MARS
Amateur Radio Society
FOX Hunt
2024 Feb 11
The Fox Hunt - After months of planning and coordination the much awaited FOX HUNT was held on 11th Feb, Sunday. One of our longtime members who has a reputation of being an excellent fox hunter himself and an avid participant in every event was the designated Fox.
The Fox howl was heard for 60 sec every 240 sec on the VHF frequency 145.000 MHz. The timings followed and power used for transmission were like this: (All times are in IST)
- 08:00 to 08:25 @ 25W
- 08:30 to 09:30 @ 25W / 5W
- 09:30 to 11:30 @ 500mW
So, came the day and many HAMs were on the roads of Chennai. They had formed teams to find this fox. Cars and SUVs were loaded with different types of home-brewed antennae, signal attenuators, trackers, handies, maps and what-have-you's.
After a quick breakfast at some roadside eatery and a fresh cup of coffee, the search began earnestly. Many started off from the outskirts of the city.
Though the actual event officially started at 08:00am (0800hrs), the participants were on the road from the break of dawn. In fact, the outstation team from Bengaluru stayed overnight at a hotel and started hunting before even the fox had had his morning breakfast!
The location provided was within a radius of 30km from the 'Zero Stone' of Chennai city. Just imagine this scene - A car dashes through the morning traffic and suddenly halts on the side of the road. A few men come tumbling out of it holding what looked like cloth hangers - which in fact were antennas and direction finders - in one hand and a walkie talkie in the other. These men would jump out from the vehicle, point their strange devices here and there and then excitedly jump back into the car and drive away!
People on the roads must have been intrigued and amused to see random men in civil clothes perform such actions which must have really looked silly to some and mysterious.
Nevertheless, after some hours of cross country driving, seven teams arrived at the fox location before 11:30am (1130hrs). But the hunt was not over yet. Now they had to find the pups of the fox! Three of them were lost among the fields. The HAMs were once again on the hunt, some using imaginative and homebrewed searching devices to finally bring the pups to their mother.
Finally, three teams managed to locate all the pups and the hunt was over. A well deserved prize distribution ceremony was held and plenty of memories were captured on digital frames. VU3VWR also managed to get some great aerial videos using his drone
Many thanks to all those who organised the event:
- the Event Coordinator: VU2DPN - Deepan,
- the Fox - VU2DH Das,
- the president VU2PTR Thyagarajan.
There were many who worked behind the scenes to make the event a success. These included:
- VU3NKQ Vipin, who got the necessary permissions,
- SWL Arun, harmonic of VU2DH, who was everywhere doing everything,
