10/29/99

Fox hunt report for Sunday, 10-24-99

What a gorgeous day for a fox hunt! Mark, N8DEF, did the honors of hiding
at the Piaget nature area, near Herbison and Airport roads in DeWitt.
Participating in the hunt were Rog, Kc8cgh and two boyscouts
and I believe one of the scouts fathers, along with Dennis, Kb8zqz as a team,
Paul, Kb8yqw and a friend Mike, and yours truly,
John, AA8LF, and daughter Lisa for the 2nd hunt.
Mark was hidden and ready to turn the fox on ahead of schedule, cudos.

We started from Theios somewhere around 1:15 pm. This is one of the rare
times that I actually got a good bearing from Theios rather than a reflection.

Results follow

HUNTER	MILES	TIME
AA8LF	7.4	00:59:20
Kb8YQW	10	01:59:45
Kb8zqz/ KC8CGH	10.2	2:10:05

Paul started sometime later.
An on foot hunt followed as each participant found the first fox.
Times follow:

HUNTER	TIME
AA8LF	00:04:15
KC8FDP	00:05:15
KB8YQW	00:06:00
KB8ZQZ KCC8CGH scouts	00:06:15

I'll mention that Mark deducted a couple minutes from my on
foot time as we tried to remotely reprogram the piccon fox
controller for longer xmit times while I was hunting for it.
Also, kb8yqw gets the good sportsman award, as I played a
bit of a prank on him. He arrived just after my daughter
had found the 2nd fox and was looking in our direction. So
Lisa and I took off to the south, and I made it known loudly
that the signal was stronger there, and went through the motions
of finding the fox about 200 feet from its actual location.
We must have made quite an impression, as Paul and Mike spent most
of their time scouring that area. I felt a little guilty and offered them
the use of my beam/attenuator set up, along with mentioning that I'd tricked them.
After that Paul and Mike made very short work of finding the fox.
This does illustrate a problem of on foot hunts, in that its nearly
impossible not to give away the location if everyone hunts at the same time.
I think its safe to say that everyone enjoyed the hunt. All of the
mileages were very low, and times well within reason for a mileage
hunt, i.e. take your time and do it right.
I guess I lucked out on the driving hunt. I think I drove
as directly to it as possible. At one point out in the country,
high location, in the clear, I had two peaks of equal intensity,
one NW and one NE. I moved a few hundred feet and took another
bearing and got the same perplexing reading! I decided to ignore the NE
bearing as all previous bearings were NW. Mark thinks the stereo reading
is due to mineral deposits. I was ready to accuse him of having
two transmitters :-) kb8zqz also got the same'stereo' bearings.
I was using a 4 element 2m beam through the roof of my car. It sure
beats having to get out and take bearings. For the foot hunt I used
a 4 el tape measure beam, and a miniature step attenuator that was in
qst a year ago April (I highly recommend it).

best regards,
John AA8LF

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