Who, What, When, Where, Why...
I headed to Mojave for the All Day T Hunt. South of Mojave I hid T4 down Silver Queen Rd on a rise just south of the
BNSF track. One reason for this site was that you can’t get to it directly as from the 14 freeway Silver Queen Rd does
cross the UP railroad track. Another was that you also couldn’t drive directly to it from any of the other Ts.
Next up was T10 which was in Mojave on the opposite side of the railroad yard from McDonalds. T10 was 50mW in a
tree.
Now for the main T. Still had plenty of time. I went west on Oak Creek Rd only to find that since the last time I was here
the area is now full of windmills and no longer accessible. Plan B. I returned to Mojave and proceeded north toward a side
where I was going to hide a small T. As I climbed the hill I came across several places where the road was no longer in
good condition (lots of deep ruts). Plan C. I headed toward another area to the west. On the way down the road, I saw that
it was coming up on 10 AM. Plan D – hide here. I found a road going west and hid on it. I set up the beam and connected
it to the transmitter. Hmmmm. The IDer was not functioning. The xmtr worked fine but no ID. I retrieved the usual T1 and
its 40W amp – my go-to boxes. The output was only 22W. I contacted the starting point. They could not hear it. Odd since
this location had a great view south. I double checked the beam heading and found it was way off. I re-aimed it and now
KG6GQ/LAJ could hear it. I tried boosting the amp output by trying another T box but it was also 22W. Since GQ could
hear it (I could hear it fine through his phone) I went about hiding the remaining Ts.
I hid T3 on a small hill down Rosewood at Dominion. This is near the 58 and 14. It was running .5 W into a whip.
T2 was hidden on the old Southern Pacific railroad grade where it intersects the new grade. This road was off Myer Rd.
As I returned to Mojave I realized T2 couldn’t be heard. I back tracked to T2 and changed its antenna to a hex beam. This
seemed to fix the issue.
I also couldn’t hear T4 even though it had a great view toward Mojave. I returned and changed out T4 for T8 which was
higher power. This resulted in T8 being heard everywhere.
While driving around I found that T3 was also hard to hear. I drove back to T3, moved it farther up the hill and changed the
antenna to a gain whip.
The GQ/LAJ team arrived first and found 3 Ts before departing for home. They passed the RXX/VCR team just south of
Mojave on their way up.
T8 was supposed to be a problem to get to from the north as the BNSF track prevented it. That didn’t stop the HPW/PL
team. They simply hiked the half mile from the road north of the track to get to it.
Results:
T2 T8 T1 T3 T10
RXX/VCR 4:33 6:12 7:39 8:36 10:06
Winner 108 128 141 147 158
T8 T2 T10 T1 T3
HPW/PL 3:22 4:53 5:37 6:51 8:37
126 135 138 149 178
T2 T10 T1
GQ/LAJ 2:18 2:55 3:30
117 121 132
Once home, I checked out my original main transmitter. The IDer worked just fine. With a little tuning a was able to get T1
+ amp up to 40W.
