Xerox Amateur Radio Club

Fox Hunt 9/27/1997

Hunt masters Judy N2KXS And Fred WO2P
	Cobb's Hill is in Webster, isn't it?

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XARC 1997 FOXHUNT

The Xerox Amateur Radio Club held its second annual FOXHUNT on Saturday September 27th 1997. Based on last years results it appeared that teams vs individual efforts netted better results. This years event consisted of three teams.

All teams had assembled at the "Valley View" shelter in Webster Park by 11:45. It was a super day for a hunt, sunny a bit breezy with the temperature in the upper 60s. It was great to see the lengths that the teams went to improve their equipment over last years efforts. Each team had a yagi for long distance "sniffing" and an assortment of close in antennas. There were loops, small phase shift units and the tried and true aluminum tubes for attenuating the signal when you are really close in. The award for most sophisticated setup this year goes to Paul's team. In addition to all the previously mentioned equipment, they had GPS unit connected to a laptop to track their route, help in planning strategy and taking bearings. Jon's team also had plans to use GPS but Mr. Murphy (creator of Murphy's law) decided that this was not to be and placed his hex on Jon's GPS unit just prior to the start of the hunt.

After a flurry of final antenna tweaking and secret gadget testing, Judy took all the hunt vehicle odometer readings and reread the rules of the hunt to all the teams. This years scoring was unique in that it consisted of the total of 10ths of miles traveled during the hunt PLUS the number of minutes from the start of the hunt to when a team checked in. The lowest score would win. Check-in was via the XARC repeater (145.290 ) where teams would verify they had located the fox by giving us a certain letter of a word that was taped to the top of the fox transmitter.

The fox was turned on remotely at 12:15 and after consensus that all the teams were able to hear the fox signal the hunt was underway. As huntmasters it was interesting to watch the teams posturing while taking bearings. Each team tried not to give away the "true" direction they had came up with. By 12:30 all teams had left the parking lot and all we had to do was wait.

Now as huntmasters came the hard part, waiting. The hunt was scheduled to run for a maximum of 3 hours. Would they find the fox to quickly? After all they were much more prepared this year than last year. In order to introduce another confusion factor we decided after the hunt had started to cycle the fox on and off periodically (on for 10 minutes or so, off for 1 to 2 minutes). After all as hunt masters we could introduce changes in the hunt whenever we pleased. When it began nearing 2:00 and we had heard nothing from any of the hunters we started wondering if the fox was hidden to well. So beginning at 2:00 and every 15 minutes we would stop the fox signal, give a hint on the fox frequency as to its location and turn the fox signal back on. The hints that were given were:

2:00 "The fox is located on the Xerox Campus"

2:15 "The fox is located East of Phillips Road"

2:30 "The fox is located East of Phillips and North of Klem"

2:45 "The fox is not very far from the Klem Road extension"

At 2:04:32 Pete's team located the fox and at 2:21:40 Paul's team located the located the fox. Jon's team, the defending champs from the 1996 hunt, caught a false reflection (see the fox statistics and location for a possible explanation) and chased a false fox signal into Irondequoit.

By 3:30, the teams returned to the park where they turned in their mileage, commiserated on the hunt, enjoyed some liquid refreshments, pizza and chowed down on some really excellent venison chili complements of Paul.

At 3:45 Judy presided over the award presentations:

FOX STATISTICS and LOCATION

Frequency 146.565 simplex (national fox frequency)

Mode FM CW

Message sent "FOX FOX DE WO2P"

Secret word "THALASSA" (Greek for "Eureka", the word used in1996)

Transmission duration 20 seconds ON 10 seconds OFF

Power out 7.0 watts

Antenna 5 element Quad

Antenna polarization vertical

Height off ground 16 feet

Direction of antenna 178 degrees magnetic

The fox was located on the West bank of a large North - South running drainage ditch. The ditch is located in the North - South running cutout of a wooded area North from the East end of Klem road extension. The antenna was oriented at 178 degrees true, pointing directly into the (offset) corner of building 200. Because of the large offset the signal was reflected in a number of different directions making it very difficult to locate with a doppler or phase shift antenna systems. The minimal side lobes of the quad coupled with the RF absorbing properties of the woods to both sides of the quad made signal detection to either side of the beam very difficult. The back lobe was detectable from the North but to walk to it would have required a 1.2 mile walk from the nearest road. For over 2 hours most of the hunters were actually chasing reflections!

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