Damper Creek Sprint ARDF Report
Report & Results are below the Event Details
Map has been updated with TX locations.
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As per usual now, it’s a MapRun event. No need to eyeball the transmitter – it is deliberately well hidden from public view.
Event Name: /Victoria/OV-Clubs/AmateurRadioDirectionFinding-ARDF/Damper Creek ARDF July 2022.
In fact, if you are quick off the mark you could even squeeze it in today, Friday!
When: Commencing Saturday 16 July, 1:30pm. Transmitters will run daily from 1:30pm to 5:30pm till at least Sunday 24th July (or later on request).
Start is where the dirt path leaves on the south side of the tennis club carpark, in Federal Reserve, Mt Waverley. Melway 61D9.
WARNING: Don’t forget that once you Start, avoid going anywhere near there again till you actually want to Finish.
Frequency 145.300Mhz. 12s Sprint timing, 5TX. Time Limit 90 Minutes. If you want to give yourself the full time-limit, don’t forget to start before 4pm.
It is possible you may not hear all transmitters from the start location, so keep an careful ear out as you head around. I could hear 4 of the 5 at the Start.
Report
Well done to everyone who gave it a go over the week, a total of 13 competitors.
Special thanks to Geoff, who not only managed to win overall, but did it while picking up all the transmitters for me as well. He had no choice but to do it quickly, as he rang me around 4:30pm today saying he was heading to try the event. I pointed out to him that it was less than an hour before the transmitters were due to turn off at 5:30pm. Geoff figured he therefore might have to run. He managed to locate the last one to collect, #4, just before they all turned off! I hope he had a backpack with him, or lots of roomy pockets. Geoff gets the Golden Retriever award (hey it’s gold for 1st place, right?).
Most people chose the nice weather today to attempt the event, but Henk & Di also struck a good afternoon mid-week. Oddly, noone chose yesterday (Saturday). I wonder why? Jack was first off the mark (last weekend in the drizzle), managing to hold on to the winning time till today. Jack is therefore awarded the Beaver award.
Second place goes to Darian, followed by Mark. However, I should mention Mark’s time may be artificially long, as he accidentally ‘started’ before he even got out of his car. I have instructed him as to how to cancel out and restart in Maprun. He might have even nudged Darian out of second place. Along with Jenelle, Mark also decided on an unconventional route choice off the map. I’m pretty sure you aren’t really meant to do that in ARDF, but Jenelle left the maps at home, so I’ll decide to ignore it this time. It does make sense if you are going between #3 and #4, but probably isn’t much shorter. I have decided to award both Mark and Jenelle with OBE awards (that’s OutofBodyExperience, not OrderofBritishEmpire – I’m not Tony Abbott!). Maybe Mark should also get the Tardigrade award, for his late start?
Many reported not hearing #5 from the Start, but you were forewarned. I note also that most took a more complicated route over two creeks to #2, rather than directly in via the path below. A better map may have helped out here. The dithering by Di and Henk just before #2 makes amusing viewing in replay mode. Di & Henk are hereby awarded the Phaff award.
Peter’s result may not be indicative. He decided to willfully ignore my careful warning, imploring competitors to avoid going too close to the Finish before they actually want to finish, so we will never know what became of him after #3. Did he find any other transmitters? We’ll never know, but I have decided to posthumously award Peter the Icarus award, as all that I found left was a smoldering pile of feathers.
Ewen’s result, however, is even more curtailed than Peter’s, in that it is completely absent. I’m told there is some terrible embarrassment there, which he hoped to avoid by not even uploading his result. Unfortunately that has backfired, as now, due to this very report we now all ponder what he might be trying to hide. Ewen is awarded the Bloody Mary ghost award.
Another thing to note is that the most popular order was 3-1-4-2-5, which probably isn’t the most optimal route. I consider that a bonus for the course setting (or likely more just due to the land topology hiding #5 till later).
