May fox up a tree

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Fox hunters posing near park entrance sign

Well, May finally arrived, and with it the promise of more reasonable weather. About time after this last winter, ehhh? The local contingent of Allen County foxhunters, less the fox, gathered together at Krueger Park eager to start their quest for their elusive prey early Sunday afternoon on the 4th of May. This crew consisted of the team of Jim & Annie Pliett, K9OMA & KA9YYI plus Carole & Al Burke, WB9’s RUS & SSE, the team of Charles Ward, KC9MUT, Fred Gengnagle, KC9EZP and Phil Hooper, AB9IZ, the team of Kim & Jim Machamer, KB9’s DOS & DOT, and the team of Linda & Steve Nardin, W9’s LAN & SAN.

The role of the fox was played by Bob Dean, KC9UHU who was hid-out at Cook’s Landing Park on Cedar Creek at the corner of Shoaff and Coldwater roads. Bob was using a cubical quad driven with about 50 watts as the high power fox, and a microcontroller controlled microfox which emitted around 30 milliwatts. Both of these units radiated on 146.340 MHz, i.e., on the input to the 146.940 repeater. The microfox was attached to a tree branch about ten feet in the air.

The fox started warbling promptly at 13:30 hours and was immediately heard by all of the foxhunt teams at Kruger Park.

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Join Brian for the Indiana QSO Party

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Brian Jenks, W9BGJ, has offered to run the Indiana QSO Party from his place with the club call sign, W9TE, to help run up the total score for the club in this weekend’s contest. The contest runs from noon to midnight on Saturday, May 3rd, and involves Phone and CW operation on the bands 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10. You can find information about the contest on the Hoosier DX club website.

If you would like to join Brian in this effort, contact him via e-mail at w9bgj@arrl.net. Otherwise, you can run the contest from your home QTH and remember to claim the Fort Wayne Radio Club as your club affliation when you send in your log! If we get enough points from enough submitted logs, we can win again. We have certificates from 2012 and 2013. Let’s do it again for 2014!

If you can help support Brian this weekend, please contact him and make plans. Otherwise, get on the air this weekend if you can and don’t forget to submit your logs to the Hoosier DX Club.

Club meeting to feature preparedness program

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FRS radioPlease plan to join us this Friday, April 11th, at the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church, for the April meeting of the Fort Wayne Radio Club. The church is located at 4700 Vance Avenue, just south of Snider High School (see map below). Our program for the evening will be on Neighborhood Emergency Prepardeness and will be presented by Joseph Lawrence, K9RFZ, who has organized his neighborhood to be connected by Family Radio Service (FRS) Radios for communications in the event of an emergency.

We will have a club business meeting as well. We are at 111 members now, the highest level that we have been since the late 80’s!

See you there!


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SDR, vintage radio talks highlight upcoming meetings

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We have two noteworthly meetings this month, both of which it will be worth the effort to attend!

The first is the ACARTS meeting on Tuesday, March 18th (tomorrow) at 7:00 pm at the Salvation Army. The presentation will be on MDSR, which stands for Modulation Demodulation Software Receiver. The MDSR is a way to add a SDR or Software Defined Receiver functions to an existing older receiver! In essence, you use an SDR at the IF or Intermediate Frequency of an existing radio. Pretty cool stuff?

The second is the FWRC meeting on Friday, March 21st (this coming Friday) at 7:00 pm at the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church. Our presentation this time will be by Jack Shutt, W9GT, on Vintage Radio. Join us to remember Radio’s past roots, when the real radios glowed in the dark and kept the shack warm through the winter!

Directions and maps to both meeting places can be found in the Allen County Ham News for March, which is a free download at WWW.ACARTS.COM or WWW.FWRC.INFO

March fox hides in Harlan nature preserve

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Photo of fox hunters at nature preserve entrance

The March foxhunt kicked-off from the Ft. Wayne Safety Academy parking lot at 13:30 hours on the 9th of the March. This was the first instance of starting hunts from locations other than the Off-Track-Betting Parlor. The weather was cold but clear, and substantially better than the weather the week prior, the originally scheduled date for the March hunt.

Eleven hunters showed up at the Safety Academy site consisting of the team of Jim & Annie Pliett, K9OMA & KA9YYI along with Carole & Al Burke, WB9’s RUS & SSE, the team of Steve & Linda Nardin, W9’s SAN & LAN plus their grandson Alex, the team of Kim & Jim Machamer, KB9’s DOT & DOS, and the team of Charles Ward, KC9MUT, Fred Gengnagel, KC9EZP and new foxhunter Jeff Brady, KC9ZGN.

Dave Spence, K9NDU and Bob Dean, KC9UHU provided the role of the fox for this hunt, and they were ensconced out in the Herman Hammer Wald Nature Preserve, part of the ACRES system of preserves, close to the intersection of Rupert and Hurshtown Roads northeast of Harlan. Dave & Bob utilized a cubical-quad for the high power fox, and microcontroller controlled 30 milliwatt emitter for the hidden (micro) fox. The micro-fox was hidden in tree branches at about six feet off the ground, and both it and the high power fox emitted on 146.430 MHz.

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