Travis AE6GA Report on
March 29th 2003
Free For All

Hunt report:
By Travis Wood - AE6GA (Not So New Guy)

This is the second T-Hunt I have been on with the thunting.org group. Every time I go on a T-Hunt with these guys I learn more tricks. I once thought I knew much of what was needed to know about T-hunting, I now know better.

They held a Free-For-All near the Morongo Indian Reservation off of I-10 this last fifth Saturday (3/29/03). We agreed to hide some transmitters and meet at the restaurant near the big model dinosaur that can be seen form I-10 at around 8 AM. I arrived at the reservation around 7:30 AM and started to hide my transmitters. I had hid one of them and was in the process of hiding another when I noticed two official looking big white pickup trucks with something written on the side of them blocked the two exit paths I would have to take to leave the area. I kind of knew what might be going on. I still proceeded to hide my second transmitter. Just after I had hid it and was getting ready to go, a third identical white pickup truck comes up to me and blocks me from backing up my pickup truck to leave. They were obviously dealing with a criminal mastermind who was planting a bomb in the middle of an empty field and was clearly going to make some kind of anarchist's statement with his diabolical schema!

Written on the side of the truck was something like: "Morongo Indian Reservation Sheriff". As he pulled up, I handed him a little handout I give everyone who wonders what I might be doing. On the handout, it explains what a transmitter hunt is and what I am doing. I usually keep about 4 or 5 with me and I ran out of them this hunt by giving them away to many curious people. He read my little handout and bellowed back at me: "This was not coordinated with the Indian Reservation Council! Was it !?!" I said: "I don't know - I did not think it was necessary. It's just an informal group of people that get together and do this as a hobby. Is there a phone number I could call to talk to someone who might be able to give permission?" His hot response was something like: "This is totally unacceptable! I am going to have to ask you and your friends to leave immediately! We have no idea what this is or anything about it! The Indian Council is at a funeral anyway so there is no way you could reach them today!" I told him that there probably was already some transmitters hidden near by on Indian Reservation Land (like my #1 T) put there by people who did not know any better. He was getting more and more agitated even though I was trying to be as civil as possible to the guy. He said: "Well, then we WILL find them all, and ask them to leave as well!" With that, he drives away in a huff. The other two trucks blocking my path out, one drove away while the other came up to me to see what I was doing. Turns out, this was one of his deputies and he was also getting his Ham license and was interested in what I was doing and knew a little about T-hunting. He said: "My boss is a little bit of a - stickler - (read dick head) about these kinds of things. If I had seen you first and found out what you were doing, I would have just ignored you." This deputy was pretty cool about things and he told me where the Indian Reservation started and ended. So I picked up my second T and drove back to where I hid my first T and drove to where the deputy told me the Indian Reservation ended and hid the two T's at that location.

Unfortunately, the only road to access these two T's was from the Indian Reservation. Other hunters told me that the black guy in his pickup truck was playing games and blocking entrances to the road where I hid my T's during the hunt on the Indian Reservation Side. No one found these two T's even though they were heard during the entire hunt. Four teams found find my third T (calling itself 2 of 3) at the dead end of the freeway access road.

I finally got to the restaurant at about 9 AM. I would have been there by 8 if not for the fooling around with the Indian Reservation Sheriff and having to find and re-hide my Ts. I told the other T-hunters at the restaurant about my encounters and they chuckled and told me that most of the Ts they hid were outside of the reservation anyway.

On the way to the hunt from my home in Lancaster, I encountered a super strong wind while approaching the hunt location. It blew off my new round magnet sticker on the driver side of my pickup truck. I pulled over to try and find it, but after much searching, I could not find it. I need to know where to purchase a replacement magnet. I was warned about this happening, but the wind just picked up so quickly that I did not have time to pull over and take them off my truck. I took the other one off the passenger side of the truck and put it on after the hunt started and took it off before driving back home.

We all agreed to met back at around 5:30 PM for the end of the hunt. I got breakfast at the Burger King next door instead of the restaurant because it was faster. I started to hunt around 10:30 AM.

Just before bagging my first T that was under the freeway in a little water overpass area, a Highway Patrol guy pulled up next to me. By this time I had run out of those little handouts I give people that are curious and had to explain what I was doing. He was very interested in what I was doing and showed me that he had installed in his patrol car a LOJACK system. I told him that it was a Doppler system and that some of the other hunters have that same system in their vehicles. He told me that earlier he had seen some of the other hunters out and about, but when he started to approach them, they took off under a railroad bridge. He thought they might have been scared of him. He was a really nice guy and he said that he was just curious and that he gets that reaction from everyone. He then told me of some stories of how he was able to use his LOJACK system and catch car thieves as they were gambling at the Morongo Casino and in the middle of chopping down cars on their property and such. He thanked me for telling him what was going on and left. I proceeded to where he had told me he saw the one teams that took off and found JPIs group of Ts.

