开云体育

JJ already mentioned as much on Facebook, but we had a great time with our foxhunt today! JJ and Mike beat me to the park by a little bit and the three of us (plus my 15 year old son) all ended up in the same spot looking for a well hidden transmitter. (Kudos Sierena) I’m not sure how long the 3 of us trampled the weeds in the same area, but we knew we had to be right on top of it….. and we were! Not sure how we didn’t step on it!?

Thanks to all who participated. If you enjoyed it half as much as I did, you’re probably ready for the next one! With that in mind, let’s come up with some ideas for another. Location… teams maybe… lower power transmitter? It’s open for suggestions. My 15 year old son Logan had a good time. He’s not quite ready to get his license or anything yet, but we have talked about which of his buddies to invite to the next hunt. I was in a hurry this time to get there first and the educational time I should have spent with him was at a minimum. Next time I’ll want to start a little sooner and give some explanation before go time without boring him and his buddies to death before the fun.?

Anyway, thanks for a great day and let’s get to planning the next one. 开云体育 is a good place to have discussions throughout the month so we don’t get too far into the weeds during our monthly meeting!

Eric
KD0CEN

One tool I used in the fox hunt Saturday was my TinySA. It’s a spectrum analyzer about the size of a NanoVNA if you’re familiar with those. In the attached picture, I’m monitoring a chunk of spectrum from 130mhz to 160mhz, Which would place the 144.300 mhz fox signal near the middle. Notice the strong signal… -23.7 dBm at 144.68mhz. This is my portable radio set at 1 watt, transmitting from the other end of the couch. If the signal is that strong, you’re pretty close.

My intention was to connect this to a decent antenna on my truck, probably a 1/4 wave on a mag mount and monitor the signal strength as I drove around, noting the signal strength. We ran out of time this go around and didn’t use it in that way, but at one point as Logan was trampling in the weeds With it, he said the signal was around -25dBm. He was close but missed it.?

Anyway, just thought I’d share. It’s not a must have in every toolbox, but I’ve used this little $65 analyzer multiple times since getting it. The difference between this and an S-meter on your radio…. The readout is in dBm, making it a little easier to know if you’re getting hotter or colder.

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