It’s once more time to dust off our roof-mounted mobile and hand-held direction-finding (DF) Yagis, check our DF receivers, and upgrade our maps of Allen County in preparation of the 2018 fox (hidden transmitter) hunting season. The first hunt of the season will occur in early February with hunts planned for the following dates through November:
| 4 February | 4 March | 8 April | 6 May | 3 June |
| 8 July | 5 August | 9 September | 7 October | 4 November |
Fox hunters gather near Daryl B. Cobin Memorial Park (in the former K-Mart parking lot) off Coliseum near the Lakeside Golf Course.
Each hunt starts at 1330, with whoever is serving as the fox transmitting a high power fox signal, strong enough to be heard at Corbin Park, on 146.430 MHz, for one minute. After that, the fox transmits a high-power signal every five minutes, immediately followed by a low-power (microprocessor-controlled) hidden fox transmission, also on 146.430 MHz, for one minute. The low-power fox transmission is a cw signal. Generally speaking, the low-power fox is camouflaged to make it difficult to detect visually.
The high-power fox signal transmitted every five minutes allows the foxhunters to take DF bearings as they travel toward the fox location, which can be anywhere in Allen County. Ultimately, the hunter localizes the fox location, at which point they can normally hear the low power fox signal, which is their actual quarry.
At this point, the hunters are on foot utilizing their hand-held yagis to locate the microfox. The first person (or team) to locate the microfox is the winner and serves as the fox for the following month’s fox hunt.
More specifics regarding details of the hunts, scoring rules and so-forth can be found in a PDF document on this website.
Hope to see you out there chasing after the wily fox.