Foxhunting

 

A lot has been going on since the last entry. Through all of the birthdays, kitchen remodeling, and work projects that I am leading, I managed to fit in the occasional VHF outing. And here I am nearly three weeks later and both I and several of my grandchildren are older, the kitchen now has functioning plumbing and actually resembles a kitchen, and I learned that when it comes to foxhunting I really know very little about what I am doing.

So what is a "Foxhunt" in the amateur radio sense? Basically one person hides a small transmitter, and then a bunch of people wave antennas around to home in on the signal that it emits. The foxhunt that I took part in had a bout a one mile radius

Speaking of the later, I had heard about a Foxhunting activity hosted by the amateur radio club that I recently joined. That's right, I actually joined something.

I took the opportunity to clean up an old cross-yagi satellite antenna that I used to wave about frantically in Florida in the hopes of working an amateur radio satellites.  The antenna was a 3 element VHF and a 7 element UHF antenna. If there was a small transmitter hidden somewhere, I was betting that this antenna would be able to home in on it.

In a way I think that the antenna worked a little too well. On the VHF side I was getting a full quieting signal pretty much whenever I pointed the antenna north. I knew that the transmitter was somewhere to the north but I could not home in on.

Once the host called out to me and directed me in, I took note that several people were using attenuators to dampen the signal enough to allow for greater directivity, I hadn't thought of that. I think for future foxhunts an attenuator might be the way to go. That would be a nice project to build before the next hunt.