Next ARDF event is Sat 13th August at Bellbird Dell, by Icarus. He is also setting the next AR run street-O on Wed Aug 10.
Results
Click here to see results, and view each competitors route.
Report on Radio Combo Event 7 May 2022
A Radio “Combo” event was run in conjunction with the Saturday afternoon Orienteering event at Endeavour Greens on 7 May 2022. Unforunately the weather was rather poor but despite that we had eight people competing.
Five 2m Fox-Or transmitters were placed in bush or park areas on the map and competitors had to locate these once they had reached the large red circles on the map. A copy of the map is below with small blue dots indicating approximate transmitter locations. A 75-minute time limit was set with 3 points per minute late penalty. The event was run using MapRun and no flags were set with the Fox-Ors.
Congratulations to Bruce Paterson who got all 20 orienteering controls and 5 Fox-Ors in the time, achieving a perfect score of 120 points. Newcomer Christopher Hall also did very well, getting all five Fox-Ors and all but three of the orienteering controls. Chris also managed his time very well, returning 30 seconds before the 75-minute deadline. Monica Lo Presti came in third with a respectable 91 points. Jack Bramham was feeling a bit unwell following a flu vaccination the previous day but still went out to get one of the radio controls after spending some time getting MapRun set up on a new phone. Scores are copied below (also available on MapRun “Leader Board”):
Hays Paddock Sprint ARDF Training
Hays Paddock training event is on from 9 Oct – 24 Oct (or later if requested). For now only if it’s in your 15km circle, but fingers crossed that may change, before the batteries die.
Sorry if outside your circle – I tried to suit as many as I could !
The 2m transmitters are on daily from3-7pm daily. Time limit 90 minutes. Frequency 145.300 MHz, 5TX Sprint Mode
The event will be on MapRun6. Use the QR code on the map, “Events Near Me”, or in Victoria/OV-Clubs/AmateurRadioDirectionFinding-ARDF/
The start, as shown on the map, is the northern track junction east of the carpark.
Here’s the map:
So that’s a wrap.
Tracks and results are now visible here
Congratulations to Jack on the winning time, and I think a pretty impressive track. Apologies to those who missed out on hunting down #3, when it had a temporary outage. I can see some spent a while on long excursions looking for a signal. Click on any of the tracks to see where it actually was located. Jenelle just beat out hubby, leading a large cohort who were all close after the 50min mark. And well done to Peter M who, as usual, did the event in PMT as the controls were being picked up. He brought the total up to 16 competitors, which is a great effort.
By the way, #5 was located on the peninsular south of the creek (which is even more ‘loopy’ than mapped), but seems MapRun just allowed check-ins on the north bank, as I can see a few made use of! Oh well. We awarded Greg #4, as he was unable to get there due to the lake flooding.
Many thanks to Bill, who was able to monitor the TXs for me when required, and who we can all thank for restoring #3 to health – three times! (all for differing reasons). The firmware will upgraded so the website auto-update can be stopped for easier/safer delayed-turn-on programming (reason 1). #3 will receive a new battery (reason 2 & 3).
PS: The next version of MapRun6 will have configurable control punch tones, which will be much more satisfactory for handsfree (phone in pocket) ARDFing.
2021 ARDF membership form
If you are a returning Vic ARDF member who has joined via Eventor, and none of your details below have changed, you do not need to fill in a form. Everyone else needs to fill in a 2021 membership form (links below) and send to Kristian and Suzanne, at the address included. Payment details are also in the form.
Attention OV members:
- If you are a member of another Victorian club, please join that club first, then join ARDF in Eventor.
- In Eventor, you can still enter any OV event with whichever club you wish to. We encourage entering under ARDF, as this helps our stats.
- If you wish to join OV, and ARDF is the only orienteering club you want to be a member of, please do not use Eventor to join; fill out this form and Bank Transfer the $45.
Your Details that may have changed:
- New SI stick number (did you buy an SI-Air stick recently?)
