The Results of the WWNIATT Hunt

March 29th 1997
Well it was a good but lonely hunt. The transmitter was located on the northeast side of Lytle Creek Canyon, just 35 miles from the start (DeLorme's Map'n'Go Shortest Route). The 9 element beam, horizontaly polarized, was pointed almost due west into the east side of Cucamunga Peak. The transmitter ran 35 watts at a 30% duty. Very loud signals were bouncing all over the place as the transmitter was located about 1000ft from the top of the ridge and about 1000 feet above the canyon bottom. There was only about 1.5 miles of dirt road (by the optimum route) and even that was "sedanable".This location is just 25 minutes from my house, so I was home at 9:30AM,pouting. My experience in hunting shows that the winning hunter will usually go about twice the actual shortest distance, so one could expect about 70 miles for the winning distance. But.... The two hunters: 

        N6AIN/N6EKS...12:40PM......96.2 Miles..(the winner)

        KF6GQ.........14:06 ......110.0



        They musta wandered around a bit.



        Deryl has a lot of good pix, I hope 

        he posts some of them..



        Jippy

A few words from Don to Jippy


Bob, Thanks for hiding this past sat. It's too bad that just team (N6AIN N6EKS) and myself came out on the hunt. It was their lost. At the start when I got the bearing, I had this feeling that I've been there before, oh! no! , not Cucamonga Peak. Well when I got to the area just south of the peak, The bearing was coming from the same area, but I knew that even you wouldn't drive back up that "road" again and place the "T" there. So I investigated all! the possible likley and not so likely places at the base of the mountains. At some locations the signal was so strong that I need 30-40 db of attenuation to get a half scale reading, so I knew that it wasn't a bounce. After spending a goog portion of the morning and a hour in the afternoon, I came to the conclustion that you wern't anywhere. Oh by the way I even got out and hiked for about 1 mile, because my car couldn't progress any farther up this great road that I found (see you there on an upcoming hide of mine). So I extracted myself from the location and decided that it wasn't dark yet so I went over to the desert side of the mountains. On the way out I got some great signals up Lytle Creek, but I knew that was just some bounces. I went all the way to Summit Inn and took a bearing. I had expected it to be out into the desert, no! it was 220 degrees, back to Joe Elliot Tree farm. I think I'm going home. On the way back down hwy 15 too many of the bearings were into the Lytle Creek area for me to pass up. I knew that all I would find there was bounces, but I have come so far to not try anyway. I went all the way up to the end of the road, with the signal getting weaker and weaker, turned around and started back, when to my suprise I got a very strong signal coming from the north side of the canyon, hmmmm. This is interesting. I was pulled over and a family stopped to see what I was doing, and I got several moments to contemplate what was happening. After sever more wrong roads, I found the almost invisible entrance to the wright road. My story doesn't stop here though. Now I know I am on the road to the "T", so I am feeling good again, but kicking myself for all the wrong places that I had been looking. I come around this corner and get a 100 db signal and continue down and around the next turn and the signal is still ahead of me, the next time it comes on it's in back of me, so I stop and park the car, get out the sniffer stuff. I then start walking back along the road, looking down this vertical cliff, and thinking to myself, I'm going to need some mountaineering equipment for this hunt. If you haven't guessed yet, I was on the other side of the canyon from where the "T" was. I was thinking of leaving a note to you, to the effect that I was not a mountain goat, how did you expect me to find a "T" that I was going to have to climb down to? Just then I looked across the canyon and what to my beholding eyes to I see but the shining elements of a 15 element beam pointing right at me! The rest is history. A great hide! Thanks.
Don KF6GQ