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

the Hidden Transmitter:


When we were first discussing setting out a hidden transmitter there were questions about how it was going to
work. I had just enough knowledge of electronics back them to build a simple voice playback circuit using an
ISD2000 chip, and to build a simple delay timer circuit. What I came up with was a control box that had a
mic and power cords on it, that could turn on the radio, play back a message to the mic, stay keyed down for
30 seconds, and then turn off the radio and standby for about 5 minutes.

It was usually connected to a car battery for power, and someone woud go hide it and turn it on. It could run
for a week in the summer, or about 4 days in the winter, giving everyone a chance to go looking for it. There
was a bit of a race by some to find it first, but others were just interested in the challenge of fining it
at all. Even people with schedules that normally prevented them from playing cat-and-mouse could go looking
for the hidden transmitter whenever they had time.

After it had been found a few times, the first person to find it (that wanted to) would collect it, charge
the battery back up, and go hide it somewhere else. Usually it was hooked to a 102" fiberglass whip (covered
in black electrical tape) but there were other antennas used, such as speaker wire.

Nobody really considered whether or not it was (FCC) legal, and it wasn't uncommon to hide it on private
property (on a bridge, atop a parking garage, by a school sign, etc) but we didn't care, we weren't bothering
anyone and we were having fun. Also, having an active cat-and-mouse group in town that also could find
hidden transmitters tended to reduce the amount of trouble malcontents would cause on the radio, knowing that
if they got too annoying, they wouldn't stay anonymous for long, and then the people they were pissing off
would be told where they were.

It'd be impossible to play like that in today's paranoid world. Somebody'd probably call the Bomb Squad on us.




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last updated 11/15/2023 at 17:33:33