Hiders Conrad Lara KG6JEI and Greg Gibbs KI6RXX set out to find a suitable hide location for the February All Day Hunt. Although we had many locations in mind, we took care to choose a location that would be friendly to the hunters with 2wd and low clearance vehicles and also one that would be weather friendly given the recent rain and snow. We chose to hide the first transmitter up on Mt. David in Beaumont given its short distance to the starting location and nice weather for the day. Also, this would be a familiar location to some of the hunters given its use about a year prior. We wanted to make it an easy hunt.
In use was a 13-element beam antenna pointing at Lake Matthews. We could have pointed it directly at the starting point, but now what fun would that be, and besides we didn’t want to immediately overload the front end of the hunters’ radios. We started out at 5 wats. Then up to 10 for a better signal and boy what a delight it was to hear a hunter claim they had a potential Catalina Island bounce. I had heard in the past that a bounce off of Catalina Island took no less than 150 wats. Hmm… Perhaps Not… LOL. To my grave disappointment, a correction in polarity from the hunter along with a gust of wind reorienting the antenna quickly ruled that out. 5 wats was chosen as the final power for (T1) and off went the hunters. Also, off went the hiders to drop the next T. T1 played the opening theme for Super Mario World and ID’d as KI6RXX T1 every 10 minutes. Every 5 minutes T1 would play the theme from Forest of Illusions, an area within Super Mario World. This stumped a few hunters who hung around T1 to make sure they were not looking for three different T’s in the same location. Next location was at the base of 234 with a micro (T37) hoping to draw the hunters up into Idyllwild with the third T (T64) located at White Water and pointed towards Idyllwild. Oops, lets head back to T1 to place the sign in sheet. ☹ Conrad bailed me out on that one. The 4th T (T46) was located on the other side of the 10 across from the T at White Water. This was meant to get the hunters around the hill so they could hear the remaining 4 T’s all placed in Desert Hot Springs. The 5th T (T01) was placed on a power box on a telephone pole at the corner of Indian and Mission Lakes Blvd. On the way up into the hills to pick our next hiding location we stopped at my Uncle’s house to say hi. He suggested that we might place a transmitter behind his house on the dirt wash road that runs behind his house. The lot next to him is vacant and provides easy access. This was (T19). The last two T’s where places along a chain link fence at a water tower just around the corner from T19 and further into the hills. Both of those T’s (T99) and (T99r) played a seagull sound with one ID’ing T99 at the end.
For Lunch the hiders headed to El Matadors. A very good Mexican restaurant in Desert Hot Springs. We both had the Queso Birria Tacos with Consume, rice and beans. Delicioso! Now off to locate some of the hunters and harass them. Thank you to those of the hunters who had their APRS on a working. This always makes hiding more fun. Also thank you to the hunters who checked out so the hiders knew it was ok to take down all the T’s.
We had a lot of fun hiding and watching the hunters hunt and we hope the hunters also had fun.
Congratulations to Tom and Bruce for coming in first place finding all the transmitters and the only team to find the micro at the base of 243 and the repeater at the water tower. They will be the hiders in July. Results and photos below.
Photos can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-Blb5iudaevE_fI9W1187ijCD6ikWRnL?usp=sharing
and will be added to the site once a 2mb limit is fixed.
