[FoxHunt] Lose your parachute? RDF to the rescue.

[boeing377 at aol.com]

I skydive and also have an interest in radio direction finding. Never 
thought the two hobbies would intersect. In the March 2006 issue of 
SKYDIVING magazine there is an article about a new product which 
employs a small transmitter fastened to your main canopy which is 
activated when you do a cutaway (a procedure where you jettison a 
malfunctioning main chute in order to be able to open your reserve 
chute without entanglement). A receiver with a sig strength meter and a 
directional antenna is used to locate the canopy. Tests of the 
prototype were very successful enabling novices to locate the 
transmitter at distances over a mile. Main canopies cost around $1500 
up and they are sometimes lost if a cutaway is performed. I did a 
cutaway last August in Rantoul Illinois and lost some of my gear in 
dense soybean fields even though I had a good visual fix on where it 
landed. It was swallowed in the vegetation and could not be located 
visually from the air or ground despite intensive searching. A 
transmitter and RDF sure would have solved my problem. A natural 
evolution would be to incorporate GPS and transmit the location to a 
suitable receiver, but I prefer the DF foxhunt aspect.