in the November WWNIANT (which no one found). Then it rained. And it rained. And then it rained some more. Well I gave the plan a try.
The road from the school to Mt. R was in 4 ft of snow and I couldn’t seem to find anywhere near there that had any kind of view of the canyon. I opted for a place behind a wooden sign for the Country Club about 2 miles west of where I wanted. It seemed to have a good view of the start and that was the main purpose. It was on Fredalba road .2 mile SW 330.
Well, on to the 1N09. About a mile in on 1N09, the road was just gone. A 15 ft drop into a nasty little creek was substituted for dirt. This was about 5 miles from being under Mt. R. Phooey! Well this washout was too good to miss so I hid there anyway, carefully placing the transmitter well on the otherside of the washout
The dam transmitter was located in a small pack of trees just north of HWY 38, somewhat east of the dam, but only about 500 ft from one of the quarry operations supporting the dam construction. The transmitter used an 8 ½ element beam pointed at Morton Peak. This signal was used to try to mask the transmitter located in back of Morton Peak and indeed it did help.
This site behind Morton Peak is indeed a neat one. It was by far the strongest signal at my house in Fontana and throughout the San Bernardino area but, east of there it just died. You didn’t even get a clue as to where to leave the FWY much less which of the dozens of little twist dirt roads it may be on. The road going up to this site (1N12) was fully illuminated by the dam transmitter and as they were all some what synchronized, it was very hard to find which one was that weak little squeak under the dam transmitter for the few instances where it could be heard.
The above was written before I read the results. Now I’m really confused about what makes a T-hunter think. Here is my problem. From the start, you could hear T-2, the Country Club T, in Running Springs. On the way to T-2, you would naturally hear T-4, only about a mile off the obvious route Hwy 330. Ok, it makes sense that you would find these two transmitters, only 6.1 miles (by road) apart in some sequence. Of the six teams that found these transmitters, only three (TNJ, FAT & GQ) found them sequentially. The other two transmitters were off of Hwy 38 and were only 8 miles apart (by road) and separated from the other pair by 18.3 miles yet MI and AIN oscillated back and forth between these two groups. Only one team (TNJ)found T-1 and T-3 sequentially. In fact the TNJ team was the only one that seemed to do the hunt correctly, heading for the transmitter they heard at the start (T-2), finding T-4 along the way, proceeding on to the other pair, finding T-3 on the way to T-1, the furthermost away. (of course they had to go to Barstow between T-3 and T-1, I guess for lunch at BunBoys.) Another strange occurrence is YKE, going for T-1, skipping T-3 along the way up 38 or T-2 along either 18 or 330. I don’t know just how they did it, but they went for the hard one and found only the hard one. Dedication to cause.
For those that may have wondered just where these guys were, here are the lats and longs:
T-1 N34 07.180 W117 02.054
T-2 N34 12.123 W117 07.588
T-3 N34 04.672 W117 04.827
T-4 N34 10.508 W117 08.870
The results:
CALL T-1 T-2 T-3 T-4 Total CU
KF6GQ/KD6LAJ 194.40 137.10 107.10 145.60 194.40 20.68
N6AIN/N6XFC/N6MJN 151.85 193.00 95.00 113.20 193.00 20.89
KC6TNJ/AF6O/WA6TQQ 243.75 105.90 185.70 98.90 243.75 26.79
N6MI /Sweetie DNF ? 109.10 100.10 DNF NA
N6YKE/KE6JKE 201.75 DNF DNF DNF DNF NA
Not at Start Point
WA6FAT/WB6HPW/WB6YMI DNF 2 1 3 DNF
N6ZHZ/KD6CYG DNF DNF 2 1 DNF
The AIN team finished first, at 6:23 PM, and with a late start, ZHZ found T-3 at 12:41 Sun AM.