[WIham] Fwd: New FOX HUNT Being Organized

[Mark Thompson]

Please answer Questions at bottom of email below and return to Joe NOT me nor the list/group. 

Thanks. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe <nss at mwt.net>
To: 
Sent: Thu, May 8, 2014 09:36 AM
Subject: New FOX HUNT Being Organized

Yeah I know, Another FOX HUNT. But please read on. This is going to be different. If you get more than one of these announcements,,, Sorry...

First thing, this FOX HUNT, is NOT associated with any one club or group. This is open to everyone from everywhere. The more the better!

It's location will be determined by the number of participants. In other words, it will try to be as centrally located to all the people that want to participate.

This will be a 2 Meter FOX HUNT..

A few groups in southern Wisconsin have been thinking of doing a FOX HUNT.  Some have done a few before, and others this would be their first time.

I, myself have done so many I could not even begin to count how many. Been doing them off and on since 1975.

As said, some local clubs have done a FOX HUNT with having a wide range of successes. 

So before making this announcement of this New hunt, I did some research for oh, the past six months or so, on what clubs across the country have done for their FOX HUNTS, and how they went. How they did them, and what the level of participation's are, and how often they hold their FOX HUNTS.

I took special note of the two extremes. 

What did the groups that have very successful  FOX HUNT's,  with large participation, and frequent  FOX HUNT's, What do they do for their FOX HUNT's That seem to make them popular? In other words what things SHOULD be done to have a successful FOX HUNT.

AND even more important possibly is the opposite. The clubs that held a  FOX HUNT, and it had low participation, and /  or, few repeat hunts if any. How did they do their  FOX HUNT? In other words what SHOULD NOT be done to have a successful FOX HUNT.

I was amazed at the level of replies I got to my questions. And two things became very obvious as to the above two categories. The Should Do's and the Should NOT Do's.

All the FOX HUNTS that are successful, having a large level of participation, and frequent HUNTS, ( 90% are even monthly! ) Have three things in common, two good things they do, and one bad thing they never did, or that if they did, they stopped doing.

First the good:
There are incentives to be the first to find the FOX, Several kinds of incentives are given, This new hunt will use two of them, that are most common to these successful hunts.

AND

The other "GOOD" thing is they make it a "Social" event too. 

After the hunt a "Social" meeting happens. And this also makes sense too. Think of your club or group. Of all the activities, What ones are the best attended?  Things where it is "Social" like holiday parties,  etc.

Now the Bad:
There was one completely universal with 100% solid consistency. They, do NOT USE a robotic FOX, ya know the automated hidden transmitter that does all the timing and transmitting. Someone goes out and hides this little "FOX" and then the hunters go and try to find it. 

Every successful group uses a Live FOX. 

And many groups that replied to me said they Started off with the robotic FOX, and had limited to bad levels of success with their hunts. 

Many of the successful groups, said they started with a robot, and had only so-so levels of participation. Hunters would come and do only a hunt or two and never come back. But as soon as they went with the live FOX it changed. BIG TIME! They could have never thought it would make such a difference.

Many said the hunts are sooo popular with the live FOX, that the attendance of the hunts most times exceeds the attendance of the meetings for the club. And some say it's even close to the attendance of the big main holiday parties.

One club says the level of "FUN" is so high, that they started doing a monthly FOX HUNT, every single month they hold a hunt. almost never have missed a month. And this started back in 1975!!!!

So this New FOX HUNT will NOT be using a Robot FOX, the FOX will be Live!

I myself never really understood the robot one anyway. The poor chap that hides the Robot FOX, what does he get to do while the FOX HUNT is happening. Obviously he can not participate. He knows where the FOX is true? So what does he do for the duration of the hunt? And this automatically removes one hunt team from the group of hunters!

OK, below here is a description on how this new FOX HUNT will happen.  After the description will be a short questionnaire. Please answer the questions and send it back to me at.

nss at mwt.net

After the questionnaire, is a couple of examples on how much fun these can be.

Here we go....

============================

Here is a typical Hunt, and how it happens...............

The "HUNT" will always start off as a vehicle driven hunt. Your first signals heard, you will be driving towards. The end when you find the FOX, it could be either a drive or walk. Where some hunts you could drive right up to the FOX, while others may need some walking to get to the Foxes Den. 

Say the "Hunt" officially starts at 7 PM. 

Now this can be Changed, this is just an example, even tho, the evening hunts are the majority types done. Probably a 75% level are evening hunts. . This all depends on the answers given in the Questionnaire. Maybe we would want an like Saturday afternoon HUNT? Whatever the most of the group wants is how it will be...

