Our story begins on the Tuesday morning before the
Meathead. As I was heading into work Westbound on the
10Fwy in Redlands, I see a white Toyota 4-Runner
heading Eastbound. This is no ordinary 4-Runner, no
siree! This is a white 4-Runner with a large cross
polarized Yagi mounted thru the roof, and brown and
yellow Southern California Transmitter Hunter’s signs
plastered all over it!
I continue heading West, knowing that this could not
possibly be the infamous WB6JPI (or Jippy as he is
known as in the SCTH Mafia) heading out to find a
hiding spot. I completely erased this memory from my
head, but did leave myself a little hint of it on the
message board.
Flash forward to Saturday morning...
We arrived at King’s Hawaiian at 8:15 and proceed to
order breakfast. As has been the trend as of late, we
were alone.
We made our way up to the hill... We were still alone.
Perhaps I should have showered that morning, I don’t
know.
As the time approached 9:30, other hunters finally
arrived. We heard several stories as told by the
all-wise and knowing J. Scott Bovitz... (You still
never told me what you did in January)
It’s now 10:00, we all begin swinging our antenna’s
frantically trying to catch a glimpse of the huge
signal that usually comes from a Jippy hunt. There
was no signal. We made phone calls, he made promises,
all lies, but there was still no signal. At 10:25, a
voice from the other side of the road; Deryl “Wounded
Knee” Crawford told us that he had the hider on the
phone, and could hear a signal. We all began
frantically swinging our antennas... Still no signal.
We went home
Oh no, wait, we went up to the church parking lot.
Still no signal!
We went home
Well, almost went home. Then suddenly, out of
nowhere, another member of the SCTH Mafia, “The Don”
told us that a signal could be heard from the top of
the road. We drove up to the top of the road, and you
guessed it, we had no signal, nadda, zero, nothing!
We finally pulled into the magic spot located behind
the all-knowing J. Scott Bovitz and were able to hear
a very, very, very weak signal coming from the North
East. We plotted the bearing on the map, and it
pointed East of the Big Bear area.
We headed East on the 91, and seeing as we had not
heard anything through the whole Santa Ana canyon, we
decided that stopping at Green River would probably be
a waste of time. We continued east, and still had no
signal. We contemplated heading up to Cajon Summit,
but then I suddenly remembered seeing that mysterious
white 4-Runner a few days before. We continued East
on the 91 to the 215 North... Decision time! Do we
continue up to the 15, or head East on the 10? We
still have no signal; it must be on the other side,
but where? We decide that we must have lunch, and
what better place to do it than our beautiful hometown
of Redlands. We call our good buddy on the phone that
we had managed to play leapfrog with on most of the
91, Mike “the mud man” Obermeier to see if he would
like to join us. He agrees, and meets us at Tony’s
Spunky Steer. We arrive at the restaurant, and still
had no signal. While waiting for Mike, we turned off
the engine, laptop, GPS, and everything but the radio;
flipped on the preamp and swung the antenna... There
is a very, very weak signal on sideband, pointing
right at San Gorgonio. By the strength of the signal,
we know that it could not possibly be on the mountain,
or could it? Seems like a reflection, perhaps from
the low desert, or maybe a knife edge from the high
desert. Being confused by this, we decided that we
were so close to home, that we should just go there
and call it a day.
We went home.
No, we had lunch! We managed to get our good friends
Deryl “Wounded Knee” Crawford and his partner Ray
“Purple Plaid Shirt and Red Laces” Hughes to come down
from Cajon Summit and join us for lunch. Besides,
they had no reason for going up that way anyhow, the T
was certainly in the low desert. As is SOP for them,
they managed to make it from Cajon Summit to Tony’s
Spunky Steer in what seemed like 10 minutes, no, not
really, it was more like 5 minutes.
We all exchanged lies, enjoyed a great lunch, and took
off east on the 10.
When we got to Cheery Valley Blvd, there was suddenly
so much signal coming off the mountain that I could
finally turn off the preamp and turn the navigation
system back on. We got off at CVB and took several
bearings along with “the Mud Man”
The signal still pointed at Gorgonio, but also pointed
towards San Jacinto! How could he do that if he were
in Big Bear? He must be in the low desert.
We continued east on the 10 to the 111. Suddenly,
there was a ton of signal coming off of San Jacinto,
and barely any coming off of Gorgonio. We decided to
head down the 111 a little bit to see if we could
figure out what we were seeing. When we got to the
first off road area, we pulled over and took some
bearings. Looks like we’re going to Yucca Valley!
