WHEN: First Sunday of each month STARTS: 1:00 pm FOX FREQ: 146.565 MHZ COORDINATION: 147.645

MARCH 2008

After a couple of gray cloudy days, the sunshine was a pleasant change last Sunday, March 2, 2008. It was the first Sunday of the month and time for the SOARA T-hunt. Karl, KF6MDF, and Dale, W8RRV, had the honor of hiding the transmitter. They chose a small park in Laguna Hills. The park is at an elevation of 488 feet above sea level, and seemed to be not greatly obstructed in any direction. The hunt started, as scheduled, at 1:00 in the afternoon. About five hunters checked in at the start, including one first-time hunter. Some hunters were unable to hear the “T” at their starting location, so in a burst of uncharacteristic kindness, the hiders made a transmission from one of the car radios. This gave all of the hunters a chance to get an initial bearing. (Yes, the car transmitter was at the park!)

One hunter had some equipment failure which made it very difficult for him to hunt. He was getting close to finding the park when his time ran out — he had another commitment — and had to drop out. The first hunter to arrive at the park was Gray, WA6BJY. By 2:25 PM Gray had found the transmitter, which was not actually in the park. It was in shrubbery about 100 yards down a horse trail. Howard, KG6GI, arrived shortly after and quickly located the transmitter. His time was about ten minutes later than Gray. Both Gray and Howard had their vehicles well equipped for hunting. Gray has a rotatable antenna in the center of the roof (he doesn’t have to get out of the car to get a bearing.) and Howard had his Doppler system mounted on his car. Equipment and experience are big assets.

Brian, NJ6N, who is recovering from a foot injury came by, but he was not in shape to walk around hunting the transmitter. About two hours after the first hunter arrived at the park the other hunters arrived. Lou, KG6FCT, was the last to arrive, but he quickly found the transmitter to come in third. Tom, KI6GOA, (first time hunter) and Steve, N6XFC, (an experienced hunter) were mislead by reflections and had too many false starts once in the park. Eventually everyone found the hidden transmitter, and all agreed that it had been an interesting and fun hunt.

The park is Lost Trail Park in Laguna Hills (33N 33’ 56”, 117W 41’ 17” was the location of the “T”) — it is small and not shown on some maps. The streets in the vicinity of the park are something of a maze, and the transmitter was closer to some streets than to the park. The difficulty was that you couldn’t get to it from those streets. The intent was to make it fairly easy to get in the vicinity of the “T” and yet present enough of a challenge to make it fun.

The next SOARA hunt will be held on Sunday, April 6. Gray Bickford, WA6BJY, the winner of this hunt, will hide it. Thanks to everyone who came out on a beautiful, warm Sunday to participate in the hunt.

 

 

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A Tale of Two T-Hunts - February 2008

It had been roughly a year since the last SOARA T-Hunt, so we decided at the last board meeting that is was about time to get them started again. The first hunt was scheduled for the first Saturday in February so as not to conflict with Super bowl on the 3rd. After a quick email, web, newsletter and repeater publicity campaign, we were ready to go. One of the emails I sent out was to a list of folks who had been involved with hunting a fake mayday caller who had been operating on marine channel 16 a couple of years ago. I did not notice that the list also included Gordon West, WB6NOA. Gordo replied to the email saying that he would not be able to hunt because he was giving a class that day. However, we were welcome to hide the transmitter at his house so that his students could get a taste of what T-Hunting was all about. This seemed like a great idea at the time... more later.

In addition to the T-Hunt, Dave KG6QCI and myself held a quick class at Gilleran Park prior to the hunt. Greg N6REG, Kevin KI6LOQ, Mike KI6IRA and Chris KI6IUC joined us at the park as did Dale, W8RRV. We hid a couple of transmitters, demonstrated how to use offset attenuators, talked about the techniques that we use to find the transmitters and lent equipment to anyone who needed it.

We had to modify our hunt rules since Gordo's house in Costa Mesa is actually north of the 55 (our old boundary). The new boundary was set as a 15 mile radius from Laguna Hills Mall. In addition, I set a simple trivia question that required driving by the Mall and reading the Edwards Theater sign by the freeway. The idea of this was to remove some of the advantage people get if they happen to start the hunt close the hiding place.

