K9 SAR training with Eagle Valley Search Dogs

January 10th counts as a winter day in my book. With a predicted winter storm coming from the west, I expected some wind at least at ground level. Nada, zip, nothing. Yes the winter storm came from the west and it snowed, enough to make driving next to impossible in the late afternoon/evening but at ground level, not even a flake was drifting, showing no significant air movement at ground level! Makes things kind of hard for the dogs to work as the scent cones do not develop much.

I gave my Kahtoola Microspikes a workout in the am and they worked like a charm. I did not slip once for lack of traction. Some teammates complained that they can ide up, so next time I'll use some show sheen on them and see if that helps. The snow we were on was on top of a layer of ice and snowshoes maybe would have prevented breaking through that ice, as it happened

In the pm, I used my snow shoes, but this time, the snow was not that deep, no ice under it and too many logs to block my way. I would have been better off with the Kahtoola Microspikes. Go figure!

My Oregon 400i GPS also caused some havoc as suddenly I could not see my topo map on the screen. For whatever reason, when I switched it perhaps back to the K9 SAR profile, it worked fine thereafter. There is also a possibility that I inadvertently switched the scale of the map, difficult to say, as the cold can cause butterfigeritis. Anyhow, I was happy to be able to solve the problem on the fly.

As for Stryder, he did ok. The hide Kyle had chosen was a bear, well almost a bear's den. The subject got inside that natural ledge so deep he could not be seen from outside. I got there by sheer luck as my search plan got shredded from the beginning, as the area I was given and the area I had on my GPS were not matching at all! So after I took Kyle's GPS and started working it and trusting it (that took me about 10 good minutes as I had to clear the mental picture I had built in my head and replace it with what that GPS was telling me). I got to the corner of my area and decided to do a pass in the middle of my area, mostly following contour lines. That's where I got close to the cache. I then saw the footprints. Stryder did not alert yet, he even poked his nose in the cache but did not indicate yet. He worked the scent, got on top of the rocks where scent was probably escaping up. Stryder now had his natural alert, came back towards me got under the ledge and did his refind, bumping my right hand.

Had I not seen the tracks, I am not sure Stryder would have gotten his subject, as we passed close to him a little higher and he did not show any scent acquisition, yet the scent was going up from the mini-cave at least at first. Would he have gotten scent farther below, where un-energized scent tends to go? How far would the scent have gone? These questions will remain unanswered.

Sonar SAR K9, like a cruise missile, fast and accurate

Sonar is working a scent source located towards the close end of the gutter. This is the way she indicated on sources that were up, beyond her reach.

Here is Sonar in an actual search, checking the shore of the Grasse River near Canton NY. Sonar was a superb search dog and cadaver dog. Unfortunately she blew an ACL in training in Montana, and despite surgery, she never recovered completely so I had to retire her. She is now enjoying the couch at home.

Radar, SAR K9 extraordinaire

This is Radar, sporting his New York State Senate Liberty Award he earned for his work in 9-11 at the recovery detail in Fresh Kills, Staten Island, NY.

Radar was raised and certified in the US, then both Radar and Chip went with me to Israel for a year and a half as I was taking care of my ailing mother. We also participated in a few searches in Israel, one particularly memorable as it was in the Judean Desert, near the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. That search did not have a good outcome as the victim was found deceased, about 10 miles out of that area.

We, Chip Radar and I, then returned to the US and were asked to participate in the mission to Australia with the 1st Special Response Group (1SRG).







That search in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia sure made headlines, especially when the subject was found after having spent forty days in the unforgiving desert! Other than 3 very skilled K9s, 1SRG also had, IMO the best visual mantracker there is in SAR, Joel Hardin. All these special skills in addition to the team's resourcefulness contributed greatly in the desired result.












