Foxhunter activities 10-March-1996

A Bear of a Hunt

by Bob Ragain, WB4ETT

The Denver Area Direction Finders group held their regularly scheduled second-Sunday hunt on March 10th, 1996.

The hunt was a "difficult" category hunt in the Rocky Mountain foothills. The location was difficult to reach and had to be approached from the "back side" of a mountain near Evergreen, Colorado. About a dozen vehicles were at the start, and most finished the approximately 35 mile hunt. Straight line distance was about 16 miles. Shortest time/mileage was the N0XGC (Mike) and N0TZL (Dan) team. The hunt lasted about 3.5 hours and was called off a little early when one team's car broke an alternator belt. The group called off the hunt to aid in the "rescue" before it got too dark. Dinner afterwards at a Perkins Restaurant was enjoyed by all.

The transmitter was located on an Eastward facing slope of Bear Mountain, 2 miles east of Evergreen, running 200 mW into a 4 element vertically polarized beam. The antenna was bungee-corded to a tree just off the road in the heavily wooded area. Due to the difficult location, the huntmasters, WB4ETT (Bob) and N0QGH (Colleen) showed some mercy and left the transmitter on all the time with no power or polarization changes.

A co-located ELT practice beacon on 121.6 MHz was used for a simultaneous hunt by the Front Range Electronic Direction Finders group which specializes in DF'ing downed airplanes. (The group had just found a plane on Saturday which had made an emergency landing in a field several miles East of Buckley field, east of Denver. The plane sustained serious damage, a broken off front landing gear and a bent wing, but no one was hurt.)

The fox hunters reported strong and consistent signals in the Denver area but very confusing signals in the foothills. Several hunters ventured into the mountains almost immediately but several committed to detailed searching behind the first range of hills, a mistake they soon regretted. The winning team (N0XGC/N0TZL) decided to go-for-broke and drove past the second major foothill range and approached the target from behind, exactly the approach the huntmasters had hoped no one would think to do!

One hunter, WA0GEH (Marty), the "Sheriff magnet", had his usual chat with the local law enforcement officials. It seems that Marty gets stopped just about every time! After explaining what he was doing, he was allowed to proceed on the hunt without a "pink slip". Unaware to the Huntmaster, another law enforcement vehicle had already been dispatched toward the site of a "suspicious blue van with antennas" parked on a nearby mountain (WB4ETT!). Luckily, Marty's discussion with the second Sheriff's unit clarified what was going on and the dispatch to the blue van was called off. THANKS, MARTY! That will earn you points next time!

The transmitter used for the hunt was a sono-bouy transmitter, modified from a 160-something frequency down to 147.540 MHz. The ID'er was a W6ORE (Bob) designed PIC microprocessor-based CW id'er.

Hunters used several types of antennas, the most common of which was a through-the-roof mounted beam or quad. One antenna was a four elememt array of fullwave 2 meter loops in a "loop Yagi" design by N0XDW.