I hid the fox on Horseshoe Bent at Coalmine
View (2.13 million dollar homes) in the City of Portola Valley.
N 37* 22.166' ... W 122* 12.289' ... 726' elevation.
The three watt transmitter, fed a 4-element yagi with an ERP of 30 watts
and pointed 320* true, towards San Francisco. I started the hunt at 6:00
PM and ended it at 9:30 PM (3-1/2 hours).
My intention was to beam the signal towards Scarpet
Peak about 1800' up and fool the hunters on the East Bay towards San
Francisco. I didn't expect the two hunters very close to me though,
Andy-KR6DD at Canada College and John-KJ9U on Marsh Rd.
From what I was told, my plan did not work. Almost
everyone knew I was somewhere near Redwood City. Although I did hear
most of the hunters received some weak reflections from San Francisco.
Phase-II of my plan did work however. I was situated
between some mountains and as the hunters got close to me, they receive
multiple reflections and even lost my signal altogether.
Some hunters did not find me, mostly due to the
distance they had to travel and traffic on the freeway. I sure hope
their not mad at me.
EQUIPMENT I USED
1) Arrow 146-4-II,
Four element yagi, mounted on a camera tripod using 3/4" PVC pipe.
2) Compass.
Magnetic compass, to aim my beam along the mountains and reflect off of
San Bruno Mountain.
3) Fox Box.
Fox
Controller, Yaseu FT51R, Gel-Cel battery
and cooling fan.
4)
Standard C5900DA, Mobile tri-band radio. Listened to multiple
Talk-In frequencies, 147.045 MHz, 147.015 MHz, 446.00 MHz and the Fox
frequency 146.565 MHz. I also controlled the PicCon Fox Controller,
using 'touch-tones' on the 70cm band.
5)
Garmin StreetPilot-III. Street level mapping helped me drive to the
Fox location, since I never saw this site before and only imagined this
location by looking at maps on Delorme TOPO. It also found the closest
Round Table Pizza place for tonight's dinner.
Jim Sakane (KD6DX)
