Two weeks ago a ham friend got his military Chevy Blazer stuck going to his ham radio site in the Tehachapi mountains. He was going up because the site had lost power, he made it within 200 yard but due to white out conditioned he remained in his vehicle and did not hike to the site. He was rescued by Kern County SAR after being stuck for 9 hours.
Saturday we volunteered to take him back up to the site to fix the power problem and hopefully dig his vehicle out. The road wasn't bad on the snomo's, snow coverage was anywhere from 3ft deep down to dirt.
This site had some of the best workmanship I've seen. The container sat in his driveway while they modified the container and installed the equipment. It was then trucked to the mountain top on a flatbed.
The site is solar powered.
This is the owners son and my snomo buddy Mark. Yes, thats a couch and carpeting. Not shown is the TV, Microwave oven, and bar b que.
Mark, Dan, and Cam the site owner wa6vvc
When we arrived the site was completely down no power.. This is Cam's first look at what the hec is going on. Turns out the charge controller was pooched so we bypassed the charge controller, then disabled the transmitters so they would not be keyed while the batteries recharged. He'll turn the transmitters on remotely once the batteries are juiced.
The "bench".
power distribution panel. Notice the low voltage. The hole is where the faulty charge controller was mounted.
There is no commercial transmitters at this site. It's 100% hobby.
I wish I had video of the ride back. We dug out the blazer then followed the vehicle back down the hill. I've never seen anyone drive so hard, for so long without driving off a cliff or into a ditch. This guy should have been an off road racer. There was half a dozen times I thought he was stuck, but each time he got the vehicle moving again.
We made it, and helped him get his vehicle back to Rosamond. Cam bought us all lunch for our help.
