MINI ALL-DAY THUNT
February 22, 2014


I had and ARRL OO breakfast meeting in Anaheim so I didn’t get up to the start point until
about noon. Don had specified a repeater to coordinate and I have the perfect radio, the
Kenwood V7A which has the ability to simultaneously receive on two frequencies so it could
be my “you just drove by a little T” receiver and listen to the Table Mountain repeater. 
It is around 12 years old with a lot of hunts and the screen had been going stripey. Well
I got it set up to receive the repeater, but I couldn’t set the PL.

While I was in Anaheim I bought another radio, a Yaesu FT 8800RE which can do the same thing,
but it wasn’t installed other than in its box.

I messed with it at the start as the repeater isn’t very strong at my house. The radio just quit.
I didn’t do anything, it just quit. . No power, no lights no repeater and no “you are here”. 
I assigned a hand held to the job but it didn’t do well.

I heard three transmitters at the start and plotted them. I pondered and mulled a bit and
decided to go up the 15 freeway to Barstow as the 395 seemed to far west. Somehow I heard
T2, T3 and T9 (I think very weak). I musta got T3 and T1 mashed up. Off to Barstow.

Signal got weaker and weaker the further I went but I could still hear T2. Decided to
go west along the 58 and found that I had a good right angle bearing at Harper Lake Road.
As in the last hunt I had not gone at the right angle due north bearing and went around to
395 and really ate it, I decided that I would go north on this semi-paved road. I went
about 100 feet, hit a bump and the Yaesu FT 857 died. Again no power although the meters
showed the unit has power. Now I am getting the usual level of frustration when the hunt
gods seem to be in the hider’s corner.

My sniffer was reading a 2 and the bearing was nice and clean so I drove on up the road.
I got to a huge solar plant that had to be 5 square miles and now  I had a clear visual
sight on the west end of Black mountain. But the signal was down to a 1 on the sniffer…I
needed to get around to the rear of Black Mountain. My maps were failing me as they showed
the only way across the lake was to go east. I went east but soon the road died and I was
still no where near any road going north.

So I did the dumbest thing. I just started driving across the lake. Three miles of lake
later I was in heavy sagebrush still couldn’t find a road. I went cross country another 2
miles more NW at this time and eventually found a road going around the west end of Black
Mountain. The signal went away. Today I find I was about 3 miles from T2 and yet I heard
just a murmur on SSB pointing NE. I knew it was NW, but I was now down to a ¼ tank and
decided that I had had enough bouncing around. I went South through Black Canyon and
eventually (15 miles of more dirt) go the Hinkley Road and sanity.

I think I did around 60 miles of dirt (3 hours at 20MPH) so it was worth it.

Good hunt??

Bob, WB6JPI