Brainerd Area Amateur Radio Club  

Club Fox Hunt and Summer Picnic  Sunday, August 21, 2005

Fox Hunters assembled at the Fleet Farm Parking Lot in Baxter at 10 AM:

Terry KIØFW hid a 146.52 MHz transmitter and turned it on just before 10 AM.  

The Fox Hunters:  (l-r) Greg NØLJY, Charles W5CCL, Paula WØHA, Lyle KØLR, Kathy KØTHY, grandson of John WØJGY, Mark WØMH, John WØJGY, Andy NØREQ, BAARC President Lyle KØLFV, and Fox Hunt Chairman Terry KIØFW.

The winners and their times were:
Mark WØMH  45 minutes
Lyle KØLR  55 minutes
Kathy KØTHY and Paula WØHA  57 minutes
John WØJGY and Andy NØREQ 1 hour and 18 minutes
Greg NØLJY and Charles WØCCL  1 hour and 20 minutes
Lyle KØLFV 1 hour and 23 minutes

(l-r) Mark WØMH being congratulated by BAARC President Lyle KØLFV.       

How the Fox Hunt was won by Mark WØMH

Paula WØHA and I used a five-element cubical Yagi and a Yaesu VX-1 Transceiver as a receiver.  A home-made passive RF attenuator was used between receiver and the antenna.  From Fleet Farm, we drove east to the Paul Bunyan Arboretum.  From there, we went south to where Harold's Supper Club was many years ago.  This is north of Highway 210 and where each of us picked up about 100 sand burs.  It took a few minutes to get them off our pants before proceeding south again to a block north of the railroad tracks.  Since the fox was still south of us, we circled around to get south of the tracks.  It became evident that the fox was then north of us.  When we walked across the tracks and to a fence line,  the fox was still north of us.  I then added an offset attenuator, shown under my left thumb in the photo.  This allowed me to get closer to the transmitter by tuning 1 MHz off from the fox frequency.  This worked until I was within 100 feet of the fox with its powerful 5 watt signal.    I then tuned around to find the fox on an unrelated frequency, probably an image frequency of the receiver.  I was able to find one where the signal was less and I could use the antenna to again seek direction without the signal strength indicator reading full scale.  That got me to within 40 feet of the fox.  From that point, I was on my own to walk around and locate the transmitter along the Paul Bunyan Trail.  About that time, Paula showed up after moving our car closer to the action.  She, was joined by Lyle KØLR, and Kathy KØTHY.  Lyle brought a highly directional loop antenna and was able to get even closer to the fox before searching in the grass for it.  He became second to find it.  Paula and Kathy tied for third place.  Paula tuned to the third harmonic of the fox at 439.6 MHz to get a weaker signal to home-in on and that worked well although she could not use a 2-meter antenna to do direction finding at that point. Instead, she use a rubber duck antenna.

In retrospect, I should have tuned my receiver 10 or 15 KHz from the fox frequency to reduce the receive sensitivity. That probably would have gotten me closer to the fox before receiver front-end overload.  All in all, it was a great fox hunt and good learning experience for everyone involved.  

All in all, it was a great fox hunt and good learning experience for everyone involved.  Thanks to Terry KIØFW for coordinating the hunt.  Mark WØMH

Glad to hear that everyone had a good time at the Fox Hunt.  Since Mark WØMH found the fox first, he will probably be the fox next year.  

One of my other interests is Geocache hunting.  I hid three aluminum tags in trees on the west side of Brainerd and in Baxter.  Hunting and locating them this year were Lyle KØLFV, Kathy KØTHY, Lyle KØLR, Mark WØMH, and Paula WØHA.  They are still out there for additional hunters to find.  You too can look for them at the following GPS coordinates:  

N 46-21.485, W 94-14.790
N 46-21.406, W 94-13.348
N 46-21.496, W 94-12.859

Terry
KIØFW
BAARC
Fox Hunt
Chairman

Jim Talbott
WØYA VP
& Program
Chairman

Our next big get-together is a Membership Meeting on September 29th.  Hope to see you there.