Transmitter Hunting in the San Francisco Bay Area
SPECIAL JAMMER HUNT
March 30, 2002

Thanks for visiting the San Francisco Bay Area T-Hunting WEB SITE.

Story by: Jim-KD6DX
Photographs by: Jim-KD6DX
Resized and edited with Thumbs-Plus 4.5 & Photo Shop 6.01
From 2560x1920 to 640x480 and highly compressed (50%).
Nikon CP5000

Last updated: Sunday, March 31, 2002

THE FOX

Paul Shinn

PARTICIPATING HUNTERS


Jim-KD6DX, Rich-KN6FW and Chris-KF6VFU

Participants

Starting out this hunt, Rich-KN6FW used his interferometer setup and read a good initial bearing of 60* to the communicator and the jammer. (The actual bearing was 58*). I used my 4-element 2-meter beam and read an initial bearing of 52*. Accuracy aside, I had a difficult time reading both transmitters. Since both transmitters had different signal strengths, I had to add or subtract attenuation from my beam and since both transmitters were intermittent and transmitting mostly at the same time, I could not dial attenuation in quick enough.

Trying to drive a path along my initial bearing, I ended up at a large building in downtown Stockton, where the communicator was located. Using my beam setup with the Scout-40 frequency counter, I pointed up the building and found the strongest signal coming from atop the roof on the back side.

Driving away from the Communicator, I zeroed in on the jammer, transmitting from his house, not to far from the communicator. That was pretty easy.

Finding the repeater was a different story, I initially had a difficult time finding a road at did not dead-end. After multiple "Not a Through Road" signs on surface streets, I decided to hit the freeway. I drove south on freeway-5 and when I thought I finished driving, I drove some-more. Eventually my Doppler started to turn right, indicating I should exit the freeway. Taking the highway-132 exit I drove down Chrisman Rd (a dead-end road), not more than 1/2 mile from the repeater.

Not wanting to ask Paul for hints, I saw a possible back way in on my GPS map and drove around further south. This turned out to be a dirt road and to further make matters worst, it didn't lead to the repeater site.

I drove around un-chartered  territory until a farmer asked if I needed help and I was able to followed him up to the repeater.

Paul hosted a really good hunt. The equipment was very elaborate and the jammer setup was extremely realistic. If Paul does another one of these hunts, you have to participate.

Equipment I Used:

1) Icom R3 (Receiver): used for both my initial bearing receiver and my U-R-Here radio.
2) Arrow 4-element (Beam): used for my initial bearing and close-in direction finder.
3) Optoelectronics Scout-40 (frequency counter): used as my close-in receiver.
4) Garmin StreetPilot-III (Maps): used to plot the shortest distance to the transmitter.
5) AHHA Microfinder-I (Doppler): used to instantly know the direction of the transmitter.
6) Standard C5900A (Mobile radio): used to scan both transmitter frequencies and talk on the talk-in channel.