Brainerd Area Amateur Radio Club  

Annual Fox Hunt and Picnic on Saturday, August 18, 2007

Times of the fox hunters who found the hidden transmitter were:

Lyle KØLR, 63 minutes
Kathy KØTHY, 65 minutes
Paula WØHA and Newel Hirst, 67 minutes
John WØJGY, 69 minutes
Lyle KØLFV, 75 minutes

(l-r) Kathy KØTHY and Lyle KØLR. 

Winning the 2007 BAARC Fox Hunt by Lyle KØLR

My hunting companion Kathie, KØTHY and I, along with several other fox hunters, decided to start from the parking lot across the street from the Northwind Grille. We turned on our radios at 10:15, and almost immediately Kathie picked up a signal, using a 3-element tape-measure beam that she built several years ago from plans at http://home.att.net/~jleggio/projects/rdf/tape_bm.htm. I thought at first that the radio was just hearing industrial noise from downtown Brainerd, but then Kathie heard the CW identifier and we were good to go. The peak direction was a little east of north, so we decided to head for the East Brainerd Mall to get to Highway 3 (formerly Highway 25). While in the car, we plugged Kathie’s beam into an IC-706 receiver. The IC-706 has a fairly good signal strength meter and a built-in attenuator, both of which are useful for fox hunting. At the East Brainerd Mall, Kathie re-confirmed the north heading and we started up highway 3. Things were looking good until we crossed the river, at which point Kathie said the signal was coming from behind us. We headed back south to Mills Field, where the signal was strongest, parked the car near the grandstand, and started out on foot.

 While on foot, Kathie continued to use her beam with a handi-talkie and an offset attenuator, and I used another handi-talkie and offset attenuator in combination with a little diamond-shaped loop antenna of my own design. What’s an “offset attenuator”? For a good example, including plans to build your own, see http://members.aol.com/joek0ov/offatten.html. My homebrew loop antenna has a nice sharp null in one direction, which allows fairly good direction readings, but the gain is very low and it is only usable with strong signals. I was getting a reading from almost straight west, and started walking in that direction. But I soon ran into a chain-link fence, beyond which was a railroad track and the river. I started to wonder if Terry really meant it at breakfast when he talked about needing a wet suit to hide the transmitter! Since we were in a part of Brainerd that was totally unfamiliar to us, it was time to walk back to the car and study the map. Unfortunately, when I got back to the car, Kathie was nowhere to be seen. Turns out that she stopped and waited in the area where she had last seen me, while I was waiting in the car. We need to carry another set of radios so we can communicate! Eventually I saw Lyle KØLFV and Mark WØMH in another part of the ball park, and also caught sight of Kathie by the highway.

Once we determined how to get across the river and had headed south on highway 20, things started falling into place. The signal strength increased rapidly and peaked where we saw Paula WØHA and John WØJGY in a parking area next to the highway. We weren’t sure how the heck they had gotten into that parking area, but soon found the entrance road. I got out of the car and started to walk back across highway 20 toward the river. However, before getting to the road, I reached a point where there was no null in the signal no matter which way the antenna was pointed. Looking right behind me, I saw the “fox” almost completely hidden under a little pine tree. Kathie was heading in the same direction, but her radio was showing a full-scale signal in all directions, even with the offset attenuator cranked all the way in. She finally had to disconnect the antenna completely and use the handi-talkie alone as a “sniffer”. For some of the hunters, the signal was too strong even with no antenna, and it was necessary to tune off frequency by 5 or 10 kHz. Maybe we need to add a piece of aluminum foil for emergency shielding to the fox-hunting kit…

Thanks to The BAARC and Terry KIØFW for putting on the hunt and providing us with an interesting challenge!  Lyle KØLR

Jim Talbott
WØYA VP
& Program
Chairman

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