Feburary 1999 Foxhunt

Report on VK3HLP February Fox Hunt 1999

Eight teams took part in the second hunt for 1999. The starting location for the night was at the Dick Smith car park in Springvale. Most teams managed to arrive before the eight o’clock start. Teams were given an information pack with details for the follow hunts and also a card to be handed in at the end of the first hunt to verify that they were at the starting location. If a team didn’t have the card they would have been given a score of 10, regardless of whether got in on the fox or not.

As it happened all hounds had the card so the scores for Hunt 1 didn’t need to be adjusted. The fox was located in Breaside Park. There was no access to vehicles and hounds had at least 1 km into the park to find the fox. The idea for this hunt was to give the runners a good run. Sorry Phil (VK3GMZ), you should have sent one of your other runners for this one.

For Hunt 2 the transmitter was located on the bike path beside the National Water Sports Centre and Carrum Treatment Plant. Again the runners had to run. I am sure they were starting to hate us by now.

Hunt 3 had the transmitter located at the lookout at Earmil Drv Mount Eliza. This location was picked because of its tricky position on the Melways map. And it didn’t disappoint. Several hounds ended up several blocks away and had to run down the beach only to find the transmitter at the top of a rather steep headland. Most hounds found a track up the headland. The transmitter was left on a further 5 minutes as requested by hounds.

For Hunt 4 the transmitter was located at the base of Olivers Hill, Frankston. The idea here was that as hounds were traveling back towards Frankston they wouldn’t hear a lot of signal until they got over Olivers hill as the cliff face would reflect most of the signal out to the bay. Most teams stopped at the top lookout of Olivers Hill only to find that the transmitter was at the base of Olivers Hill this time. So they had an interesting run in front of them.

Hunt 5 was an easy one, the transmitter was located back at the National Water Sports Centre again, but on the other side of the river this time. Teams could drive very close to this transmitter. So the runners got to have a bit of a breather for a change.

Hunt 6 had the transmitter located in Jells Park. Teams had quite a bit of trouble with picking the signal for this hunt, due to other amateurs operating on the Fox Hunting frequency. For this reason teams were directed to head for the supper location to get a better signal, as well the fox signal was pulsed, to help distinguish between the two signals.

Supper was at Andrew house in Glen Waverley

The Official scores were as follows out of a possible 60:

1st VK3HDF 1

2nd VK3YQN 17

3rd VK3MZ 31

4th VK3PW 40

5th VK3TXA 42

6th VK3TKQ 44

7th VK3VT 51

8th VK3BLN 52

The VK3HDF team have to be congratulated on such a low final score. It could have easily been a zero for the night, but for Bruce beating Bryan in on Hunt 3 by only seconds. The VK3HLP team would like to thank all teams which took part in Friday nights hunt.