back to 2023.12.03 Ames Foxhunt

6. my followups:


Lessons learned from today's event:

- Not sure how, but somehow I put the event down for Saturday in my phone calendar. So I actually made an
extra trip to Ames on Saturday for no reason other than wasting some gas. Owell.

- the Mk4 isn't very sensitive, and was barely able to pick up fox-1 from the starting location. Next time
I should start with a regular HT and 4 element tape beam for at least the initial bearing. Or possibly the
vehicle pole beam. Multiple tapes in the back of the Escape was getting a bit cumbersome.

- tape beams also don't do well trying to sniff out a box in leaf litter. When you're only a few feet away,
you can't really get a good directional reading. The driven element is basically what's doing the sniffing,
which isn't practical while waiving around the end of the beam. I'd like to add another little stub antenna
on the end of the beam, with either a switch or just swap the BNC on the Mk4 for final sniffing.

- not having the doppler available definitely makes things more difficult. Lots of stop-and-get-a-bearing
slowed me down quite a bit, combined with not being familiar with the city.

- the printed map was basically useless. It was difficult for me to figure out exactly where I was on the map
to draw a bearing. So I ended up keeping track of bearings in my head, which also slowed me down a bit.

- I thought I had the talk-in repeater and fox properly programmed into my mobile, but as it turns out they
don't have PL on TX and I somehow set tone squelch, so they could hear me but I couldn't hear them. Got it
fixed eventually though. I also noticed I had TSQ set on a few of my local foxes. So all that's fixed now.

- Weather was very mild for December in Iowa. A little chilly, but not too bad, and no snow on the ground.

- I brought along a little bit of spare gear just in case someone needed a loaner, and in the end I was the
one that ended up using it. My "hybrid attenuator" got its first major use, and worked like a champ. I need
to get that other one finished. And of course that was used with the spare tape beam and one of the HTX-202
that I also brought.

- I might be able to use a lap timer, to keep track of when the fox's next transmission is due. Not sure if I
want to juggle yet another item or phone app though. I was just using my wristwatch and that worked out pretty
well.

- The velcro on the tape beam does a great job of stowing the elements, but I found it really slowed me down
when I was rushing to unpack it and catch the tail end of a transmission. In the end I just stuffed it back
in the truck without tying back the elements, to save time. I should think about a better way to handle this.
I could also imagine cutting a finger on the sides of a tape if I'm rushing too much.

- what I REALLY need to do is make an iPhone app to plot bearings. It's doable, but a lot of work. There are
a few triangulating apps on the android store, but the only one on the Apple store is out of date and can't be
installed on my phone.




last updated 12/05/2023 at 07:26:42