Well, it’s two for one with this edition of the Foxhunt Chronicles. The results of both the July as well as the August contest will be, well, chronicled here.
The July hunt occurred on Sunday 9 July with just a few of the usual mob of hunters able to participate. They consisted of the team of Steve and Linda Nardin, W9’s SAN & LAN, and single hunter Clarke Derbyshire, KG9FM. Their quarry, the fox, consisted of Charles Ward, KC9MUT and Fred Gengnagle, KC9EZP and they were holed-up at Dan Ward, W9WLW’s Ward Metal Plating facilities located in the industrial park north of Smith Field just off Cook Rd. Charles had obtained permission from Dan to use the property as a fox hiding site. The high power fox emanated from Charles’s truck which was parked back in the woods and essentially hidden from sight. The microfox was contained within a metal sleeve in the wall of one of a large collection of metal containers located behind the building, and used to store and move metal parts at the facility. Given the placement of the microfox, its signal was very weak. Steve, Linda and Clarke crawled around and about the metal containers and eventually found the microfox. Linda was the first to actually lay eyes on the little bugger. Interestingly, Clarke used a combination of body shielding and an improvised attenuator consisting of a cardboard tube wrapped in aluminum foil that he would place over his HT’s antenna to reduce the microfox’s signal strength when he got close to it.
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