ARDF, or Amateur Radio Direction Finding, was successfully carried out last week!
As part of our JSCARC Student Intern support, the JSCARC invited Sarah KC1VCT, Gavin KF8CHK, and Shirina KO6DOS to patriciate in a T-Hunt on Friday. Nov 1, 2024.
We hid 3 fox transmitters on the Gilruth premises and had our intrepid hunters try to locate each of them using NZ1J 2m doppler receivers.
We used these NZ1J receivers in 2 previous JSCARC Student Intern Fox Hunts. Each time we’ve had some issues, but we fixed all the operational and technical bugs. And for this event… everything worked GREAT. In fact, everything worked so well that all three foxes were easily located within one hour a new record time.
Each hidden fox was additionally marked with a 3”x5” bright colored flag to make it a bit easier to find the hidden transmitter. Because the NZ1J receivers worked so well, these flags really made it too easy. We’ll not use these flags henceforward.
Background-
A very popular doppler detector, called the “HandiFinder” was updated with software and LED indicators by NZ1J, Dave Tipping. The original HandiFinder, built with a 555 timer, is extremely easy to build, but only gives an audio indication of the direction of the fox.
NZ1J’s design uses a PIC microcontroller and LEDs to indicate the direction to the fox. It requires a bit more hardware to construct, but with NZ1J’s help W5OC procured PCBs and parts to build about 6+ units for STEM outreach use.
Shout out to Jeff AB4ME and Kelvin K5KGH who supported the Fox Hunt and provided training and guidance to the student hunters.
Afterwards, we made some QSOs on the air from the shack
Here’s a video which we used for doppler receiver instruction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNqUKYkifOo
and here’s what we showed as an overview of the orienteering activities throughout the US https://orienteeringusa.org