We wrapped up at Gilleran at 12:00 and I headed off to Gordo's. I deliberately started by driving south as I left the park in case some of the folks who were there were watching for clues.

I had never been to Gordo's house before and I don't think the folks who produced the map for my GPS had either - it took a little finding. But once I turned on the street I knew I was in the right place. Not only does he have a couple of towers that are covered with antennas, his ham neighbor across the street has a similar amount of fire power.

It was like arriving at a ham radio convention. There are antennas and ham license plates everywhere. With less than 20 minutes to go before the start of the hunt, Gordo took me into his radio room, pointed me at a source of power, the feeder for his antennas and a radio tuned to the SOARA 2M repeater which I could use for coordination.

I took with me Brian NJ6N's transmitter, my Astron 30A switch mode PSU, a 100W Microwave Modules 2M amp and an SWR bridge. With it all hooked up, we were putting about 50 watts into the feeder. At the other end of the feeder were 2 stacked 19 element yagis that were pointing across John Wayne airport towards Santiago Peak (lots of reflections !).

I estimated the total gain of the system to be close to 20DBd giving an ERP approaching 5KW or about 5000 times more powerful than the signal we had demonstrated in the park. This combined with the  requirement that everyone visit Laguna Hills Mall made this hunt extremely challenging. As hunters left the mall and drove up the 405, they drove into the main lobe of the beams. The rapid increase in signal strength resulted in several of the hunters believing that they were on top of the transmitter in Irvine when in fact they were looking straight down the throat of a beam that was over 10 miles away.

The first hunter in the area was Karl, KF6MDF. Dave was camped out at a park about a mile west of Gordo's house and he reported that Carl was in the park taking bearings. Karl then drove off in totally the wrong direction but finally arrived at College Drive about 10 minutes later and was pronounced the winner with a time of 1hr, 17 minutes. He was followed a little later by his partner Dale, W8RRV.

Dave had brought along some drinks and snacks which he tried to hear up using the RF coming from the antennas!

We had a visit from the Newport Beach police helicopter that was beaming LIVE ATV down to the class in Gordo's back yard !

The next hunters on scene were the team lead by WA6BJY who had a little 'fire power' of his own on the roof of his car.

Our remaining hunters all gave up with several complaints that we had made this one far too hard for rookies... I have to agree and I apologize if you had a frustrating afternoon and hope that you got something positive out of it and will hunt again in the future.

In an effort to help some of our new hunters get up to speed, we are trying to organize some practice all day hunts in the Mission Viejo Area. The first one was on Saturday February 9th. The T was hidden in the upper parking lot at Mission Viejo High School. It ran from 9:00am to 5:00pm with 1 watt ERP on the usual 146.565 frequency.

The T was found by AE6H, W6BGR, WA6BJY and W8RRV.

Congratulations and thanks to everyone who came out and found it. We plan to have a similar practice run on February 23rd.

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SOARA T-Hunt December 2006

Since the December transmitter hunt fell on the same day as the SOARA holiday party, I decided to hide the transmitter close to Mission Viejo so that our hunters would have time to find the transmitter as well as get to the party. Even though the transmitter was close to where most of our hunters start, this was far from being an easy hunt.

The transmitter was located under a tree root on the side of Also Creek bed with 3 ele hidden in a tree and point NW along the creek towards the I5 freeway.

map

There were several aspects of the hunt that made it quite difficult.

• The low powered transmitter at the floor of the creek bed could only be heard from locations that were either high up or close to the transmitter location (Alicia and the I5).

• There was no direct access to the creek area from the adjacent streets (Georgia Sue and Christina). To mobile hunters on these streets, the fox would appear to be beyond a row of houses. Access was from the bike trail that runs along the creek.

• Once the hunters had found their way into the canyon, they were confused by the multiple reflections off the walls of the canyon and gulleys.

• The transmitter was only accessible by climbing down to the creek bed and walking along the slippery bank to where the transmitter was located.

