Sunday, September 8, 2013. The sun came up, the birds sang, and the weather was pleasant as an early fall day should be. And in the parking lot of the Off-Track Betting Parlor at Lima and Washington Center roads, there gathered a group of eleven foxhunters, intent for the activities that would occur that afternoon. The hunters consisted of the team of Jim and Annie Pliett, K9OMA and KA9YYI plus Carole and Al Burke, WB9RUS and WB9SSE, the team of Linda and Steve Nardin, W9LAN and W9SAN plus their grandson Alex, the team of Charles Ward, KC9MUT plus Fred Gengnagel, KC9EZP, and the team of Dave Spence, K9NDU plus Bob Dean, KC9UHU.
It should be noted that as competitive as foxhunters tend to be, a new piece of (old) technology was introduced into this hunt by KC9MUT. Charles mounted a two element vertically polarized switched dipole antenna on the front of his truck (out front of his grill), part of a so-called “Pickle Fork” DF system, and used it to get “right-left” signal direction steering cues. He told me that it gave him helpful information as he drove down the road when the fox was up.
(Jim Pliett and I are researching the fine print in the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) to determine if that switched dipole DF system that Charles added to his foxhunting suite is legal. We’re hoping it isn’t, but if it turns out that it is, then it looks like we may have another building project. Seems like our work is never done. We are considering the use of UAV’s).