December came and went…. cold, snow, and no foxhunt. Then came January…cold, lotsa snow, but still no foxhunt. And finally February arrived….still more cold and snow, but…. our intrepid foxhunters eventually came out of their caves and didn’t see the shadows of their yagis. So that meant that a foxhunt was on!!!
Thus for the February event, which occurred on Sunday, 8 February, (one week late because of, guess what, lotsa snow on the originally planned 1 February foxhunt date), three foxhunter teams gathered at the Off-Track Betting Parlor parking lot near Lima and Washington Center roads. They consisted of the team of Charles Ward, KC9MUT, Fred Gengnagle, KC9EZP, and Robert Dean, KC9UHU, the team of Kim & Jim Machamer, KB9’s DOS & DOT, and the team of Linda & Steve Nardin, W9’s LAN & SAN. In total seven rabid hunters.
Their quarry, the fox, was provided by Jim & Annie Pliett, K9OMA & KA9YYI plus Carole & Al Burke, WB9’s RUS & SSE. They travelled down to Klotz Park, near Southwick Village in south-east Ft. Wayne. From there they emitted the high-power fox signal on 146.430 MHz from a roof mounted quad with about 40 watts into the feedline. The low-power signal was loosed from a camouflaged micro-fox transmitter hung from a tree branch about 10 feet high in a copse of trees bordering a creek, and out in the middle of a show field, around 1000 feet from the Klotz Park ball diamond. (Let me tell you, tromping around in a snow field without snow shoes is hard work).