This is a picture that not very many cas take. We were searching for a suicide victim in the gorge of the Genesee River in Letchworth State Park NY. We were give special permisssion to search the upper part of the river, where no visitors are allowed and had to cross the river not far from the falls in the background, to check a ledge with caves where the body could have been lodged in high waters. I worked both Chip and Radar, together, as I had trained them to work like that. They did well even in the canoe that transported us from place to place. The water was so shallow that we did not have to search it, just get the canoe through. But we stopped and searched areas that had been under water during the winter and early spring.









This picture was taken during Radar's water search certification. Radar was always meticulous in his alerts, precise till he jumped in, only in calm waters though, and the scent sourde was always there, where he indicated!






This was Radar's largest water search, off City Island, NY. There were four victims and despite two dogs giving trained indications the divers never found the bodies on the silty bottom. All four bodies were recovered later on as they re-floated. This search was a first as we used new technologies, search patterns planned on a laptop computer and transfered to GPS, then implemented. Alerts and trained indications were saved as waypoints then later analysed, on location, to see where the next effort should go.

Chip my first SAR dog

This is Chip or formally known as Can OTCh. Amir's Tollhouse Morsel Am. UDT, Search and Rescue K9, Super UD Award winner and many other titles.

Chip is the dog that started it all, who taught me so much and who had direct and indirect influence on my other SAR dogs, Radar, Sonar and Stryder.

Chip has always loved the water and water searching has perhaps been his favorite specialty. Chip here shows how accurate his nose was and how readable his alert had become over time.

Worked All States (WAS)

Working a two-way contact with each one of the fifty states of the Union was a goal I set to myself after I upgraded to General. Contacts seemed to be easy to make at first. Then came the realization that having made the contact is just part of the job and it needed to be followed up by a QSL card. Envelopes, stamps, return address stickers, address sticker in addition to filling the QSL card (I still prefer filling them manually to putting a sticker on them too), all that amounts to a lot of work that took me away from the radio itself. Then I discovered ARRL's Logbook of the World, LoTW. After sending in my full log, I was nicely suprized with quite a lot of confirmed QSLs. Then Stephen Genusa came up with Ham Radio Deluxe Utilities and that practically automated the process with my logging program, Simon Brown's Ham Radio Deluxe. Now I just had to make contacts and hope they will log it on LoTW. There were a few states that eluded me for some time, Alaska, till I got my new antenna, the Cushcraft MA5B. Then came some western states such as Nevada and the mid-west as in North and South Dakota. For whatever reason, the entire north east was never heard till the day of a contest where I got all these missing states, including Delaware and Rhode Island in one weekend! Now I knew I had contacts with all fifty states and just needed to wait for the confirmations. The mailcarrier brought some, LoTW brought most. I ended up with 33 LoTW contacts and 17 QSL cards. The last card, the one from Rhode Island, came in just a few days before Christmas. I was ready, applied for the LoTW part on line, made the payment, printed the forms, and mailed them and my cards the very same day. The ARRL Awards Desk was wonderful and I got my WAS certificate before the year was over! Talk about fast turnaround!

So here it is, now proudly hanging on my wall. And now it is turn to get serious on the DXCC, my first 100 contacts with distant entities.

From inverted V to plain ole W

Last winter, we had an ice storm and trees were covered with a nice layer of ice, well nice to the eye, but not to the tree, power lines etc. Fortunately the damage was minimal as we were lucky enough not to get too thick a layer. I use a Cobra Ultra-Lite antenna for HF and I took a few pictures of the change that occurred with the ice.

What normally is an inverted V shape, was now a plain ole W shape. Having never read about a W shaped antenna, I did not bother checking SWR nor attempted to operate with it in that shape. The counter weights I use to dampen the sway of my supporting trees did its job and the antenna survived the ordeal without problems and is still in use a year later. The picture shows only one leg of the W though. The antenna is 140 feet long, at about 35-40 feet high. It works fine in all bands, with a tuner of course. The internal tuner of my Icom 756ProIII does the job. Difficult to rotate though! It is currently used for 30-160 meters as my Cushcraft MA5B beam is doing a better job on 10-20 meters.