Coast Guard response to distress call on Jewell Island, ME

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I was wondering about that. O'Toole's player is an electric engineer (and a software engineer) and he didn't seem very confident that there were any settings on a hand-held radio like that to get any useful directional data.

It's simpler than that. The antenna on that Motorola looks to be a dipole or monopole, which means that it's least sensitive along the line of the antenna. So, turn the gain down until the jammer is just a strong signal, not saturating the receiver, tilt the radio 90 degrees so the antenna is horizontal and then turn around spotting the directions in which the received noise is at a maximum and a minimum.

The jammer is in one of the minimum directions, but you'll have to triangulate to find out which one. See Enhanced Senses, p10, for Triangulation rules.

Originally Posted by Icelander

It is an option. It opens up directly into the sea, however, and during in-character discussion, Taylor claimed that the Atlantic in February would kill us before we could reach shore.

He's likely right. However, coming out of the sea onto Jewell Island, somewhere out of line-of-sight of the guard towers, gets you further from the jammer.