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United We Stand |
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Brainerd Area Amateur Radio Club, Inc. |
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Club Meeting September 26, 2002 |
The Brainerd Area Amateur Radio Club held a regular monthly club membership meeting on September 26th at the Mississippi Horizons School. The 8 PM presentation was extremely captivating and well received.
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Brian Dirks,
Animal Survey Coordinator for the Minnesota Department of Natural
Resources at Camp Ripley, was the guest speaker. Brian explained how
radio transmitter collars are used on bear, deer, wolves, and even fish to
track wild game locations and migrations. The DNR tracks many
hundreds of animals in an effort to find out how man is affecting animals
behavior.
Brian is shown holding an animal collar in his right hand and a tracking antenna in his left hand. The antenna is a three element Yagi very similar to the ones built as a BAARC project on November 30, 2000. |
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Radio collar transmitters are normally found between 27 MHz and 401
MHz. The bands are 27 to 40 MHz, 148 to 152 MHz, 163 to 166 MHz, and
216 to 220 MHz. Many are found in the 163 to 166 MHz band at 5 KHz
increments. The collars have a three-year battery life and about 90%
are recovered to be used again. Some are GPS (Global Positioning
System) equipped to provide frequent data on the animal's location and
newer collars use solar cells to extend the battery life.
Tracking is done from helicopters, airplanes, and on the ground. DNR officers use triangulation to locate animals in a similar fashion to hams locating a fox hunt transmitter. We thank Brian Dirks for presenting this fascinating look at radio tracking. |
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This page was last updated 12/19/2006 Ø
