I too want to congratulate Doug for a class hunt. I went up the 5 fwy until the signal vanished and never got anything but the 330-345 signal. No swing to the west or anything. It just vanished. I wanted to go west but I was far enough north so there was no way to go west. I was hungry for lunch and needed gas so I decided to go on north to Frazer Park, get gas at the flying W and eat lunch at Dennys and figure out where the T might be.
 
I concluded that my next chance at hearing anything was to go up on the Pine Mountain Ridge road (road to Reyes Peak) and figure out how to get into the south end of Los Padres. I romped down Lockwood valley (the Chuchupate ranger station was closed for lunch. It has a nice new building and museum and I would have liked to tour it but the T was calling). As I passed the road to Mutau valley I heard a very weak signal on sideband that was pointing 150 degrees. This would put it far east of Reyes ridge and there is no road that goes that far east from there, and no road east of where I was that went south at all. This was the only way.
 
I had checked this road out several years ago but the gate was locked. The one lane paved road quickly turned into a 30 mph dirt road that had been graded this year. After 10 miles I was topping a ridge and heard 6 transmitters and all was well. Another couple miles I ran into Doug and all was better. For the next couple hours I picked off all seven of the transmitters. I was first to sign in on all seven Ts.
 
I was amazed and fooled by T1. the big horizontal signal in that I could not imagine it could be located so low on the side of a hill in the bushes and make so much signal at the start point. And it was only 40 feet from T5.
 
I asked my GPS for the fastest route home and it put me out of Los Padre the same way I had come in so I kinda knew I had done well on the hunt. At Flying W I got gas and as I had backed into a tree rather violently making one of many 6-point direction reversals, I decided to straighten out my rear bumper from rubbing on the tire by wrapping my tow line around a parking lot lamp post when hooked to my bumper and driving forward a couple feet. While in the midst of this maneuver, Bob and Cathy emerged so we had a nice dinner at Dennys.
 
Thanks again Doug.
 
I will not be on the September hunt unless it is in Sacramento.
 
Bob, WB6JPI

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