[FoxHunt] Foxhunting/ARDF Equipment

[Bruce]

On 11/13/11 4:44 PM, Marvin Johnston wrote:



 

Hi all,

 

One of the things I've been quite interested in is getting more people

involved in both transmitter hunting and ARDF (Amateur Radio Direction

Finding/Radio Orienteering.)

 

To that end, I've been providing Tape Measure Beams kits, offset

attenuator kits, and MicroHunt transmitters for quite a few years now.

Recently, I added a few more things to the mix trying to get equipment

available.

 

I am curious about a number of things related to increasing the

participation in transmitter hunting/ARDF.

 

* Where do/did you get your initial training? How could it have been

made better?


In my case it was an outgrowth of mobile T-hunting.  As mobile hunts got 
more sophisticated, the "sniff at the end" became more of a challenge. 

#Yes, exactly. Did you know the Ultra-Sniffer and the Mk3 both existed
*before* we had much involvement in ARDF ?
#The organiser of the Townsville Region 3 ARDF (1st International ARDF held
in Australia) came down to give a talk at the "Australian Foxhunting
Championships" held in South Australia looking for people who could form an
Aussie ARDF team. About 5 of us (from different foxhunting teams) decided
we'd give it a go, and only then did I start to attend orienteering events
to find out what this map reading stuff was all about. There was enough
enthusiasm locally to start up the Victorian ARDF group, which was formed
prior to Townsville, and it ran a few events on mostly hand drawn maps to
give us some ARDF practice.


Due to this I was doing a lot of on-foot RDF before I had any experience 
with orienteering or map reading.




* Where do you get your equipment? Is it mostly homebrew, plans on the

Internet, magazine articles, or something else?


For 2 meters, initially homebrew.  TDOA rigs, offset attenuators.  For 
80 meters once I got into ARDF, a Ukranian rig and upgrade to the Aussie 
blue box.

# 80m is a kit that I have home brew modified somewhat to meet my
requirements. A similar kit design is used for the 'loan' 80m sniffers the
club holds. Initially, I had an 80m Ultra-Sniffer and a large DF loop, but
it was quite heavy.
# 2m everyone uses Mk4's now, but I started out with Ultra-sniffers, which
were better suited to ARDF than the Mk3. There were 2 firmware versions for
the Ultra, FoxHunt and ARDF, but there was so little codespace in the tiny
Motorola micro that you had to change over uP chips to change personality. A
new Ultra MkII design was designed but never got off the ground. A few ideas
from the Ultra were, however, incorporated into the Mk4 firmware. 




* If you are traveling, how do you find out when and where local hunts

are held in other parts of the country?


Having heard about them is often the reason that I'm traveling.  :-)

# Exactly. Most ARDF events are held by our club anyway. There are a handful
of interstate foxhunts that have an on-foot sniffer hunt or two. The
Queensland ARDF push largely revolved around 1 person who did the legwork,
and it ceased once he stopped.
# Internationally ?  Look up ARDF regions, or homingin.com for USA.




* How did you find out about the listservers/forums dedicated to

transmitter hunting?


Hard to say at this time, I've been on several for a while.
# We actually started one of them way back, but it has fallen into disuse
once others took over. There are also Facebook pages now.




* How can we reach more people, and with what kind of information to get

them interested and/or involved?


I think stressing the game portion of it.  Cater to some of the crowd 
that is interested in things like the "Amazing Race" TV show, adventure 
racing, etc.  A well-written press release to the local media in advance 
of a practice session inviting the public might help, especially with 
the right spin (and hope for a slow news day).

I'm somewhat surprised, at least locally, that there isn't more interest 
from classic orienteers in ARDF.  I'd like to see more ARDF in 
conjunction with conventional orienteering meets.  There are typically 
50 controls set out, all of the logistics are in place.  Five more 
controls aren't that big of a deal.

# Most, if now all, of our local events are in conjunction with orienteering
events. Largely I'd put our experience from O clubs down as one of 'mostly
tolerant' rather than 'embracing'. The experience varies, but still mostly
'us' and 'them'. If you look at our membership profile, the majority are
foxhunters who also became ARDFers (and many of those who also became
Orienteers, some heavily involved). There are, however, a few who came from
Orienteering to do ARDF (some of who now also dabble in foxhunting). I can't
think of any who went Amateur Radio->ARDF. Trying to get 'normal' Amateurs
involved in actually competing for more than 1 token event is usually
unrewarding :). They are a great resource for helping out at major
championships though. Getting orienteers involved in assisting major ARDF
championships also helps change their attitude too.

# If you can somehow make the radio part seem cooler to youngsters who are
possibly being dragged along to orienteering anyway, rather than nerdy ?

# A lot of people seem to be involved in geoCaching, even families. Perhaps
this is another opportunity area ?

# Orienteering locally has a huge schools program, but it really has very
little to show in the way of long term orienteers who bridged from schools,
other than those who are from orienteering families anyway. One major
problem is distance to events and how do they get there, without involving
the whole family. They seem to be doing much better in smaller rural cities
where the travel is minimal.
ARDF would suffer similar issues if it had such a program. 

--
Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Engineering - jay at impulse.net
Impulse Internet Service  -  http://www.impulse.net/
Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV



 

Cheers,

Bruce