The transmitter went on at 1:00. Around 1:30 there was no sign of any of  the hunters so I decided to stroll along the creek with my camera. There were a few folks on bikes, a couple of ducks and a guy in a wheel chair.

At 1:49 and heard a shout, looked up and there was Karl! He was across the creek from my location and seemed intent on crossing the creek and searching from my side. As he walked west to where the bike path crossed the creek, I walked east to another place where the bike path crossed the creek. The result was that we swapped locations and we were still looking at each other but now from the opposite side of the creek.

Karl and the guy in the wheel chair started to become suspicious of each other. Could it be hidden under the wheel chair? What was this guy with the antenna looking for? Karl explained to the gentleman what he we doing... 'yes, that's the b&^%$%d that hid it', he said, pointing at me :-)

Karl hunted around for a while, chasing reflections when, who should show up but Brian, NJ6N followed by Tom, AE6SH. The two of then were to the west of the transmitter chasing reflections by the freeway.

I continued to wander up and down the canyon trails, taking pictures of the wild life (both hams a birds).

Everyone was chasing reflections and looking at each other for clues. At one point they climbed to the top of the hill and started looking over fences into back yards. I think Brian was starting to believe that it was hidden in my camera. It was now 2:28, Karl had been searching on foot for 40 minutes when who should burst onto the scene but none other that Matt, KE6ALM!

Brian, Tom and Karl continued to search the hill-side, looking in gopher holes, in bushes, and very confused. Meanwhile, Matt was a man on a mission. He was going to the find the transmitter first, no matter what.  So after fighting his way through the undergrowth (he'll remember not to wear shorts next time), slipping down the river bank, crossing the creek and nearly tripping over the transmitter, he was the first to discover its location.

Matt's time was roughly 1 hour, 40 minutes. Brian, NJ6N came in second, Karl, KF6MDF was a close third followed by Tom, AE6SH.

 

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SOARA T-Hunt November 2006.

I hadn't planned to do this one since my partner KG6QCI was unavailable and I'd already spent way too much time playing with radios this weekend. But as the magic hour of 13:00 approached I decided that since Dale W8RRV and Karl KF6MDF were going to the effort of hiding the 'T' I should at least take a few minutes out of my busy schedule to find it :-)

I set off from my home at around 12:50 and got to my starting point at 12:59 just as Dale was announcing that the transmitter was about to be switched on. A quick switch of memory channels on my 857D to "FOX" and there it was - S8 at Capistrano Valley High School.

1.  My first bearing showed that it was horizontally polarized and roughly north west of me (this turned out to be somewhat off).

2. Get on the 5NB at Avery

3. Signal is weaker - hills to the west of me - get off at Oso to check signal the other side of hills.

4. Signal comes up in strength as I crest the ridge confirming its west of me. Look for somewhere to take a bearing. Pull into Target parking lot. Saturday shoppers ! Traffic ! Rats - wasting time. Take bearing from gas station parking lot. Bearing is towards the sun. Continue to Alicia.

5. Left on Alicia - its getting stronger.

6. Very strong at Alicia and Pacific Park, find somewhere clear to take bearing. Pull up next to some offices on Terrace View Drive. Bearing still points down Alicia.

7. Turn South on Alicia. Its very strong.

8. Could be in the regional park... find somewhere to take a bearing to check.

9. Rats - soccer game - kids - traffic - wasting time! Take bearing - its down Alicia.

10. Ridge to my west. Signal is dropping rapidly. It may not be in the park but it has to be on the other side of that ridge. Find somewhere to turn right.

11. Ridgeview looks interesting but lets try to get on the other side of it.

12. Niguel Road - (I bet Brian has already found it) - lets try up there

13. Dead end! Wasting time! Take bearing - I've passed it... back to Ridgeview.

14. So this is why they call this Ridgeview - and look - there's a park on the ridge overlooking the Regional Park. Stop, get out, walk over to the park and take a look. There's Dale talking on the radio - and there's Karl. Ask if I've found it - they come up with some story that its the other side of the canyon, they're watching it thru binoculars and that I have to find it. Back to the truck, grab my HT, yagi and attenuator. There it is, horizontal yagi just over the ridge.

37 minutes, 13.3 miles, first place.

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