back to 11m (CB) foxhunt (aka Cat and Mouse)

hand-held sniffers:


After you got as close as possible in your car, it was time to get out on foot and search around. Few people
had hand-held CBs to use, and handheld scanners were pretty rare, so I started collecting and modifying some
cheap Radio Shack CB walkie-talkies for hunting. I found some 2.5" meters online (no easy feat in the 90s)
and after some poking around in the radio, I tied them into the AGC circuit, which worked as a signal
strength indicator.

I later modified them further by adding a little momentary micro switch to power a small 12v lamp from the
radio's battery pack, to provide light to read the meter in the dark, since people with jobs and school were
limited on their free daytime hours. Those were three-channel Radio Shack TRC-223's.

Radios with collapsable antennas worked well as primitive attenuators, while the other radios could unscrew
the rubber duck antennas to cut back the signal.

One especially good radio to use was the Radio Shack TRC-216, which had a collapsable antenna with outstanding
range. But these were hard to find and I only had a few. The antennas was also easy to damage because of how
long and skinny it was. Unfortunately, in RX, the meter showed battery level, not receive strength, so it had
no "s-meter", and you had to adjust the antenna and go "by ear". Our group was somewhat used to this with our
cat-and-mouse play though, so it was still quite usable.


TRC-216

TRC-223


TRC-216 40CH 1:


TRC-216 40CH 2:



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