Much has already been said about the t hunt of last week. I was in the mountains again this weekend so I may not be up to speed on some of the latest details but to the best of my knowledge the sequence of events are as follows:
On Saturday 9/27/97 an unmodulated carrier was found on the output of WA6PWW (147.015). I was at my mountain house so I didn't hear of the problem until Monday 9/29/97. By Tuesday, 9/30/97, Jim Sakane (KD6DX) and I went to San Jose to try to locate the transmitter with Jim's "Micro Finder" doppler as designed and built by Rich Harrington. We were able to obtain approx. 4 real good bearings while driving with the "Micro Finder", all of which would come in handy for triangulation to find the transmitter location.
As we drove up mountains to the east of the Alum Rock/Evergreen area of San Jose, we started to loose the signal. Jim had not been home from work yet, we hadn't had dinner, it was getting late and, our patience for further hunting was decreasing. At that time we came to the conclusion that the transmitter was east of the San Jose Hills, maybe in the Livermore valley or further east. This proved to be incorrect and was verified incorrect later when Jim triangulated the maps.
Later that evening Jim, DX, plotted the bearings on his computer and found the triangulation points to be in a remote area about 500 feet up in the foothills. About the same time that Jim was plotting the bearings on his computer, Andy Korsak, VE3FZK, and Larry Scharr, KD6FFN, teamed up to hunt the transmitter and found what they believed to be the house in a gated area at the end of a side road. Since it was around 1:00 am Andy & Larry decided to go home for the night.
The next day 10/01/97 around noon Andy, FZK, couldn't resist the temptation to go looking for the signal again with his 6 element beam mounted to a tripod attached to the bed of his truck. and in typical FZK fashion he did not give up until he found the transmitter. The transmitter was not located exactly where he and Larry believed it to be the night before, but rather one hilltop to the NW from the original location.
Larry and I had planed to talk to the people at the original location about 4:00pm but Andy corrected our destination and offered to guide us to the new location. Lloyd Hartshorn ,N6DOK, and J.P., Frenchy joined the group. Lloyd had a spectrum analysis of the signal, which proved useful in determining the center of the offending signal and would have been extremely important if the individual operating the transmitter proved uncooperative.
About sundown Wednesday evening, 10/01/97, four cars and five individuals converged on a house in the middle of nowhere in the hills of east San Jose. The owner was very cooperative and took us to the closet that held the transmitters. There were two microwave repeaters, a 2.4 and 1.2 gig, and a 2 meter repeater in the closet. After some phone calling to the control operators and a lot of visiting, the 2 meter machine was turned off and the offending signal was gone. The problem, though this is only speculation is that the power supply had failed and the backup batteries were so low that it adversely affected something in the controller, possibly the frequency synthesisor.
Afterward, in the tradition of regular practice hunts, we all stopped at a little restaurant for some thing to drink and to discuss the details of the hunt.
There have been no further reports of interference on 147.015 since Wednesday evening, 10/01/97.
Any corrections or additions are welcome. 73's Chuck 10/6/97