Ham Radio, Foxes, and Rhode Island’s Awful Awfuls…Wow, What A Wonderfully Strange Hobby!

Skip KB1CNB sent around the notice that the Bristol County Repeater Association (BCRA) was doing another fox hunt and the games began! These amateur radio direction finding exercises, where Skip and now Kevin N1KJS radiate boops and beeps from a transmitter in their vehicles somewhere on the Massachusetts and Rhode Island border, and the rest of us circle around for hours looking for them, are becoming cult classics.

AA1F and I have not missed a single one. And I do recommend it for couples…because if you can survive a radio fox hunt together while trying to, ummm, “negotiate” which direction to go every 5 minutes in a 5 mile radius for 4 straight hours, well, uhhh… let’s just say it builds character and leave it at that.

By our third one, we invited Jeff AC1JR to go with us. His version is here and mine is here. And the result of our team effort was that Jeff has never entered a car with AA1F and I since. But he (along with his wife Holly) have become our biggest BCRA Fox Hunt competitors. Well, at least in AA1F and my minds… truth be told, we have never come close to beating them.

So this round, I invited KB1REQ to join us. I knew he could tolerate me at my worst, and not just because he’s seen it, but he has also been known to cause it 😂. A little AA1F and KM1NDY bickering over signal strength or driving the wrong way would not bother him a bit.

We put the 2 meter magmount antenna on the roof of AA1F’s truck, picked up KB1REQ, and headed toward the center point of the fox hunt in Swansea MA. And that was our first mistake. We were looking for two transmitters this round, and started with Skip’s Fox 1.

Every other fox hunt, AA1F and I have started on the Fall River side of the Taunton River. This time, with the center point of the 5 mile hunt radius now moved to Swansea, i.e., on the other side of the waterway, we started there instead. You can see what our map looked like below with six headings taken on the western side of the Taunton River. In fact, the one heading we actually took from the east side appeared to show the transmitter back on the west side. Our primary tool was my handheld yagi (Arrow brand) and Yaesu FT-4X HT with a couple of passive attenuators (3dB and 6 dB) that KB1REQ had brought along. The FT-4X has a signal strength meter that is quite helpful. We had one or six other radios with us as well.

By now, KB1REQ was getting his own bearings so to speak after having participated in his last fox hunt a decade earlier, and his acute intuition regarding RF (and in particular VHF) was starting to kick in. In fact he led us to Skip’s hiding location in a retail plaza without ever taking another heading. Fox 1 was found (and the .gif above proves it!)

Mike K1MJC had already found both foxes, and was the first to do so. For what it is worth, he was using an impessive doppler antenna array to direction find.

And too our dismay, we also learned that Jeff AC1JR and Holly had already found the first fox! We took off in a hurry after Kevin’s Fox 2. And if you take a look, our map had a very sparse number of headings…

…And yes Jeff, this is because we had gotten a couple of hints (we were desperate to beat you guys!) First, Skip told us Fox 2 was “in another state”. And then he eluded to the fact that it may be at an eating establishment. Between KB1REQ’s confidence in RF and his knowledge of this corner of the world, two headings later and we ran into Kevin N1KJS operating Fox 2 at the Palmer River Grille on Route 136 in Rhode Island. Of the 9 or so teams, we arrived in the middle of the pack. But much much more importantly we had a great time!

Jeff and Holly had come in second place just behind Mike K1MJC. They were nearly back in Boston by the time we arrived at Fox 2. Read Jeff AC1JR’s take on this hunt here.

(Poor Kevin actually couldn’t get out of his truck for the picture. Because unbeknownst to most, he had to keep pressure on the speaker mic jack of his Baofeng with his hands in order to actually transmit Fox 2!)

Following the fox hunt, KB1REQ’s senses led us to one more destination, the Newport Creamery for an Awful Awful. (If you have to ask, you clearly are not from Rhode Island!) And, on top of it all, he left something behind for me that was guaranteed to quiet me down. Haha, that last sentence is indeed a riddle!

Finally, remember, keep that Yagi parallel to the ground, ‘cuz you ain’t tracking satellites!

Thanks Skip and Kevin and the rest of the BCRA for another epic event! 73s my friends!

KM1NDY

[Check out our previous BCRA Fox Hunts here, here, and here!]