In this example, this first hunt I WB9SBD will be the Fox.  And Someone who volunteers this first HUNT, is the master of the hounds. Description of this job follows...

The "Master Of The Hounds" I just one of the actual FOX HUNT Teams. This first hunt the master will be a volunteer. Then after that it is chosen automatically. The process is seen below....

I the Fox will go into my Den at about 6:30 or so.

At 6:30 till 6:45 the hunt teams check in with the "Master Of The Hounds" at the designated starting area. And the "Master Of The Hounds" takes down their info. The "INFO" consists of,,,

The Name & Call of head hunter of each team,

Description of vehicle for each team: Matt- KC9UPE = Dark Blue SUV,  Tom-N9PQJ = White Malbu, etc.

Once the team is checked in with the master of the hounds, they are free to go to any starting location they wish to go to. Or stay at the designated starting area. That is a risk they they must decide on. Because one of the few rules is, that the " FOX" must be audible to a typical mobile station at the designated starting area. If you go off to a different spot and do not hear them, oh well.

Now 5 ( or 10 depending on the amount of hunters ) minutes before the start of the hunt. The Master of the hounds, Calls the fox on a cell phone, and tells the fox, the information collected from the teams, so the Fox knows how many hunters there are and descriptions of vehicles.  In the 70's we did this by using a super coverage repeater and the fox ran just enough power to get into the repeater, but not be able to be heard at the starting point.  This was done to try to keep the hunters from getting a  reading even before the hunt starts.

Now we can use a cell phone so that way of cheating is gone.

OK it is Now 7:00 
I Transmit. I am using the YTARC 315 repeater. The majority of the hunters that joined made the centralized location be in the Baraboo area and the YTARC repeater 315 is the best coverage for the area.

 When I transmit I transmit just like I am using the repeater as normal. I transmit on the input frequency.  This way you are guaranteed to know when I am transmitting because you hear me on the output. As soon as you hear me you drop down to the input and get your direction headings and head on out.

I will transmit for one full minute every five minutes.
7:00
7:05
7:10

etc....

And the hunt continues...

I continue with my transmitting schedule, and as the FOX is found by each team I would check them off the list of hunters, so I know who is till out there looking.

I check them in and then tell them where to go (more on that later) I want them to leave the FOX's DEN as fast as possible so they do not alert other hunters of my location.

Now we can if we want to, set a time limit. Say the hunt Stops at 9.

So starting at say 8:30 in my transmissions I start to give clues as to my location. To aid any that have not found the FOX yet. Making them more and more obvious so hopefully everyone eventually finds the FOX before the final cut off time of 9 .

Ok as I stated, when a team finds The FOX they are checked in, and told to go to wherever the FOX chosen for the after hunt fun.

This was typically someplace like PIZZA HUT or similar establishment.

Now The First team that finds the FOX, are of course the winners, and this is where the incentives to be the first to find the FOX comes in. First to find the FOX is the winners!

What do they win?

Two things

1-  They get to be the FOX for the next hunt.

AND

2- they go to the "PIZZA" place or whatever, and they got to eat as much Pizza and drink as much as they want. for Free!

The FOX and the other teams divide up the winning teams bill.

We may impose a price limit of "X" amount total that  the "Loser's" will contribute to. something to work out with the group I guess. Maybe limit their bill to 20 bucks or something like that. so it would be 20 divided up by the rest of the teams and the out going FOX.

Now for the next hunt, The outgoing FOX ( me ) is now the Master Of The Hounds,  and the winner is now the FOX.

See this combines a fun new activity, The FOX hunt,, WITH an activity that always brings in a good level of participation, the "Social" events like the holiday parties or the "Zilches"

a win / win  combo I think.  And a LOT more exciting that hunting for a meaningless un-personal box transmitter. Because the FOX can actually interact with the hunters. With what he is saying during his 1 minute transmissions.

Here are a pair of hunts that I was in as examples of this fun and interactions.  I'll post the questionnaire after these stories.

I remember one hunt we had back then. Now this is a hunt were the hunters have had years of experience already, so the FOXES were making it ever more difficult to find them any way they can. I mean crazy stuff, Using high gain beams to make a narrow transmitted signal, then pointing that at like a large water tower and bounce the signals off of it.  Or changing power levels as they were transmitting, or again using a beam, and spinning it around as they are transmitting.

With out begginner hunts here we won;t allow any stuff like that. Maybe in the future,.  but not now.

  It was like the first week of January, super cold, and icy. The hunt started, we were in the designated start area. in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, we got our first beam heading and it was southeast, and very weak, detectable but barely!

we're OFF!

