Mini All Day
Transmitter Hunt
This was for us (KF6GQ & KD6LAJ) too soon after the last hide. We where tired! Luckily it was a MINI All Day so we started to plan it soon after the last hide. Being it was still going to be hot, so we needed altitude so the hunters wouldn't melt in the desert heat. The Wrightwood area was chosen to be the location. I looked at several maps and Google Earth for many hours to find the just right spots, we would limit the number of T's to three, to be keeping with the “mini” aspect of the hunt. The first location we looked at was the Vincent gap along hwy 2 Angeles Nation Forest hwy. Three weeks ago the hwy was open between Glendale and Wrightwood, but not on hunt weekend! From this location one can clearly see Mt. Baldy, with good sheilding on both sides of the antenna. We thought that a low powered signal <2 watts with a gain antenna, would send a nice bounce from Baldy. Only one hunter got stuck up in the Mt. Baldy area, the rest figured out to go north to the desert. The other two where set up to confuse (hopefully) the hunters and bring them out to the desert instead of up hwy 2! This T was set up on a dirt road that is above Hwy 2 that takes a bit of navigation to find and get to (MI VCR can attest to this).
We checked out a second location south of Pinyon Pines that can't be gotten to from the north easily. This was on FS4N07 which is off of Ball Flats road (both of them). In checking out the area I thought there was only one way in, but leave it to Scott & Tom to fined a better way in (at least that's what they said it was). But at the far North East corner was a great spot to place the GQ T9. Both N6MI and N6AIN teams found this T (only 15 minutes or so apart from each other) but coming in from two different roads.
The third T which was T3 was on Big Rock Canyon Road near the Fenner Canyon Conservation Camp. This was on the paved portion on the road, just before it goes dirt! This was a transmitter running about 5 watts to a dipole hung between several trees. If you look at a map all the T's where in a big circle that would take about an hour to pass by each one!
Results are as follows:
Note MI & VCR had good mileage to their first two T's because of superior navigation, but then something happened, I think the naviguessing took a wrong turn (pun intended). They had passed with in ¼ mile of LAJ T9, and spent several minutes at the Vincent Gap area only to leave and not return for several hours and miles later!
Team of N6AIN N6EKS GQ-T9 115.4 mi @ 3:38, LAJ-T9 136 miles @4:53, T3 140 @ 5:26.
Team of N6MI & K6VCR GQ-T9 84 mi @3:00, T3 101 Mi @ 4:53, LAJ-T9 159 mi @ 10:45
Team AB6PA wasn't able to find any T's, spent too much time in Rancho Cucamonga! Following the bounce from Baldy.
Winners were Ray N6EKS and Deryl N6AIN
Thanks for coming out and sorry for those that wanted to but weren't able to.
KD6LAJ & KF6GQ
Glenn's Story
Deryl's Video
