Ham Radio Fox Hunt

The Venture Out Ham Radio group had a "fox hunt" scheduled for a recent Saturday.

 In preparation, they built directional antennas to help to locate the "fox".

This was at one of the regular meetings of the club so they could see the "fox" and an example of a directional antenna (made from metal tape measure material).

The antenna-building class session.

On the morning of the fox hunt, there was a breakfast for the ham radio group, and Carl had his antenna, radio, and map ready to go!

I rode along to help with photographing the hunt and I piloted the "Fox Hunt Chase Vehicle" (aka golf cart) for part of the time.

We were convinced that the fox would be in a public space in Venture Out, and the signal was bouncing off of the back wall of the community, so we spent a bit of time looking for it in this area behind a few houses.

Eventually, we realized that we needed to try a different direction, and here is Carl having found the fox! (Note that the fox itself is just a prop, there is a transmitter hidden in or near it that is sending the signal that we were "hunting".)

Our fox hunting group -- we initially just had Carl, Roy (on the right) and me, but we picked up a fellow who is studying to take his ham radio licensing exam and he enjoyed coming along!

The fox hunt was named in memory of Alice E Brewer who was a former member of the Venture Out Ham Radio club.

This was the list of participants/teams. Our team (called "Fox Finders" came in third by the time on the photo when we found the fox.

This activity is a little like a game such as a scavenger hunt, but being able to locate a signal with a directional antenna can be useful in many applications. For example, the concept is used in finding "black boxes" from airplanes (but not usually by ham radio operators). Carl shared that the amateur radio club that he belonged to in Columbus, GA had fox hunts that interfaced with the local law enforcement. The hams were requested to help out if any resident of a local memory care center happened to leave the facility without authorization -- the residents wore ankle bracelets (transmitters) and the amateur radio folks could help in locating a lost person. By practicing with a fox hunt, the hams honed their skills in case of a future need.