KF6GQ & LAJ Story.
July 28 Mini All Day Hunt

After setting up the FJ for T-hunting while waiting for Steve to arrive, I was monitoring the T frequency for any signal. I did hear a T once! It must of been a passing aircraft, because as much as I listened, it never happened again. Bob N6ZHZ said he was able to get a bearing on the T from a location that was only .25 miles from my home. Why can't I hear it. Soon Steve arrived and we started on our way. No readable signal at the 210 and Mountain, and no signal all the way to I5! When we started north on I5, we got a very weak signal pointing in front of us. Now both Doug & Deryl got a 320 bearing from the area that we where in (upper San Fernando Valley) and our bearing seemed to confirm this also. About this time we got a cell call from N6MI wanting to know how we where doing. We told him that we are getting an approximate bearing of 320 also from the I5 & I405. He said okay, call me in 15 minutes and tell me what you have then. So we continued up pass the 14 fwy, to McBean Pkwy. where we exited and went east and stopped on a side street. This time when signal came on it was more than full scale, but also the bearing changed to 95 degrees! Now we could hear two T's, T22 & T MI both in same direction. Wait! let's check the 320 bearing again! Nothing much that way, so let's get to the 14 frwy and head north (east), On checking futher, the bearing went both through Magic Mt. on the west and through Mt. Gleason on the east. On a side note, I don't get a chanch to drive this way often with my FJ, but most of our camping trips to the mountains we do drive this with our RV. I have been noticing (well actually more than noticing) that if we are in the most right hand lane as we cross Sand Canyon bridge, my RV does a bit of dancing, it porpoises and sways from side to side, enough for me to get concerned. So this year I put heavy duty extra thick sway bars on both the front and rear of our RV. This last time we crossed the bridge, I got the porpoising as before but not the swaying back and forth. As we drove the FJ across the bridge, it was obvious that the bridge has really something not right with it! I wonder why nobody has complained about it? Back to the hunt. We continued north (east) on hwy 14 with perotic bearings heading mostly south, but always a signal still in front of us. We went north to the Agua Dulce Canyon Rd. exit going south. We turned left (east) on Soledad Canyon Rd. We had signals all over the place!, but, we always had a strong signal in front of us. We stopped several times and took bearings, it became obvious that T22 was going to be west of the main T MI. My expert navaguesser Steve said keep going east, because none of the south going roads will go far enough to get to T's! We went all the way to Aliso Canyon Rd. We then went south and did several U turns on the highway as our signal would go from in front to in back in a couple of hundred yards, but the signal wasn't a you are there yet! So we would go up to the next right hand turn road and find it a private route! Finally we backed tracked a couple of miles to Aliso Arrastre Cutoff which follows the many power lines from the Acton switching station. The signals where both coming from the direction of our travel, so we were happy. Soon T MI was turning to our right, so we pulled over and took some bearings, and it looked like it was up on the side of a hill with 71 other power line towers! Now we know what can happen to a rf signal that is close to power lines, well it sure did it to us! We had a close to U R there signal from every direction when we got into the area of many towers. We tried going away from the signal to see if we could get some cross bearings, but nothing definite. We got out of the FJ and used the snifter to get an elevation on the signal, this seemed to work, it looked like it was the last row of power lines up the side of a very high hill, all we had to do was find the proper turn off to get there! We finally found the proper road (all dirt), so we approached one of the towers, Steve actually spotted the antenna, so no sniffing was necessary. When we signed in, we where surprised that no other teams had signed in yet! Doug had a two hour lead on us, and Deryl had one hour, where were they? About then MI called our cell phone and asked how we were doing, and we told him we had one to go. He asked that we note the power level of the T (I guess he was going to use this as a tie breaker as the power would go down as the time went on), anyway we noted it and took a bearing on T-22 which was very strong at this location. It showed it as being down towards the end of the main road, where three other roads intersect with the main road.   Of we went on a deteriorating road that manages to twist and turn and dips into every small canyon. Finally on a forest route going up to the road that crosses between Mt. Gleason & Magic Mt. This road is now closed for the foreseeable future. Just before the gate that closes it to the Gleason road, T-22 was up a small hill on the right hand side of the road. This antenna was pointed (as best as I could tell at a 320 degree direction, that would point at Mt. Pinos. So now we know why the bearings we and everybody got going up the 5 fwy. I bet if we hadn't turned off at McBean exit, we would of dropped down into the reflection that took most of the hunters north!  We met N6AIN as he was getting off Aliso Cyn. on to the road to the T's. He was having trouble with his attenuatetor , we gave him some white paper towels to shield the radio from the heat of the sun, apparently it worked because he found both T's. I actually got home by 15:00, in plenty of time to relax and enjoy dinner at home. It's too bad that we couldn't of come in second, but that's what happens when the luck goes your way (or not!).

Thanks, Scott & Tom for hide. Don & Steve