Another Oceanside Hunt
Work had been hectic and my schedule was very tight. To make matters worse, Tom was unavailable to help hide. With this in mind, I decided I wanted to make the hunt easy. Oceanside was chosen as the location as I knew hat I could get a signal to the start easily and already had hide spots that I knew would work.
On Friday, I headed out to hide the micros (IE not the main transmitters). As it turned out, the homeless sole all my good hiding spots so I was only able to hide one transmitter. Saturday Morning I woke up early and hod the other 4. Then to a local high spot to setup the main. First attempt was a bounce of off San Jacinto. No Go. Then a bounce off of Catalina. OK good. Scott hears it. Then he doesn’t. Lets try San Jacinto on a different bearing this time and this time at max power. Wait Scott reports a Baldy Bounce. YES!!! Then Scott no longer hears me. It turns out weather was not in my favor. OK, direct this time. I'm heard. Oceanside hunts can be fun for many reasons, however traffic to get down here is not one of them.
An hour passes and I'm receiving threats of Anza Borrego hides from HPW due to the traffic, if I hide again I Oceanside. Then the main goes offline. I had to now run it off the truck battery. I found out later that the charger I used has an over voltage setting that I didn’t realize was set incorrectly at 10AH instead of 100AH. Oops, apparently zero’s do make a difference. After transferring the gear to the truck and its antenna, I decided that I could relocate and head to lunch. I went not far down the road to a local BBQ place. After eating lunch and leaving to return to the original place, I spotted N6MI and Jim and gave him credit for the main. He was sitting just outside the parking lot taking a bearing. While chatting with him, Paul and Seth showed up behind me, so they got credit. I then drove to Doug’s hunting location and gave him credit. He wasn’t far away.
The hunt turned out to be a lot harder than I expected and lasted well into the evening. Thanks all for coming out. Results below.
Congratulations to Doug WA6RJN winner with lowest milage.
