A New Fox Hunt – Half Successful

This week W1MJ and K1MJC deployed their foxes at two local conservation areas in close proximity to one another making for an excellent hunt, combined with the unseasonably warm weather. I tried first on Sunday but had trouble activating the foxes. It seems I was speaking too softly to get them to turn on. Both had been revised to broadcast only when requested to conserve battery.

Returning on Monday, I was able to activate both foxes and spent some time hunting. I wound up chasing a reflection from the W1MJ fox clear on the other side of the park, though I should have realized when third harmonics and no antennas did not yield results despite full signals with any antennas, even with the offset attenuator. I ran out of time that day and had to head home hoping to return later in the week.

Saturday was another gorgeous weather day so I set out a little before noon, this time parking on a different side of the parks. Armed with my tape measure yagi and offset attenuator, I started hunting the W1MJ fox again, this time using an all around better HT — a Yaesu FT-50R — which is a clunky if rugged HT. I found the S-meter much more responsive than that of my Explorer QRZ-1 which seemed to lag while I turned the yagi. I tried to contact another ham on the fox frequency, but had difficulty copying clearly probably due to the movement and hilly terrain. After a short walk in the direction of the fox, I ran into a couple who was also hunting, AC1JR and his companion. With a few more readings and hunting in the woods, we all quickly found the fox one after the other. Success!

Was nice to run into another ham in the wild and have a quick chat about hunts and some of our interests in the hobby. With that, I set off to find the K1MJC fox, but learned quickly from another hunter it had just been retrieved earlier, so I’ll have to wait for another hunt! Great fun and great excuse to get outdoors while putting some skills to practice.