Fox Hunt Report – January 22nd, 2022
Fox Hunt Report – January 22nd, 2022

Report

On Saturday, January 22, 2022 we had our test fox hunt. We wanted to have a test fox hunt for both the hunters and the hider to test their equipment and to experiment with different power levels on the fox equipment. We had a good group of hunters come out and almost everyone found the fox. We even had a few operators at home and even some mobile who were not hunting, but gave signal reports and helpful information to both the hider and the hunters. We gave out several clues and helped each other along the way to find the foxes. Everyone left with a smile on their face, so I would say it was a successful hunt.

General Information

    • Date: Saturday, January 22th, 2022
    • Time: 20:00Z - 22:00Z (3:00PM - 5:00PM EST) 
    • Location: Holston Valley Drive Greenbelt Trailhead
    • Hunters: KO4LBE (First finder), KO4TDK, KO4VPS, KO4SCU, KO4SCT, KO4TOH, N4CRS
    • Supporters: W4GAJ, K4TEN, WX4ET
  • Primary Fox: 5W Baofeng in the parking lot
    Secondary Fox: 15mW Film Cannister Fox hidden by a drainage pipe

Photos

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After Action Report

We had a successful fox hunt. We had a few rough spots and learned a lot about how low power can propagate and cause reflections with our downtown environment. This hunt gave us a lot of ideas and things we need to improve upon to make the next hunt more successful.


Strengths:

  • Primary fox was easy to find even with just a vertical antenna
  • Having multiple powers available helped lead the activators closer
  • Doing check-ins beforehand really helped to know who was out there hunting and allowed us to help them out with clues and check in periodically. 

Improvement Opportunities:
  • We need to do a better job at organizing the start and end of the fox hunt. Check-ins could have gone smoother and we need to officially close out the fox hunt on the repeater before turning off the foxes.
  • Had some issues with the primary 5W fox that need to be worked on.
  • Once we dropped the power 15 minutes in (this should be done at 30 minutes or so next time) we had some people lose the signal completely so we bumped it back up which hurt those closer to the fox as they were overloaded. 
  • Encouraging team operation would help significantly. Also could involve those at home giving signal reports to hunters may help them triangulate it quicker.

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