APRIL 22, 2000 ALL DAY TRANSMITTER HUNT

It was cold and drizzling rain when I climbed to the top of a hill in Inaja Memorial Park, just south of  Santa Ysabel in San Diego County. Everything was wet, including me by the time I got T number 1 planted.
 
Ray and I had driven down to Julian on Friday and got a couple of rooms at the Julian Lodge. It turns out that Easter weekend is big in Julian but fortunately a film crew had canceled out so there were plenty of rooms.
 
We then scouted around looking for a good spot for the main transmitter. After looking around Pine Hills we decided to use the hill in Inaja Memorial Park. We could hear and bring up a PV repeater with low power and a quarter wave antenna. So we thought it would be a piece of cake.
 
The weather reports had all predicted it would be clear and sunny on Saturday. The clouds were so thick that I lost track of my direction and had to pull out a compass to get the beam pointed in the right direction. So much for the weather people.

At around 9:20 AM Ray and I started calling the start point but got no response. The PCS phones were useless so Ray tried his Mother's cell phone. After much aggravation he was finally able to get through to someone and found out that they had heard nothing.

T1 was only running 5 watts to a 4 el. beam and I wasn't about to carry a car battery up that hill to add more power so we decided to leave T1 there running and go up to a spot near Pine Hills that we had looked at before.

We arrived there and put out T3. It was an AF6O box feeding an amplifier, putting out about 80 or 90 watts to a 4-element beam. They finally heard us.
 
I drove up to Deer Lake Park Road and put out T2. It was running around 1 watt to a 1/4 wave mag mount. Ray went back to T1 to see that it was still working ok.

I had been coming down with a bad cold since Friday morning so I decided to go back to the Lodge and get some rest while Ray took a site seeing tour of the area.
 
I put a 4th T ( a KF6GQ box ) in the window of the room. The sign in sheet was on the windshield of my Jimmy just below it.

Here are the results:

  MILEAGE TO EACH TRANSMITTER