Then on April 21 it rained again but cleared up for the hide.

Joe buried the coax in the grass along the curb and in to the trunk of Mike’s Chrysler. We had to drill a small hole in the car, but all hams like to drill holes in cars. We wanted to use all the power we could without breaking anything. We used Mike’s battery and Joe’s mobile and Tom’s 150 watt linear. We put the j-pole in the ground and covered it with PVC. We then taped on half of the garage sale sign. Joe put on the other half and Mike added the flag to justify the tall PVC pole. We were ready. We were hoping that most hunters would have problems attenuating that much power and that beam readings would be hard to understand.

Joe parked his truck at one end of the hide street and I put my car near the other end. This decoy was wasted as no one saw them.

Tom took Joe and me up to the start point where we arranged to get a ride with two of the hunters. Unfortunately two teams were all there were. Thomas with Johanna, and Ron (KK6I) with Gary and Rebecca. At six, Mike turned on the PicCon and we were off. I was riding with Ron, Gary and Rebecca who was running the beam and attenuator. Rebecca said, “my it’s strong!” At first all went well, North, East, now north again. Then as we went up Carlton Hills Boulevard the clarity of direction became somewhat uncertain. It was everywhere. Rebecca then tuned the receiver off frequency and still had a bit of a go picking a direction. Now north, no back that way! It’s all around. We followed a route a bit like a dog looking for a sleeping place.

After that commentary, I don’t think they will let me ride with them any time soon.

South, East, North, we stopped maybe 75 yards north of the hide and took four bearings. We were very near. Moving around to the south and what do we see? Thomas and team. Ok, sniffing time. Even Sniffing was not all that easy. It was sort of all around. Look, what’s this? Green coax? Gary "lets look in here. “ Ah ha, there it is!"