back to 2023.11.11 George Wyth Park Foxhunt

What we learned:




- Contacting the park ranger before the event was a good idea, we should try to do that for every event. We
should also do it farther in advance of the date of the event.

- We need to find more ways to "get the word out", both as broadcasts to hams in general, and also in contacting
specific hams that have already expressed an interest in playing. Realistically, we probably had just the
right number of people show up today, given that this was a bit of a beta-test of our future regular fox-hunts.

- George Wyth Park is a great place to fox-hunts in the off-season, but I don't think we would want to try it
in the summer when there are lots of people around. I was surprised by the number of people we encountered as
it was. And we noticed several vehicles seemed to be "driving laps around the park" for no apparent reason.

- The park offered a wide variety of locations to hide foxes. My general strategy today was to find an area on
the map that looked good for a hide, drive there, find a parking lot, hop out and hide the fox. All the foxes
this time were hidden within a few feet of the tree-line, which made it easy for hunters to get to them. There
was no need to go into heavy woods, or on long walks. Most of our players were pretty mobile though, so maybe
next time we can move them deeper into the woods.

- The foxes were all hidden in a pretty consistent way. Step a short distance into the tree-line, find some
obstacle for cover, set the box on the ground, and drop a handful of debris on top to cover it up. Next time
I need to be a bit more dynamic in the hides. The last hide in the tree was really the only departure from
this pattern. I had one player comment that the hunts got easier once he "figured out how I was hiding them."

- A few of the players from out-of-town found the hunts to go in an unexpected direction. They were more used
to medium-range hunts within a city, tracking higher powered transmitters. Despite being different than what
they were expecting, they said they still enjoyed it and thought it was a nice change of pace that forced them
to change their technique a little. Maybe the next hunt we do will involve a wider area. But my foxes may
not have enough transmit range for a wide-area hunt. I'll need to at least improve their antennas.

- Four hours seemed like a good length of time for the event. It wasn't so long that it was tiring people out,
but the players got plenty of action throughout the day. We got started with setup pretty early, and were starting
to lose our light by 4pm since the trees effectively pushed sunset back an hour. While I had planned to just do
one hide each with the four foxes, my decision to re-hide two of them just before 3pm to extend the game
delighted several players that had finished the hunts early. They excitedly picked their gear back up and got
back to work as soon as they heard Fox-3 and Fox-4 had been moved and were ready to be tracked down again.

- I was grateful that Mark was able to swing out before the event started and help with setup. I was concerned
with having to leave anything at the starting point as I set out around the park to hide the foxes. With Mark's
help, I'd say I had just enough prep time. As soon as I was back from hiding foxes, I immediately had to start
getting people signed in, set up test beacons, loan out equipment, repair equipment, and give a little bit of
training to some of the new players. Next time I think we should plan on my having a helper for setup.

- I was expecting most or all players to show up with all the gear they needed. Despite this, I brought three
tape measure beams, several radios, offset attenuators, RF adapters, and batteries. As it would happen, I
ended up needing ALL of these things. Several people showed up with only an HT and needed both an antenna
and an attenuator. (and sometimes an SMA adapter) We were inviting new players with no prior experience to
come out, so I guess this should have been expected. I'm moving all those items from the "good ideas" list to
the "essentials" list.

- At the last minute I threw together a sheet with a map of the park and a table of the foxes, frequencies,
and their timing, and printed several copies. The sheets were in high demand, and I ended up handing every
one of these out. That's definitely on my list of things to do for the next event.

- Initially new players that showed up (without gear or experience) were looking to me to train them on how to
operate the equipment, and how to use it to find a fox. But I was so occupied with setup that I really had NO
time to train, and was grateful that others stepped in and took over helping the new players. It looks like
the new players were riding with more experienced players and working as a team, which worked out really
well for everyone. This "buddy system" should be encouraged in future events.

- We need to make sure to remind players to avoid stopping in places that might block traffic. The roads in
the park are winding and an inattentive driver might rear-end a car parked on a blind curve. Remind players
to find a parking lot when they want to stop to take a bearing. All the foxes were hidden close to a parking
lot, so there should be no need to leave a vehicle parked on the road while you search.

- Fox loop times were mostly 5 minute intervals, which turned out to be too long. Players were quickly getting
close to a fox, and then having to stand around and wait for the next transmission. This was probably boring
the players, and slowing the pace of the game. I reduced the loop to 3 minutes and that seemed to help a lot.
To increase difficulty, I think it's better to shorten the transmit time rather than increase the loop time.
Five minutes would have been good (or even a bit short) for a wider area fox-hunt, but they need to be kept
short for a small area hunt like in this park. 30 second transmit times are also probably too long.

- Tape-measure beams flop around a lot in windy conditions. I've had problems with that in the past, so all
of my beams use the widest, stiffest tape measure tape I can find. And even with that, they were just barely
holding up to the wind.

- Fox-6's 2mhz offset attenuator frequency is 146.820, which is the output of Chuck's main repeater. I might
want to change Fox-6 to a different frequency.

- Fox-4's second round (in the tree) appeared to have reduced transmit power. I checked it over and found out
the female SMA on the outside of the box had its center pin pushed in from repeated use. It had actually pushed
the coax out the back of the connector about 2mm, enough to lose contact with the antenna. Fox-3 was also
close to failing in the same way. The coax can be pushed back in but it'll just come out again. I'm going to
try to use hot glue to hold it in, similar to how I use it to reinforce the RG-174 at the BNC on all of my tape
measure beams. (these are purchased 6-inch pigtails with crimped and heat-shrink ends that failed)


If you have any other feedback, I'd appreciate hearing from you. Send e-mail to SEC at W0MG.NET




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