2008 March FRRL Foxhunt
Do foxes like rain? Well, 21 members of the Fox River Radio League came out on March 30th to find out! Starting at 1pm local time, the event began from the parking lot in front of the Colonial Cafe in Aurora. 10 vehicles went out in search of the fox after scanning the parking lot horizon for the elusive signal.Denny W9HI provided the voice of the fox by using a Kenwood TH-F6a handie-talkie and Yaesu FT-8800 transceiver. The Yaesu was set up in the back seat of Denny's wife's car using a couple of large gell cell batteries as a power supply. The rig was placed in the cross-band repeat mode using UHF as a talk-in frequency, and 146.565 as the output. The antenna was made from a chassis mount UHF connector and #14 solid house wire. An MFJ antenna analyzer was used to "adjust" the SWR of the antenna. The Yaesu was set to its high power setting, 45 watts.
The "fox" was inside the Oswego East High School with the Kenwood HT on low power. An Icom IC-2720 with a mag-mount quarterwave antenna was also used to monitor the NIARC repeater where the participants were asked to check in.
Of the 10 cars out in the hunt, 4 of them belonged to members of Kane County ARES. A team approach was used by these hams using the Yorkville repeater for coordination. Several members had previously joined together with Dave N9CTO to build a few tape measure yagi antennas. This project was featured at the FRRL March club meeting by Program Committee Chairman, Dick AH6EZ.
Congratulations to the hams who found the fox and returned to the Colonial Cafe in the shortest amount of time: Joe AB9OU, Bill W9WRS, and Neil KB9RFX. This team also won the award (ice cream) for driving the shortest distance to and from the fox! They were tied for this award by Ben KC9LTY, a member of the ARES team. Coming in a very close second place with both time and distance results were Carol WD9CNW and Tim N9TO. They were only one minute behind the leaders, and one mile longer in distance traveled!
Special thanks go to Denny W9HI for being our "fox" this time. Greg N9CHA coordinated the event and Dean KC9EOQ was the statistician. Of the participants who found the transmitter, here are the results of the March fox hunt:
Joe AB9OU, Bill W9WRS, Neil KB9RFX: Total time = 2hr 8min Total distance = 34 miles
Ben KC9LTY: Total distance = 34 miles
Carol WD9CNW, Tim N9TO: Total time = 2hr 9min Total distance = 35 miles
Bart KC9FQA, Catherine KC9KJU, Eric KB9IDT, Frank AA9FR: Total time = 2hr 27min Total distance = 36.5 miles
Dave K9WDB, Cyd N9CV: Total time = 3hr 6min Total distance = 42 miles
Dave N9CTO: Total time = 3hr 7min Total distance 50 miles
Photo credits: Joe AB9OU, Greg N9CHA
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Pictures from Jan '08 Fox Hunt are here.
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