Blue Mountains Amateur Radio Club

BMARC Foxhunt Reports

August 2002

This hunt was a little more difficult, with
the fox being hidden by Adrian, VK2BFN. 

The hunt was well attended, and several members from the Fisher's Ghost ARC
also made the journey up to participate.  

The day started with a BBQ lunch at Lawson, followed by several short pedestrian
hunts for practise.

Andrew VK2AFL, Dave VK2JDC, Roger VK2TEA and
Ross VK2WN were the first to find the fox, hidden on top of the water tank at
Wentworth Falls.

John VK2QN checks his equipment	Andrew, Roger and Dave discussing tactics	The participants of this Foxhunt

June 2002

This was the first foxhunt conducted
for many months by the BMARC, and the turnout was excellent.  

The hunt was conducted
as a TRAINING hunt, with no points on offer. The practise was invaluable to
those that attended.

The Fox was cleverly hidden near Phil VK2FIL's QTH (Who would suspect a fox
at a ham's house?)

Surprise surprise..  First
on the scene was Adrian VK2BFN, (who claims to practise foxhunts almost weekly),
followed by Bob VK2BYF, Dan VK2DC and Dave VK2JDC.  Everyone else found
the fox and a good time was had by all.

Pre 2002 hunts

Here
is the state of the art RDF Datsun 120Y unit belonging to Mike VK2KVC, Mike
supplies the horse power and rally honed driving skills, while the high tech
RDF gear and rat cunning is the responsibility of Adrian VK2BFN. Dave VK2IH
is standing by  ready to start the hunt.

Dave
VK2DPA (far right) explaining what happened when his homebrew 3 element beam
came in contact with a low flying gum tree.

More competitors at the start of the hunt, the Commodore in the foreground is
fitted out with a home brew 2 element close spaced beam, made from wooden dowl
and 300 ohm ribbon. This equipment actually produced a first place for husband
(VK2MNU) and wife (driving) team of Kevin and Sue.

Summer 2000 Friday Night
hunts

The first foxhunt of the current 4-hunt competition
was held on Sunday the 15^th of August. Three teams called in at the
start on the club 2m repeater, the teams where:

Team 1 VK2DC

Team 2 VK2DPA / VK2GXZ

Team 3 VK2BGL / VK2BHG, and helpers

The Hunt started almost on time
at about 13:10, after a short on air brief from the Hunt Master. The fox was
an FM900 running 5 watts and a mobile antenna, the I.D. unit used to modulate
the signal was a standard FM900 microphone which had a pic chip circuit CW generator
build in to the mic case. This clever little device was build by Pascal VK2IHL.
Thanks Pascal, it worked great. The radio used had a 2.5 minute time out so
the signal disappeared for about 10 seconds every 2.5 minutes (much to the delight
of the frustrated hunters).

The
first team to arrive at the fox location was    VK2BGL/VK2BHG, and
helpers. Although they had found me they still needed to sniff out the fox and
retrieve the numbered transmitter tag to receive the points for first place.

They headed off in to the bush
  searching for the hidden transmitter. Unfortunately they went past the
fox and several hundred metres in to the bush. While the main part of the team
were getting confused deep in the bush, Henry VK2BHG found the bright yellow
fox tag in a dead tree trunk which hid the transmitter. So thanks to Henry's
keen eyes, that team took out 1st place.

The next two teams arrived within
minutes of each other and it was an exciting dash as Dan VK2DC and Dave VK2DPA
competed to sniff out the fox. In the end it was Dave 2^nd and Dan
3^rd with only seconds between them.

Points standing after the first
round were...

On arrival at the fox site, hot
tea and coffee and afternoon tea was enjoyed by all present. Where was the fox
located? Just off Marshal Rd, Mt Riverview in the bush reserve. Access to the
bush was through a vacant block between two houses and the fox was hidden in
an old log (I know not very original, but it worked).

Dave
VK2DPA searching in the log has found the transmitter but hasn’t seen the
yellow tag which is located in the stump to the right of him.

November 1998

Click here for an album of  "highlights" of Alex VK2ICL's 8th November
'98 Foxhunt/BBQ.

The following is the text of an email
sent by Jack VK3WWW, president of the Melbourne ARDF group.

It is included here with his permission because of the practical information
supplied...

Hi Steve,

You really have a keen group there, I hope you can keep the interest up to keep
the hounds turning up at the start point.

Antenna polarity is not really an issue, for years we used
a 2m AM fox with a 2m halo antenna horizontally polarised.

In recent times to speed up the hunts the fox would have about 3 foxes and when
all the teams have re-grouped the next transmitter would be turned on, and in
most cases the other transmitters would have vertical antennas.

One Melbourne team used to have a 5 element yagi both vertically and horizontally
polarised, by flicking a switch you could select the best polarisation.

These days they achieve the same result by using a motor and lifting the antenna
to a vertical position, most hounds prefer to have there antennas horizontally
mounted for the low profile.

The most important time polarisation can have a major influence on your DFing
is during sniffing out the fox.

If the runners learn right from the start to try both polarities and choose
the strongest one combine this with swinging the sniffer left, right, up and
down providing the front to back on the antenna is good they will be hard to
beat in sniffing.

As for the ARDF, currently we have on loan from the VK4
division 4 dual band ARDF transmitters, they were constructed along with 8 others
to conduct the International event in Townsville a few years ago.

Our construction schedule would see these transmitters were not required by
the end of the year, they would then be returned to Ron VK4BRG to be re-allocated
to a group trying to get ARDF active in there state or district.

I would like to see this type of foxhunting take off in VK2 and seeing the interest
taken by your club I suggest you put your name down.

Cheers, VK3WWW Jack.

ps I notice that the attenuator design you have published
uses slide switches, these switches are very good except that if the attenuator
is dropped one or more of the switches can fall apart, it has happened twice
to me and my current manual attenuator uses toggle switches.