[GCARC] What to buy at Hamfest Sunday for our radio direction finding foxhunt Oct 5

[thewrightplacenj]

Radiosport!
If you do not have a hand-held 2Meter radio, you will want one, or want to pair up with someone who does have one, for the GCARC radio fox hunt (October 5).  Once you have the hand-held 2Meter radio, you will then benefit from having a hand held directional antenna to attach to that radio so that you can “home in” on the hidden transmitter’s location.
You can buy or build an effective hand-held 2 meter beam antenna for fox hunting that will attach to your 2 meter hand held radio.  The key is getting the correct connector to attach the directional antenna to your hand held radio, as all are different.  For example, when I unscrew the antenna connector on my Baofeng 2 Meter hand held, I see the connection is different than for my Kenwood 2 meter hand held.  Thus, I am going to bring my Boefeng radio to this Sunday’s hamfest to find a suitable connector to attach to the directional 2 Meter antenna I already have.
If you do not already have a directional 2 meter antenna, you can look to either buy one or build one.  The plans to build an effective one using the measuring tape from a tape measure can be found online. Here’s one source: 
http://theleggios.net/wb2hol/projects/rdf/tape_bm.htm 
Note that if you are going to build a tape measure antenna, you will still need the correct connector and a piece of coax to attach this to your specific radio.
New to ham radio, and not sure what a radio fox hunt is?  Go to our web site, w2mmd.org, and in the search box type the words "radio direction".  From there you should get a link to a copy of a radio direction finding presentation given to the GCARC club last year, in August 2012.
Good luck finding what you need, and have fun at the hamfest!
Jim n2gxj