Our Experience in the March 13 Fox Hunt
Jack Williams, K5FIT
This is a look at our experience with the recent Fox Hunt hosted by K1REZ and his son on March 13, 2021.
I had only been involved in one small walking fox hunt before this one but was excited to see how well my home made Yagi antenna would work. I bought an offset attenuator to use with the antenna and since none of my HT radios have a signal meter I decided to use my old trusty Radio Shack Model 95 Pro scanner as a receiver. There is no signal meter but it has a built in attenuator you can turn on and off with a button.
My wife and I arrived at the start point, registered and got our instructions. Once the fox left and started transmitting I immediately got a strong signal and a general direction. Once we were freed to pursue I would find a strong signal and take a bearing using the SigTrax app on my phone to try to get enough bearings to triangulate once the fox stopped moving.
We spent some time driving around and taking signals. I made a mistake with the SigTrax app and accidentally deleted all my bearings I had taken (and not saved as I should) so I decided to go old school and do it by ear. The transmit signal from the fox was very strong and covered a large arc of direction so I took the scanner off the Yagi and used the body block technique with the rubber duck antenna, off some and on some, and used the attenuator built into the scanner. Using this technique to find the null and a general direction we knew we were getting closer. Most of the hounds were struggling a bit so the fox gave one hint and we were within a few hundred yards at that time and closing in. I think we would have found him without the hint before much longer but it did let us know we were in the vicinity.
My wife and I both enjoyed the experience and look forward to the next one.
- Jack Williams, K5FIT