Ray and Deryl's Story
October 25th 2003




Deryl and I were a few minutes late getting to the start point. We were pleasantly surprised to see so many t-hunt vehicles (8) parked with antennas turning. Deryl got out to tell everyone that we had received a cellphone call while heading up the hill from the hiders, saying that antennas should be vertical in polarization.

We could just hear a signal on sideband S-zero, coming almost due north. We went over to the guardhouse and took another bearing. Signal strength was not any stronger and still north.

We headed down the hill trying to decide our route, when the signal came up stronger. We stopped at Walgreen’s (The Parasol Restaurant site) to take a bearing. Wait a minute! It’s now from the south, southeast and a slightly stronger signal. What is there for this to bounce off of? Nothing that we could see unlike the northern one we got up on the hilltop. That’s different. So we decided to go freeway 110 to the 405 east. As we approached the 5/405 merger, I turned on the local news-radio (we had been listening to the NASCAR Busch race on XM Radio), to get a handle on road conditions in case the 5 was affected due to the Camp Pendleton fire. I thought I heard that the 5 was closed in both directions. I waited to hear another report before taking evasive maneuvers. Turns out it was the 126 that I had heard. So we were all right, we went on south on the 5. Deryl spoke of Del Mar. But we started getting indications more inland. We took the 56 off of the 5. We went passed the 15 on the 56. We continued on the 67 in an easterly direction, through Ramona onto the 78, so far the signal has been consistent in its direction. On towards Julian my favorite (not!) tourist trap and little to no cellphone coverage land, onto highway 79 at Santa Ysabel, to Julian. We contemplated having lunch in Ramona or Julian. But we thought we had gone on a much too serendipitous route and that we were probably well behind most other hunters, so we went on. We stopped to take a bearing at the Post Office in Julian. Did I mention that we discovered (too late) that we did not have a San Diego County map of any sort? We used a California paper map (AAA) and Deryl’s Color Street Pilot GPS. This made it somewhat difficult to plot out and see which roads we should take. Deryl had surmised Mt. Laguna by now. We pressed on, never seeing another hunter. Where is everyone? We thought there might be something in the Cayamuca Lake or State Park area, but no, so we went on. At Pine Valley we paralleled the 8 on Old Hwy 80, then went on to S1 (Sunrise Hwy.), towards Mt. Laguna. We went passed the signal, having been looking (visually) for a road going towards our bearing. After about a mile we turned around. I had thought it would be a dirt road, but I saw this paved road and turned on it. We could see up ahead an FAA radar dome. We felt we were on the right track. All transmitter signals were coming from the same area.

At the end of the road we saw Tom KE6VCR’s RV and Scott N6MI’s truck parked along side it, both with beam antennas. I parked the Rover in front of the RV. Deryl and I saw Tom and Scott sitting in the RV, we went in and they were roughing it watching a movie. We soon found that we would be searching for up to 18 transmitters by foot, in the area. We would need to take a piece of paper from the main transmitter location and a pencil that were provided and write down a four-lettered word that would be at each transmitter. Where is everybody? We arrived a little before 3 pm and we were the first to arrive. Deryl took off with L-Per in hand. I had forgotten my handheld at home, so I used Deryl’s. We pushed through fairly thick brush. I decided after a few transmitters were found with the L-Per, to listen on the image frequency since I wasn’t getting anywhere with the handheld on .565, with body shielding, falling over cactus, rocks, brush. I could hear Scott’s voice identifying as T19, then another as T56. Deryl could not hear these on the L-Per at all. I tuned the handheld back to 146.565; I could not hear them there either. I switched back to the image frequency and they were there. I was looking right at Scott while one of his voice t’s transmitted, he exclaimed, “It’s not me”. I could see it wasn’t him. I must be actually hearing more transmitters, but on the image frequency only (?). I tuned back to the image frequency and there they were again. But wait, is there another, a third? “N6MI really”, yup there‘s a third one. I’m wandering along the fence area up towards the radar dome. The signal was not getting stronger. So I moved back towards the RV. Meanwhile, Deryl went off way passed the RV, looking for Tom’s voice “wabbit” t. I decided to concentrate on the 3 t’s I could hear on the image frequency. The signals seemed to be stronger coming from the brush near the RV, so I concentrated in this area.

Finally, I found two of the micro micro t's with no antennas running off a 9-volt battery hanging in the bushes in a Ziploc type bag. I still could not find “really”. Deryl returned successfully having found more t’s. I told him the problem I was having finding “really”, he took the handheld and went searching. Meanwhile, Dave N6IDF with his wife Melanie KF6GWV and closely behind them, Mike K6SNE arrived. Finally some other hunters, it was now after 4:30 pm. Where is everyone else? I decided to try to find “really” visually. After several minutes, I got the handheld back from Deryl and tried a particular bush that I had not thoroughly covered previously. Ah ha, there it is! Without the antenna, the handheld, an Alinco dual bander, is so shielded, that in order to confirm these t’s, I placed the antenna connector against the (transmitter) pc board each time.

We were hungry and tired. We went inside the RV and were offered drinks and food. Hot dogs and snacks were served. As the sun was setting, we decided that the 12 transmitters we had found were enough.

As we left, we wondered yet again where were the other hunters? As we got back down to S1, we stopped. We needed to figure out how we were going to get home. We saw Bob N6ZHZ and Kathy KD6CYG drive by. We expected them to turn around and come back, but they must not have seen us.

Thanks to Tom and Scott for an enjoyable hunt and for the good eats.
Ray N6EKS