May Fox Nearly Invisible

The fourth foxhunt of the 2013 FWRC’s foxhunt season occurred on Sunday, the 5th of May on a warm but overcast spring day. The mild Sunday afternoon put everyone in the mood to HUNT!!

May’s hunters included the team of Jim & Annie Pliett, K9OMA & KA9YYI plus Carole & Al Burke, WB9’s RUS & SSE; the team of Charles Ward, KC9MUT and Fred Gengnagle, KC9EZP, and the team of Kim & Jim Machamer, KB9’s DOT & DOS, a total of eight participants eager to get at the wily fox.

Now the role of the fox was played by Dave Spence, K9NDU & Bob Dean, KC9UHU and they were hiding at an Acres, Inc. nature preserve off Zubrick Rd. adjacent to I69 just south of the Vera Bradley complex. You had to drive by the entrance to the preserve off Zubrick Rd. to spot them, otherwise they were invisible.

The high power fox was a mobile rig driving a quad antenna while the actual fox was a microfox programmed to output cw one minute out of every five. The fox broadcast on the input to the 146.94 machine so that local hams would be able to listen-in on the progress of the hunt.

Dave & Bob had added camouflage to the microfox and installed it in the branches of a tree at about six feet off the deck. It was extremely hard to spot as can be demonstrated in the pictures associated with this issue of the Chronicles.

The fox came up on the air at 13:30 and were heard by all of the hunter’s right off the bat. And much to our delight, the initial bearing indicated that it was to the south-south-west, i.e., not anywhere near New Haven…..Yahhh!!

Now the Burke-Pliett team was intent upon winning this hunt and as such instigated a new top secret strategy designed to minimize both our mileage traveled and time to localize the quarry. And hey, it sorta worked. We wound up at the nature preserve about twenty minutes after Charles and Fred did,(i.e., their strategy worked better), and Jim & Annie found the microfox in short order afterwards. However, Charles and Fred got there first, and I might add in less mileage than we racked up, and so they were the winners of this particular hunt.

Kim & Jim developed antenna problems and thus were not able to complete the hunt.

Based upon miles travelled and time, the scores for this hunt were as follows:

So Charles Ward and Fred Gengnagle will serve as the fox for the June hunt.

Year to date cumulative points are as follows:

After the hunt several of us headed over to the Steak-N-Shake at Chapel Hill for a burger, milkshake and a chance to relive details of the hunt. It was decided that we would utilize the input to the 147.255 machine as the fox frequency for the June hunt.