We managed to make our way back to Hwy 62 north to the
247. We continued up the 247 where we started hearing
the annoying “WB6JPI little T5, Come find me” T. We
now had a moral obligation to find this T and take it
out... It had to be stopped!
We made our way to Bessemer Mine road, and entered the
Johnson Valley OHV area. Hope we don’t need 4WD! As
we were driving thru, Mike got on the radio and told
me that he was going to go into the mud puddle! I
told him it was probably a bad idea, but as long as I
was to inherit his Jeep, I did not care! We grabbed
the video and still cameras and got out of the Durango
to enjoy the spectacle that was to become known as
“Mike and his mighty mud hole!” We realized that he
was just having way too much fun, and that seeing as
Mike has that big winch on the front, we might as well
try it. We don’t need no stinking 4wd! I proceeded
to slowly enter the mud, at which point, hit the gas
and began the spin! It was a blast. I had to do it
again! This time I decided to go further out.... I
was making my way thru the mud, then suddenly, out of
nowhere it went from 6 inches to about 24! Luckily, I
had enough momentum, that it made it thru without a
hitch. I was done playing in the mud hole, but
Melanie, who was being a great videoographer decided
that she needed to take a ride in the mud as well...
I took the same route as before, and she was laughing
until we hit the deep spot! I think her heart stopped
for a split second until she realized that we made it.
She made me do it one more time...
Ok, back to what we came here to do.
After we made our way away from the lakebed, we
realized that the pesky T5 was up on a hill with a
microwave tower. We made our way up the hill, found
the T, took some pictures and bearings and proceeded
to head back down the hill. We were about halfway
down the hill, when we heard the voice of the
all-knowing J. Scott Bovitz on the radio. He wanted
to know if there was room to get past us. Knowing
that there was a sheer cliff on the uphill side of the
road, we told him that there would be no problem, go
right ahead! No, not really! They backed a little
ways down the road to a point where we could pull over
and let them go by...
Next, we headed for the main T. We found this very
quickly without any sniffing, probably because it was
almost in the middle of the road! At this point we
ran into Deryl “Wounded Knee” Crawford and Ray “Purple
Plaid Shirt and Red Laces” Hughes. They claimed that
this was the first T they had found. As Deryl and I
have a mutual understanding, I believed him. Then, we
exchanged more lies... Or were they?
Our next task was to find the T that would become
known as the power tower duct tape T. We found this T
quickly, enjoyed a little bit of high EMF waves and
decided to see if we could hear any more T’s... We
couldn’t. Time to head for the 40.
We made our way north on an unmarked road, or was it a
riverbed? As we crested a hill, we heard a 4th T that
we had not heard before. It appeared as if it was
coming from directly in front of us. As we headed
north, the signal started to turn to the east
slightly. We managed to get off of the dirt road by
going over a burm that looked as if it may have had a
barbed wire fence across it at one time. We were now
on Route 66, getting our kicks! As we headed east on
the 66, the signal abruptly turned to the left. We
got out of the Durango, and I hiked across the lava
bed and sand while Mike and Melanie waited. I managed
to make it to the fence that separated the lava bed
from Hwy40! SH!%, it’s on the other side. Having
grown up living across the street from the 215 in
Perris, I remembered how much trouble I got in for
running across that freeway when I was 13, I could
only imagine how much trouble I would get in at 33.
While I was standing there, I noticed what looked like
a large turnout across the freeway, and what looked
like a car stopped there with it’s lights on. I would
later learn that this was probably Deryl signing into
the T. We made our way east on the 66 to a point at
which we could jump on the 40 west. We proceeded on
the 40 west to the Emergency parking area... You have
got to be F$#%(&@ kidding me! This is private
property, but we have become accustomed to this lately
(-; ! Though a good spot none the less. We signed
in, and had dinner with Mike in Barstow. As we made
our way through Victorville, Mike decided to call the
all-knowing J. Scott Bovitz to see how they were
doing. Apparently, they were stuck; call him back in
a few minutes. We pulled off the freeway in
Victorville, and waited a few minutes to see if they
were going to need help. Mike called him back, and
apparently, they were near some talc mine, but were no
longer in any trouble...
We went home!
No, really, we did!
N6IDF