04/10/1999

Greetings fellow fox-hunters, (eh hemm, and couch potatoes)! The results
for last Saturday's hunt follow: Troy, W8TCC graciously agreed to hide
for us, as both of our scheduled foxes had to cancel at the last
minute. Troy hid in Abbot Park, about 4 miles east of our starting point.
We had the following hunters: vehicle # 1 Don, W8BQD, Mike, N8NBZ, and
Mike ,KC8LJD. Vehicle #2 : John AA8LF and Dennis, KB8ZQZ. Vehicle #3 was
Paul, KB8YQW . Troy started the main transmitter shortly after 10:00 am,
and we all took bearings from Thieos and took off chasing reflections,
some chased the reflections longer than others :-) Results at the park

were:
AA8LF/KB8ZQZ 8.3 miles
W8BQD/NBZ/LJD 11.2 miles
KB8YQW 24.3 miles

WD8OVL (Ben) stopped in the park not long after the first car pulled
in. He wasn't officially hunting, but shot a bearing from his home
and wanted to check out where the fox was.
An on foot hunt at the park followed, with a small transmitter hidden out
in the woods not too far off a trail. I gave Troy my video camera and he
shot some excellent footage of the foot hunt. Results, ranked in least to
most time (un officially)were AA8LF, KC8LJD, W8BQD, KB8YQW, and KB8ZQZ.
(ZQZ found it before YQW did, but YQW started quite a bit later).
Did I mention we had absolutely perfect weather for hunting? Two other observations
come to mind. First is that the Thieos parking lot is a terrible place to get a 1st
bearing from! Next time I'll just spin a stick and go in the direction
it points, asit's quicker and has every likelihood of being just as good as a real
bearing. It's taken me 4 years to arrive at this conclusion :-) (The best bearings
are taken high and in the clear, but I've seen them lie also.) Second
observation is that hunters in the park on foot all took off with ht's
and tubes, except the winner who used a yagi and step attenuator.

Even with the yagi the reflections off the trees were amazing, and frequently
stronger than the direction the fox was in.
I don't mean to put down the venerable attenuator tube.
It's amazing what you can do with one, particularly when combined with body
fade. My own plan is not to resort to it until I'm so close that 100 dB of attenuation
won't knock the signal down.
Speaking of attenuator tubes, Paul, KB8YQW gave me 10 or so cardboard tubes
suitable for wrapping with aluminum foil. If you or someone you know would
like one let me know. I think a hunt limited to ht and tube would be a lot of fun.
Speaking of fun guys, (for those of you who didn't make the hunt) fox
hunting is right up there near the top of the most fun things you can
do! I've noticed that other groups around the country have elaborate
hunts with lots of participants. I'd like to see more new faces getting
involved in it, (and a bunch of old faces too). I'm rather baffled at
the lack of interest in this area, but each to his/her own. For those who
did make the hunt, I hope you can drag a friend along for the next one,
and for those of you who didn't, I hope you'll give it a try. I'll send a
couple interesting hunt announcements from other areas shortly, in hopes
of drumming up some additional interest.

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