Jippy’s Sad, Sad Story

T-Hunt July 26, 2008

It was a beautiful day for a hunt. Lots of fine folk at the start and the weather was tolerable. Signal came on at 10 AM but was very hard to hear, After a while flailing around Doug found it was 5 KHz  low and then things got better with a fine signal on sideband with a CW filter on the FT 857.

Deryl and Scott both had bearings around 70 degrees but I found it smaller at 64 degrees. (The actual is 62.5 degrees). Off I went.

At Green River still on sideband I read 45 degrees (which is almost dead on the transmitter) and with some bias from the compass readings of Deryl and Scott, I decided to go up the mountain on Hwy 330 to Running Springs. When I got there I still had no real signal and became very worried. I had a small blip to the west but nothing at all to the east (Holcum Valley). I went west on Hwy 18 and at Heaps peak I ran up to the top (mostly to view my old repeater site) and took a bearing of 260 degrees. This is not a good bearing and led to the rest of my day being a disaster. In retrospect I have figured out what went wrong.

The radio site on Heaps has really grown with about 7 large towers and a 8 ft chain link fence. The road getting there circles the site in a clockwise manner and ends up on the south side looking north through all that fence and towers. This is where I took my bearing of 260 degrees. Had I too a bearing while on the north side of the site I would have beamed right on the transmitter to the north and would have made my day.

I didn’t get that critical bearing, and so I decided it must be in the Cajon pass somewhere and went down off the mountain on Hwy 18 and over to Summit on the 15 FWY. At summit I got a good bearing of 102 degrees pointing back up to the Holcum Valley area. (actually it crossed the Green river bearing 3000 ft from the transmitter. There is no doubt that my new compass arrangement is working very well.)

Off to the east on Bear Valley Road and when the signal swung due south I went up some little dirt thing that required 4WD in a couple places and in about 15 miles ran into Coxey Rd and on to Green Valley Lake and back to Running Springs. Along the way on Coxey Rd I got up to 30 dB of attenuator but it really wasn’t there but still west. Back to little or nothing now at Running Springs. Heaps peak was closed when I got there but I was beginning to see the light and knew it was East of Arrowhead and West of Coxey in the Squint ranch area. I ran off in that direction and got as far as the Ash Meadow and Squint Ranch road intersection with 40 Db of attenuator and the gas light came on. It was now 8PM and I was pooped and I had to give up only 5 miles from the transmitter. With some 280 miles overall it was a shame. It was more of a shame I didn’t take a bearing on the north side of Heaps.

This was a very good hunt. 90% of my route was on sideband and I did hear up to three transmitters T1, T2 and one other. I am most happy.

Jippy