Have You Read These Articles?

Homing In, CQ VHF Magazine, Spring 2010 -- "Innovators in RDF: An Inventor, a Code Writer, and a Fox Meister"

• "Radio telegraphers at a the Brooklyn Navy Yard near his laboratory were startled to hear the William Tell Overture on their receivers amid the dits and dahs they were copying from ships at sea, as de Forest became the first to play phonograph records over the air. It is unclear whether he actually built a switched antenna receiving set for the long wavelengths in use then, but his concept is very much like military microwave RDF systems of today."

• "Dr. Iannucci got the idea for FoxHunt when he and his wife Susan, W6SJI went with friends on their first mobile transmitter hunt with the San Francisco Bay T-hunt group. It's a very simple way for anyone to triangulate bearings from multiple locations and display the bearing intersections on Google Maps. The app corrects for magnetic declination, keeps you from making math and plotting errors, and is definitely 'cool.'"

• "I've been a ham for 15 years or so and have always been interested in this. So I mentioned it to the guys and they said, 'OK, you're in charge.' They call me the Fox Meister."

• "We've had a big building effort for two-meter tape measure yagis. For about twenty minutes before each hunt starts, we'll explain foxhunting techniques to those who haven't done it before. More often than not, the experienced adults will go out with the first-timer youths to help them learn the ropes."

• "W4PHS plotted it and the bearings intersected at a Highway Patrol office, only a third of a mile away from the hill with the affected repeater. When we got there, we used our yagis and loops to pinpoint it. We were able to tell exactly which of the six antennas on the pole was the one from which the carrier was coming."

Links and resources related to this article:

• NorthScope CRT readout
  
• FoxHunt iPhone App
  
• RAI Laboratory LLC
  
• Equipment for on-foot transmitter hunting
  
• Arrow Antennas Foxhunting Loop
  
• KØOV Offset Attenuator
  

CQ Magazine, May 2010 -- "The Thirteenth Annual CQ Worldwide Foxhunting Weekend, May 22-23, 2010"

• K8TB:  "Hear ye, hear ye! Announcing the next transmitter hunt! At 7 PM, a signal from an unknown location will emanate on 145.53 for thirty seconds every five minutes. Your job, if you think you can handle it, is to find the source of that ether-filling RF."

• WO2P:  "As we walked the path to place the south transmitter early on the morning of the hunt, we came across a very young fox pup playing on the path in front of us. We must have picked an excellent hiding spot if it was good enough for a real fox!"

• AB5CK:  "I put my little rig in a baggie and buried it in shallow drifts in a local park. That's living dangerously, because the transmitter could have gotten soaked or even stepped on!"

• WA7NBF:  "There were three two-meter transmitters to find. One was unusual because it was controlled by the hunters themselves, all of whom were licensed hams. They could demand a brief fox transmission by sending it a DTMF tone."

• WA7ZBO:  "I took 26 Styrofoam containers and marked them A thru Z on the outside. Five of them had little transmitters inside, squawking on different two-meter frequencies. The other 21 were weighed down with bottles of water inside. Without opening any, hunters had a maximum of thirty minutes to turn in a card with the right letters next to the frequencies."

Tom Lewis AB5CK put his little rig in a baggie and buried it in shallow drifts in a local park. The mud that he put on top of the snow to mark the location looked a lot like something a dog had left. That was enough to keep anyone from tramping on his rig. Read more about the fun you can during the CQ Worldwide Foxhunting Weekend in the May 2010 issue of CQ Magazine. (Photo by Tom Lewis AB5CK)

Links and resources related to this article:

• North-East Radio Group in Australia
  
• 2010 USA ARDF Championships
  
• 2010 ARDF World Championships
  
• Southern California GeoHunt
  

CQ Magazine, April 2010 -- "Get Ready for Foxhunting Season"

• "Amateur Radio operators have been tracking down signals since the 1930s, starting at hamfests with one-tube transmitters and hand-carried crystal sets."

• "With practice and perseverance, you could win medals and other honors in ARDF, no matter what your age."

• "Our national Championships are open to anyone who can run or walk through the forest for five to ten kilometers while carrying RDF gear."

• "Planning hunts and building gear can be almost as much fun as the actual transmitter tracking. There are plenty of resources to help you."

At a recent radio-orienteering session in a southern California park, Max Praglin KI6SYD (at right) built his own 3-element tape-measure yagi for two meters, then went into the wilderness and found all five hidden transmitters. Read more about hidden transmitter hunts of all kinds in the April 2010 issue of CQ Magazine. (Photo by April Moell WA6OPS)

Homing In, CQ VHF Magazine, Winter 2010 -- "En Route to Croatia via Ohio"

• "Many of them ran the same paths in the forest and got scratches from trees and bushes. Doctors suspected that blood was getting on the branches and being transferred from one runner to another."

• "Tourists like to visit its 14th-century Benedictine abbey, the nature park at Mount Ucka, the woods that are full of Bay Laurel, and three nearby medieval towns."

• "USA's national championships have been combined with IARU Region 2 Championships in odd-numbered years since 2001. Plans are in the works to have the Region 2 Championships be in Canada for the first time in 2013."

• "Bearings were taken one at a time on 488 transmitters in 122 locations inside the garage, at four heights above ground for each location. A second set of data was taken with everything else the same, except that there were 46 other vehicles surrounding the car with the RDF sets."

• "This simulation assumed an 'ideal' Doppler RDF system, which is probably better than the Doppler you are using for transmitter hunting. Many hams have Doppler antenna sets with non-optimum RF switches."

Links and resources related to this article:

• Equipment for ARDF
  
• Offset-type attenuator for ARDF
  
• VK3YNG Sniffer MK4 and other RDF gear
  
• ARDF Team USA at the 2006 World Championships
  
• ARDF Team USA at the 2008 World Championships
  
• 2009 USA and IARU Region 2 ARDF Championships
  
• Official site of 2010 USA ARDF Championships
  
• Wireless InSite
  

Vadim Afonkin KB1RLI traveled to Bulgaria to compete in the IARU Region 1 ARDF Championships during September 2009. There he received an award for his efforts in promoting ARDF in North America. The photo shows him at the end of the two meter course on a Bulgarian beach. Read more about upcoming ARDF Championships events, as well as a computer comparison of Doppler versus other RDF methods in Homing In for Winter 2010. (Photo courtesy Vadim Afonkin)

You can read my regular ARDF Update articles on the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Web site.

73 Magazine ceased publication with the September 2003 issue. Homing In is now in CQ VHF magazine, a quarterly publication. Click for CQ VHF subscription information.

The Fine Print: This is the official Web site for Homing In and other KØOV articles about RDF, but not for any magazine. Homing In articles are produced independently in southern California. Text and artwork of all articles Copyright © Joseph D. Moell. All rights reserved.

Surfing suggestion: Wondering what you've been missing by not reading Homing In since 1988? Check the complete index of topics at this site. It also has links to my ARDF Updates.

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This page updated 11 May 2010