I met other hunters near these Ts and we talked a bit to each other. We were all leery of the mushy sand beds nearby and how easy it would be to get a vehicle stuck. We all found most of the Ts in this area by just getting out of our vehicles and hiking around on foot. After this set of Ts, I went up to the hills on the North. I found one T in a clump of rocks and could not hear any other Ts at that location. After talking to other hunters after the hunt, there were allegedly more at this location. It was approaching 5:30 and decided to go back towards the restaurant to the West. I found my last T just past the railroad tracks gong towards the restaurant. I did not go West of the restaurant and found all my Ts East of the restaurant.

When I arrived at the restaurant, there was only one other hunter there. We ordered our food (I got the Prime Rib - yum!) and swapped stories of the hunt. Other hunters trickled in and were all mostly there by about 6:30 PM. We all had some great stories to tell! In retrospect, I should have gone East of the restaurant and there seemed to be more Ts to find. I think I found about 7 Ts in all. Others found 11, and 20 - wow! I wonder if they were lying to me?

After eating at the restaurant, I boogied over to my first two Ts I had hidden just off of Indian Reservation land and found that number one was still working OK and number three had run out of power and gone off the air. I had stored the locations of these two Ts in the GPS memory of my laptop program. As luck would have it, during the hunt I cleared all the info on the "drawing layer" of my map program and erased the coordinates of these two hidden Ts. Number one was easy to find as I just hunted it down with my equipment. Number three was much harder to locate as it was in a featureless bush next to the road. There are many featureless bushes in the dark as you go up and down that dirt road near the foothills of those mountains. I hunted amidst some open range cattle that watched me with little interest - their eyes glowing in the dark as I passed my search light beam across the road looking for my number three T. I could reactivate it for about 2 seconds about every 3 minutes with my touch-tone pad. I used this brief info to tell if I was past or before it on the dirt road. I finally shined my searchlight into a bush and could barely make out the outline of the ammo box I stored it in and finally retrieved it. Good thing as I was about to abandon it and come back some other day in the light to get it.

I heard on the air the other hunters picking up their Ts and one of them commented: "I hear someone with a touch tone controlling their T". He also said something like: "I hope I did not offend Travis with my log entry on his T that said: 'Shut Up Travis'". I chuckled because I saw that entry and knew that people would get tired of my talking Ts during the hunt - I have had many others say the same thing that my voice gets annoying over time with hunts in the Antelope Valley area where I come from.

While I went over the Indian Reservation land to pick up my T's I noticed Mr. White Pickup Truck Sheriff follow me to the entrance of the Federal Land area that I had hidden my T at. He did not cross the line into the federal land area, but waited for me on the road to come back down the mountain past him. He turned off his headlights while he waited for me to come back down the mountain road. I can imagine that he wanted to fume at me some more. Since I could not located my last T for such a long time, he left the road and would come back about 20 minutes later and still wait for me. Golly, I must have been his total excitement for the day. What a pathetic existence! Anyway, it took me about 2 hours to finally find my last T. As luck would have it, this time was one of his mini breaks he went on. I took down my big antenna and lay it flat in the back of my pickup truck so as not to be as noticeable. I saw him turn towards the casino and turned off my headlights and took off to the freeway entrance. I arrived at the entrance and stopped by a nearby gas station. As I was filling up with gas, I noticed him go back up the road and park at the same spot and turn off his headlights again. After filling up, I exited the gas station farthest from the road and entered the freeway farther down the access road so that he could not see me leaving the area. I wonder how long he sat there and waited for me?

Just as I got on the I-10 freeway, JPI was in the far left lane going home at the same exact time. What are the odds! I heard him talking to someone else and joined the conversation. I talked to JPI about other hunts he had been on all the way to the I-215 turnoff for Lancaster. This was probably the most fun hunt I have even been on! Thanks guys for putting it on!


Travis T #1 of 3: "Behind Casino near Mountain" (working)

No one found


Travis T #3 of 3: "Behind Casino near Mountain" (working for hunt, but found dead) No one found

Travis T #2 of 3: "At dead end of access road" (working) WB6JPI 11:05 AM "Pow Wow" KD6LAJ/GQ 11:15 AM "Barely Heard" N6AIN 4:28 PM N6IDE/KF6GWV 4:29 PM "Shut up Travis"