October fox visits new downtown park

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The October foxhunt occurred on Sunday the 6th of October, which again turned out to be a beautiful early Fall day in Indiana, temperatures in the mid 70’s, and a mostly blue sky with a pleasant breeze to make things comfortable following early morning showers.

Three teams were arrayed for this hunt. The first consisted of Charles Ward, KC9MUT and Bill Hopkins, K9WEH. The second team was formed by Steve & Linda Nardin, W9’s SAN & LAN plus their grandson Alex. And the third team included Don Glick, K9LI, his wife Julie, and her dad, Ed.

Jim and Annie Pliett, K9OMA & KA9YYI plus Carole & Al Burke, WB9’s RUS & SSE were the fox for this contest. They decided to check out the just recently opened Promenade Park complex downtown where the Wells St. and the Harrison St. bridges cross the St. Mary’s river. It is a very nice facility; the Parks Department did a nice job on this one.

They located the high power fox (Jim’s van) just off North Harrison St. on the west side of the St. Mary’s river next door to a long metal building and very close to the River Greenway. They hid the microfox inside a fallen tree branch on the ground at the river bank between the river itself and the River Greenway path. It was pretty effectively hidden, he he.

The (high power) fox started blurping out about a 40 watt signal of one minutes duration starting at 13:30 hours, and every five minutes thereafter. In between the microfox transmitted about a 40 milliwatt, one minute duration signal, every two and one half minutes. Everyone heard the high power fox at the Cobin Memorial Park fox hunter starting point from the get go, so the race was on.

As I mentioned, the weather for this hunt was very pleasant and the fox location near the River Greenway path and the river bank was somewhat idyllic so we enjoyed our time broadcasting “catch me if you can” taunts to the herd of rabid foxhunters every five minutes or so. I think it took about forty five minutes for the crew to localize us. I’m not quite sure which foxhunting team arrived on scene first. All of a sudden it seemed like everybody was rooting around amongst the collection of tree branches strewn by the riverbank.

I must say we kinda enjoyed observing the frustration on the part of the hunters who knew that darn microfox lay somewhere amongst the pile of branches, but they just couldn’t seem to find it. I was told somebody actually stepped on the tree branch Jim Pliett hid the microfox in.

Eventually though, Don Glick found the microfox, followed quickly by Bill Hopkins and then the rest of the foxhunters. So that means that Don will serve as the fox for the November hunt (which will be the last hunt this year).

Following cessation of fox hunting activities everyone proceeded to the McDonalds on Jefferson where we consumed mass quantities of hamburgers and so forth and compared notes.

Scores for this hunt and for the year-to-date are as follows:

Hunter October Points Year-to-Date Points
WB9RUS 6 15.5
WB9SSE 6 19.5
K9OMA 6 23.5
KA9YYI 6 18.2
KCMUT 2 30.1
KC9EZP 0 17.34
W9SAN 1 19.67
W9LAN 1 19.67
Alex 1 13.0
K9LI 4 19.0
Julie 3 13
Julie’s Dad 3 5
K9WEH 2 11

Mark your calendar, the next hunt will occur on Sunday 3 November, the last hunt of the year. Hope to see you there!

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