Meathead All Day
Transmitter Hunt
I was looking at
hiding at Santa Rosa Mountain which had not been an ending
point for quite some time. Then I had an idea to use Santa
Rosa to hide the direct signal and use a bounce off of the
Big Bear mountains. Using my DeLorme mapping software and
Google maps I worked at a strategy. On the north slope of
Santa Rosa I found a forest road that at one time went up to
the peak. Going up far enough would get the signal over a
ridge on the east side of San Jacinto Mountain and reach the
San Gorgonio mountains. This would draw the hunters into
Palm Springs instead of taking the direct route of Hwy 74
through Hemet. Another strategy was to draw the hunters to
the forestry road off Hwy 38 (south of Onyx Peak) that
overlooks the Banning and Palm Springs areas. I was going to
hide here last month but it was 105 degrees at the hide area
and 115 in Palm Springs so I hid near the beach instead.
This month it was 90 up top and 100 in Palm Springs.
As with most
my hides there is always a complication. Driving up the
road to hide T1 I found out that Google maps doesn’t
always tell the whole story. The road was not in as good
of condition as I had hoped. I could not get up to the
height I needed before the road gave out. I hid the main
T and hoped. It was running 35W into a 15 element beam
pointed toward San Jacinto/San Gorgonio. As it turned
out, it could be heard at the Pathfinder starting point
but only when a plane was flying in the path that caused
a flutter bounce. This actually gave the hunters a
direct reading to T1 but in-route the signal came from
the bounce as planned.
There were
three teams. Two followed the bounce and the third fell
for the San Gorgonio trick ending up off Hwy 38 with a
great view. None came by the direct route as was
planned. Except for the poor signal at the starting
point the hunt went well. Once in the area there were 5
more Ts to find.
One last
complication, as I was picking up the last T (T7) it had
just gotten dark. I couldn’t remember which bush I hid
it behind, so I ended up sniffing out my own T.
