PATHFINDER
Thunt
WB6JPI
I have been hiding “out-east” nearer to my house for the last couple years. Not because I am lazy or anything, but if I don’t hide out here, who will? I thought I would hide in LA and as I have had numerous complaints (well only one long-lasting complaint) about using dirt roads for the Pathfinder I was looking for a paved road and in the true Pathfinder spirit it was to be a hard hunt taking at least 1 1/2 hours.
I used four “tricks” to cause the hunters some issues, hopefully lasting about 90 minutes longer than it would take to go from the start to Tee if you knew where it was.
The first was no direct signal until you went north to at least the 10 fwy. The horizontal beam (14 el) was pointed at Mt Baldy.
The second was the antenna was 20 ft below and 50 ft north of the 10 fwy and 50 ft above and 300 ft east of the 710 fwy in the NE crotch of the intersection. It was very hard to get to unless you were in that quadrant of the intersection. For instance if you were on the campus of CALState LA a mere ¼ mile west you had to go at least 3 miles to get from that NW quadrant into the T. Other quadrants were harder.
The third is that I ran 30 watts and the beam antenna was well below the houses and such but could see the top of Baldy. So the signal on the nearby (15 miles) ground was very highly reflected off of everything and it was very hard to get any clean bearing to the T.
The fourth thing was that it was west of the start instead of out-east. With all of the confusion with the multipath the hunter bias was to go where they always went when I hid…out-east.
As noted the T was hid on the end of
Only one team turned out. A shame as this was a
really good hunt, I got them on all four “tricks”. Deryl and
Steve went as far east as the 210.215 fwys (
The above was from the hunt I hid on Jun19, 2010 just over 5 years ago. I decided that it was too good a place to waste on just one hunt so I duplicated the hunt. Same place (with in 3 ft) same antenna, same mast same battery and would have been the same transmitter, but I blew it up during turn on. More on that later. I used a 20 watt backup transmitter u 8 ft and pointed the same way. There were 5 hunters. Almost all of them including Deryl/Steve went east from the start as far as Haven then north toward Baldy. Deryl got above the 210 freeway before they had a west signal. Glenn, AB6PA actually heard a west signal near the start and never went east. I don’t know where Don or Ron went but Don musta spent hours east of his house as the only good bearing he got was at his house still well east of the transmitter.
2 ½ hours into the hunt Deryl, N6AIN showed up
with 66.9 miles. He and Steve must have had some recall from
5 years ago. About an hour later Glenn, AB6PA arrives with
52.2 miles and at
So Glenn, AB6PA is the winner!!
