Pathfinder Hunt
Hider: Bob WB6JPI
Location: Riverside
I found five potential hiding places in
the hills of SW Riverside. Much of this area has new roads and not too
good mapping plus the hills could be used to allow a Baldy Bounce to
the start and still keep things confusing on the routes toward the
transmitter. One transmitter was planned. Found all the sites in the
daylight on Tuesday and I had them in my GPS and life was good.
I had a nice dinner with Marlene and left
the house at 6:00 planning for a 1/2 hour to the site (T3 of the five),
1/2 hour to get the antenna, mast and stuff assembled and a 1/2 hour
for contingencies. I punched in T3 into the GPS and routed myself
there. I arrived in the area but my GPS had me going on a road that
didn't exist. I wouldnt re-route me no matter what I did. I flailed
around and never did get to T3. Time was running short so I chose
another site, T4.
N33 55.603 W117 21.978 at the end of
Chartwell Dr., a street of $5 mil+ houses.
Not near as good as T3 since it was
at the end of a rather long deadend street and would be quite obvious
when you got within a mile or two.
Set up the stand, mast and assembled the
antenna a 13 element horizontal beam pointed at Mt Baldy which I had
noted was just visible over a nearby hill. Got out the transmitter (20
watts) and battery but could not find any coax. Houston, we have a
problem. It was 7:15 and the hunt starts at 7:30. Where I was I could
not reach the start with a omni antenna (The magmount off of the
Saturn) and the start was well shielded. The Baldy Bounce was a
necessity. so I had to have the big beam.
Found a 3 ft piece of cable out of the
doppler in the car and a roll of duct tape. I taped the transmitter to
the antenna boom, 3 ft from the driven element and the 17 AH battery to
the boom/mast junction. Now the tripod couldn't hold the unbalance and
kept falling over. Got it stablized at 7:29 and called Deryl at the
start. He could hear it fine. Bearing to Baldy...
Two hunters:
Deryl, N6AIN/Steve
WA6PYE 40.6 miles 9:00 pm Winner
Dave
N6MJN
45.0
miles,
9:15
pm
Found out later that Bob N6ZHZ/CATHY,
KD6CYG were also hunting. We didn't find this out until after the
transmitter and antenna were all torn down. We all met for a burger at
Bob's Big Boy in Norco.
Bob, WB6JPI
