The Foxhunt Chronicles
The tenth and last foxhunt of the 2012 season occurred on Sunday, the 4th of November, 2012. The hunt took place on a brisk Sunday afternoon, partly sunny, with a slight breeze. In general a beautiful day to hunt.
Four teams were involved in the hunt. They consisted of the team of Jim Pliett & Al Burke, K9OMA & WB9SSE, the team of Steve & Linda Nardin, W9SAN & W9LAN, and their grandson Alex, the team of Kim & Jim Machamer, KB9’s DOS & DOT, and the team of Mark Berke, WA7NXI and his son Nathan.
Charles Ward, KC9MUT provided the services of the fox and was hiding in a nature preserve behind the Maple Creek Middle School complex off Union Chapel Rd. He used a dismounted battery powered mobile rig to implement the high power fox, pumping about 30 watts into a yagi. The actual (low power) fox was implemented as a micro-fox hidden in a tree branch that was leaning up against a tree, about shoulder height, deep within the nature preserve. The micro-fox output (on the order of milli-watts) consisted of an id in Morse code for one minute every five minutes. For the first time the fox (both high and low power versions) output on 147.855 MHz instead of 146.430 MHz. The 147.855 MHz signal happens to be the input frequency of the 147.255/.855 repeater and thus Charles taunting voice fox transmissions were repeated of the 147.255 machine for the edification and entertainment of area hams.
The November 2012 Issue of the Allen County HamNews newsletter is now available for download from this web site. This and previous issues are available for download by clicking the link below or clicking the “Files” link in the main menu to the left and then clicking “Newsletters.”