4x4 Adventures
Monache Video Tour
by Greg Martin KK6PRV

4x4 Adventures
Access Tour – Monache Meadows
Google Earth Overview of Area

A quick video overview of Monache Meadows, California starting from Hwy 195 (east side of Sierra Nevada Mountain Range.

Join Land Ops for “Return to Monache Meadows” June 8^th and 9^th, 2018.

4x4 Adventure
Monache Meadows
Wet Your Appetite

The next Land Ops event is scheduled for Saturday June 9th in Monache Meadows, California. We'll be posting updates here on this blog as the event gets closer. 

If you haven't been to Monache Meadows here's a video from an earlier scouting op. 

It had been raining on this scouting op so the river crossings were slightly higher.

Join us for "Return to Monache Meadows" 
http://landops.wildapricot.org/admin/website/system-pages/?pageId=18008

Communications
MESH Networking Class
conducted by Russ Chung KI6MLU at Anaheim RACES

Tonight I attended the Anaheim RACES (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service) where Land Ops member Russ Chung KI6MLU gave a MESH network presentation and demonstration.

Photo from Quartzfest presentation (below): Left Chris Doering KI6QBM and Right Russ Chung KI6MLU.

Tonight's presentation was held during the Anaheim RACES local meeting at the EOC (Emergency Operations Center) in Anaheim, California.

Russ delivered an excellent presentation introducing the basic communication principles of MESH networking as well as details of its practical use during the last B2V (Baker to Vegas) law enforcement relay race.

It was a highly informative session and several attendees have expressed their interest in setting up their own MESH nodes as well as attending upcoming Land Ops.

A great thank you goes to Russ Chung for taking the time and effort to prepare such a thorough overview and demo.  

4x4 Adventures
JEEP WAVE
from Scott Tokar, N6ZHV

Land Ops is giving you a blog-wave back.
Thank you Scott for leading Alpha Team on this last op!

4x4 Adventures
We had an awesome desert nav-comm level 2 op.

From nearby ridgelines to flat dry lake crossings the Cuddeback op this year had some exciting and beautiful drives.

Below: Jim Biram K6JKB in his Land Rover crossing the drylake at high speed. Picture was taken from a perch along the lower ridge of Fremont Peaks mountains. Look for the tiny Rover near the bottom of the pic.

Picture above and below gives some perspective as to the scale of this area.

Photo above was taken from the upper third of the lake looking north.

Below: Great times with Land Ops members - the night quite pleasant with little to no wind.

Perfect weather. 

Report from Cuddeback May 5th Op
Ridgeline Base Camp & Special HF Demo

Instead of staying down on the desert floor we decided to get above it all. This year at Cuddeback we had perfect, I say again, perfect weather for camping up on the ridge south of Fremont Peak and East of Cuddeback dry lake.

We all found our space higher up overlooking the three dry lakes surrounding our camp.

The op attendance was perfectly sized as well. One net control station and about 10 vehicles total on the op. Afterwards we got a demonstration by Peter (new member) KA6U who was using WSJT FT8 digital mode (HF) contacting Indonesia, Russia, Japan and South America.

Peter was using an end fed 40 meter dipole about 20 feet over our heads. We also listened as he made CW contacts at about 30 words per minute.

Off The Books – HF Project (quick report)

Last Saturday April 21, a few Land Ops HF operators got together for a half day to focus on setting up mobile HF base stations.

Attending at El Dorado Park, Long Beach

Tim and Bonnie Sperry AG6RS
Thank you Bonnie for the surprise lunch

Greg Lund & Candy Kawahara K6GHL & KC6ROX

Michael Rozenstraten KJ6KNH

Chris Doering KI6QBM

We were able to make contact with Rick Bean W8KO on 80 meters so we were definitely pushing NVIS. He was based in Temecula at his home station.

Emmanuel Tsompanas KC6RUF was alerted to our exercise in northern California, but our coordination with him was less than perfect so we didn’t actually get to make contact.

All in all it turned out to be a great morning and afternoon working with wire antennas and our new radios as well as spending time with Land Ops friends.

Good news for those who donated to the Kickstarter campaign for our upcoming documentary "Mysteries of Lucky Nugget"...the t-shirts have arrived.

They will soon be distributed to those who participated in the fundraising project at that reward level.

Here's the trailer if you missed it

May 2018 Issue of QST
Land Ops ARC is in QST this month!

Thanks to member Jim Biram K6JKB for a nice trip report sent to QST magazine.

QST Article name is: Land Ops - Off Road and On the Air
This was a nice write up (trip report) on our Monache Meadows, California trip last year.

We did a little mesh networking with our own version of a talking stick.
We've gotten better getting everything functional. We had a fully functioning network with VOIP phones during this years Quartzfest. Thanks to Russ Chung KI6MLU.

Here's a little fun video of this particular trip (QST article) to Monache Meadows with some of our challenges with mesh network last year.