back to epic tales of hidden transmitters

4414:


This was, without a doubt, the most epic hidden transmitter hide we ever played. And I'm not just saying that
because I'm the one that hid it, it was just THAT GOOD, and EVERYONE had a great time with it.

Having done many hunts and hides, I knew there was one angle that hadn't been exploited yet - range. Almost
every hide so far had placed the antenna low to the ground, and often at a weird angle or laying down, so the
range was usually terrible. You had to tell players where they could go to get a signal good enough to start
their hunt. So I kept my eyes open for an opportunity.

So where do you put an antenna so it gets out well? With other antennas of course. So there's this
hill on the south-east end of Waterloo with a big radio tower on it. There was nothing else there though,
just a subtle dirt road that branched off the highway and went up the back of the hill to the shack by the
tower. So one weekend we take the gear up the road to see if we can find a place to hide the transmitter.

Now there's NOTHING there when we get to the top - just the shack and the tower. But there's ONE more thing
that you have to have beside a road. You need POWER. So there's this row of telephone poles heading North
along the hill, away from the shack. We lug the heavy battery and other stuff out to the second pole, and it
looks okay, but there's more poles. So we keep going to the next and the next, until we get to the crest of
the hill, where the terrain suddenly drops, and for the first time we see the giant new interchange for the
highway. It seems so close, but we're actually pretty far from it, but from here we can see basically the
entire city. The view is great, but then it hits me.... we're practically on top of the world here, the range
will be phenomenal! So we just drop the battery and transmitter right there at the base of this last pole,
and I use duct tape to attach the 102-inch whip to the pole. I even give it a bit of a spacer to help stop
the pole from de-tuning the antenna. Now these poles are all marked for identification, and this particular
pole is numbered "4414".

We turned it on and left. I didn't pay much attention to it after making sure it was running when we got back
to the truck, but when I got home I realized I could still hear it from in my driveway. I went inside
and it was giving me like S-8 on my base, unbelievable! So I changed to our regular channel and let some
others know the transmitter was hidden. They wanted to know where they had to go to pick up the signal.
"Oh don't worry about that, you'll hear it!" And hear it they did. We had people not normally involved in
the hunt comment on how they could hear it from their house. "It must be close to me". No, not really!

So several groups went out looking for it. They were having difficulty because unlike regular hunts the signal
was so strong that it wasn't changing much even if they drove for blocks. Craig was driving around Crossroads
in his hatchback, with his two kids, (both of which were avid CB'ers) determined to find it. IIRC it was Trencher
that was with me hiding the transmitter, and we had agreed that ANY time we discussed the hide we would find a
way to slip in "4414" into the conversation, as often as possible. It didn't take long for them to realize it
was related to the hide, but nobody could make heads or tails of just what sort of a clue "4414" was. it was
driving them crazy.

I have no way of knowing just how many people were out looking for it, but I know of at least a dozen, so it
was definitely the most popular hide of all. People that normally wouldn't play decided to join in because
they could all hear it playing "CHANNEL 2 HIDDEN TRANSMITTER KEYING DOWN" from their homes
or cars.

The strongest signal that Craig could find was in the MIDDLE of an off-ramp on the highway. So he literally
stopped there and unloaded the kids to get out on foot to try to find it. (he didn't have any hand-held gear
to sniff with) I heard that and was tickled that he was out on foot looking for a transmitter that was a good
eighth of a mile away. He had stopped his car directly under a power line, the line that was headed
over to and up the hill and the pole that the transmitter was hidden at, so I'm sure that line was getting lit
up very nicely and carrying a strong signal to him. Too bad his kids were on the wrong side of an 18 foot tall
chain link fence that surrounds the interchange. I hear Fester and AA did a very thorough job of searching
the bushes there though!

After about four days of transmitting, it still hadn't been found. The voice-ID had started "speaking in
tongues", meaning the battery voltage was geting pretty low. So I went out and took the battery away for a few
hours to recharge it, and put it back. It continued for another three days until I got on the radio and Craig
started a conversation with me, peppering it with "4414". (he'd finally found it)




last updated 11/15/2023 at 10:59:02