Hunt Results

Summary:

It really was a cold and windy day for last Saturday's T-Hunt as the main T (T-0) was located in the parking lot of the Acorn Casino about 4,000 foot elevation. Greg and I met at 0730 at the location where we had planned on putting T-11 and got it going. We split up the remaining 11 T's and began setting them out. Two in the Pine Valley area, 4 in the Buckman Springs area, 2 in the vicinity of Old Hwy. 80 and La Posta Rd., 1 on Kitchen Creek Rd. and 2 at Acorn. When we called in for a signal check it was reported that they could hear the transmitter...... strange because we had not activated the main T, T-0 yet. It must have been T-11 which was a 5 watt T on a Log Periodic antenna in the area of the Descanso turnoff and I-8. We placed that one there to make sure that the hunters would have a signal when heading east. We had tested a week before and knew that we could get a weak signal back to Montgomery Field using 5 watts but thought they would lose the signal when approaching the foothills east of El Cajon. All other T's except # 9 were micro foxes or squawk boxes. So the hunt starts a little after 10 because I could not find the T-0 Pic Con. It was reported as a "Weak Signal"..... Perfect! Now all we do is sit around and wait for the hunters to show up sometime early afternoon? Greg decided to go back to Mt. Empire School site to relocate T-6 as he thought it was not propagating very well where he had originally located it. He returned and verified that he could hear the other T's as he returned. But Wait....the APRS tracks were very sporadic...had to make a few calls to see if the hunters were still beaconing? That problem continued throughout the day as you can see from the screen shots taken during the hunt, lousy phone coverage. A couple of calls later we determined that no one had heard T-11 after about 1100, a real mystery??? We had planned to terminate the hunt at 1600 and head somewhere for dinner, maybe the Casino? The first team to arrive at 1500 and locate T-1 & T-0 was Bill, W6ZM, his son Bryan, KI6DUR and Grandson Noah. They located 11 of 12 possible transmitters making them the "Winners" and are now on the hook for the next County-Wide T-Hunt on Saturday, May 31st. which is two weeks after our annual On-Foot T-Hunt on May 17th. at Robb Field in Ocean Beach. The next hunter to arrive was Tom, K6VCR at 1520 with a mileage of 94.8, locating 9 of 12 possible T's and in third place. At 1535 Greg, KI6RXX and David, KM6ZKI arrived, locating 10 of 12 possible T's and being in second place. Two other teams, Joe, KE6PHB and Jerry W6VLF (5 T's), and Tim, AJ6XP and his navigator Tim (1T) were still out far enough that they could not make it by the 1600 cutoff time so we decided to head back to Bongiovanni's on Old Hwy. 80 for dinner. So it was an interesting hunt where some found all and all found some. When we picked upT-11 it had stopped transmitting and no one had signed in. We thought maybe it was a bad battery but it ran fine for 3 hours the next day, maybe the sun was hitting the box and it overheated and shut down or...possibly a stray DTMF tone shut it off somehow? Sorry Guys, still a mystery??? So there were 11 out of the 12 T's that we started with that were found during the hunt.... Great Job Hunters! Joe, N6SZO & Greg W6BAF