5 min later the next transmission  still southeast and not much stronger.

This goes on for 45 min to a hour finally the signal is strong, and we are DOWNTOWN CHICAGO IN ONE OF THE MAIN CITY PARK LIKE AREAS!!!

soon every hunter is there, and we all have left our cars for all the beam headings has the FOX being in the park someplace. So everyone is now on foot.

Signal is STRONG!!!  but very hard to get a good beam reading. we are all assuming it is reflections off all the giant buildings making many echos. sometimes spinning the beam showed nothing at all for a heading it was either acting omnidirectional or a kazillion minor lobes. you just could NOT get a reliable direction to go towards.

This continued on for what it seemed like forever! Every time the FOX transmitted you just could not get a positive beam heading. It was driving everyone crazy!

Then one fateful time the FOX started transmitting, and the team next to us couldn't get a good reading again just like us. so the guy with the antenna and radio started to run off hoping to maybe get a better reading from a different location before the FOX would stop transmitting. In his enthusiasm, he totally wiped out and ended up laying face down in the snow. And then it happened, The FOX Laughed! We all were stunned, the FOX is so close he can see us. He laughed when he saw that guy wipe out!

(The automated FOX wouldn't do that)

But we still were no closer to finding him. Everyone was now "LOOKING" what can be seen from where the guy wiped out, to where we have not yet hunted to?

Nothing,, it's getting later, the hints start to come out now.,, and it still wasn't helping. It was driving us all crazy! like a dozen teams in a park the size of 1/2 a foot ball field. and we can't find the FOX.

Now it got confusing, he would transmit and he started playing a game of youre getting hotter or colder, he would be saying that, but what team is he referring to? So people would walk one way and he'd say youre getting colder, but teams were all waking in different directions, so everyone would change directions, so some were getting closer but are now walking away! UG!!

Then it happened, two teams were side by side, standing waiting for the next transmission to start, and it did right on time. And again no good reading! One of the teams like a pissed off golfer screamed and threw his antenna onto the ground and again they heard the FOX laugh. BUT the laugh was not only on the radio they heard it directly.!

It came from up,, UP HIGH! They had found the FOX, he has been for the whole time up inside one of Chicago's official Christmas trees! He had climbed up about 40 feet up in the tree and thats where he was the whole time. And the reason we couldn't get a good beam heading because he was above all the beams!! If someone would have by accident tilted a beam UP we would have found him very quickly.  But who thinks of that?

Another cool hunt was also in the winter, and we all got to a general area quickly, but again could not find him. This time we were getting good beam headings tho, and all were crossing in this one area,  after a while it got down to a very small area. I mean VERY SMALL. yet we still could not find him.

It got down again to the clues helping find him. he would start to talk about the northern lights, and other cold like Alaska type of stuff. Eskimos, seals, polar bears, Yikes!  etc. We finally did find him, where was he? He had down there hollowed out from the non street side into one of the giant snow piles made by the city when plowing the area. he hollowed out a hole big enough to park his VW bug into it so from the street you would not see it and never know you were literally withinn feet of him on the street. only if you were on foot and walking on the other side of the pile would you see him :-)

Holding the hunt like this on the repeater freqs also, advertises the hunt to anyone listening because they will hear it happening on the repeater output, and may join in on the fun the next month.

And just like zilch and the other social parties the after hunt party was always a great time everyone talking about the hunt and what happened to them during the hunt.

These can be huge fun!

What ya think?

Joe

=================================

OK Questions Time.

Name?

Call? (If any)

Would you be willing to be the First "Master Of The Hounds"?

Hunt times,       Evening Hunt? Or Afternoon Hunt?

Afternoon hunts obviously would have to be on Saturday or Sunday.  If you choose the after noon hunts,,  what day is preferred? and what start time and duration?

Evening hunts,  any day is OK obviously,  what day is your preferred day and again start time and duration? start time of the hunt, and of course some time before the actual hunt for teams to check in with the master of the hounds.

Your preferred hunt general area centered on what city? And what repeater would we use?

Have you done any FOX HUNTS  before? If so, how many, and where? And type of Hunt. Live FOX or Robot?

Make a limit on how much each "loosing" team.  UG thats sounds bad.  Limit the amount the teams that did not find the FOX first will contribute to the winning teams meal?

If so,,  what would or should be the upper limit any one team would need to contribute?

Your thoughts, comments, ideas?

Please E-Mail your answers to:

Joe WB9SBD

at

nss at mwt.net

I Thank You