- New address
- Joined/lapsed OV or WIA memberships
- New callsign
- New email
- New contact phone number
- Sex/Name changed
PDF document: https://ardf.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Victorian-ARDF-Group-Membership-2021.pdf
Word document: https://ardf.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Victorian-ARDF-Group-Membership-2021.docx
Vermont South ARDF 2m Sprint Event
After some teething problems with logging the GPS locations for the start and each of the transmitters only to find the program I used to save the
locations only went down to 3 decimal places. I then went back to the course and tried again using another 2 apps this time it was better. 6 decimal
places.
The MaprunF file was created and sent to Geoff Hudson to create the file for the MaprunF app.
My map was made using Open Street Map but Geoff put the Coordinates onto the Camelot Rise Streeto map. This map had better detail of the area but
the exact start location was slightly out. I know the advertised start location of the bridge was accurate as when I did a test of the event MaprunF
started me as I stepped onto the bridge.
All of the transmitters were located in the park and I noticed from the various course routes that having the Motorcross Track, Whitehorse Waste
Transfer Station and Bunnings did make for some interesting route choices.
Transmitters were activated on December 14th and originally the plan was to collect them on December 24th. As the course dates did not suit everyone it
was decided to leave the transmitters out until after New Years Day. I could hear Transmitter 2 from home so each day between 15:00 and 19:00 I
could monitor it. Occasionally if conditions were good I could hear TX3 as well. From the Bunnings carpark I could hear all of the transmitters with
TX1 being the weakest.
In the time the transmitters were out only 7 people attempted the course and owing to the time of the year it’s understandable. For those of you who did
not do the course and wondering what the terrain is like here is a video I made of my test run: https://youtu.be/qxTOoP5uCfw
Not the best but it will give you a good idea of the area. Hopefully if I make another video like this I will get the map and the synch of the receiver
better.
Peter VK3ADY was the first to attempt the course but did not allow enough time and after he found his 3rd transmitter the timer cut in and all of the
transmitters turned off. Peter returned the following day to find the last 2 transmitters.
Mark VK3BES could only hear 3 of the 5 transmitters. I did hear TX5 come on the day he attempted the course but it may have shut down shortly
after. I was planning to collect the transmitters on Monday Jan. 4th but as TX5 and TX4 were reported not transmitting I collected them on Sunday 3rd.
1,3 and 5 were still going strong but by the time I had collected 3 and 5 TX1 it had gone silent as well.
Name Callsign TX Order Time Distance Date Comment Peter Cole VK3ADY 5,4,2 01:04:06 3.98 16/12/20 Peter Cole VK3ADY 1,3 34:04:00 1.94 17/12/20 Picking up missed TX’s J. Bramham VK3WWW 1,5,4,2,3 31:39:00 2.4 19/12/20 Course Checking + Video Peter Cole VK3ADY 1,5,4,2,3 29:58:00 2.4 19/12/20 DF1FO 2m RX Test Bruce Paterson VK3TJN 3,2,5,4,1 28:51:00 3.26 23/12/20 Monica LoPresti VK3FFAB 3,5,1,4,2 57:45:00 3.3 23/12/20 Joined by Uncle Rod Ewen Templeton VK3OW 5,1,4,2,3 32:40:00 2.37 28/12/20 Jenelle Templeton VK3FJTE 1,4,2,3,5 01:00:06 3.29 28/12/20 Mark Besley VK3BES 3,5,1 41:37:00 2.26 01/01/21 TX2 and TX4 not operational
Ashwood South Sprint ARDF Report
This Covid-safe event ran for over 3 weeks for 4 hours a day, stretching from Jack first out the gates on Thursday 22nd October, through to Henk & Di on Saturday 7th October. I suspect this may be the longest foxhunt we’ve ever run?! Perhaps longer even than the US election. Of course this renders it a bit pointless to include the traditional reference to the state of the weather at the event.
Kristian has just pipped Geoff for the fastest time just under the 3/4 hour mark, but note the impressive minimal distance Geoff managed it in. However, we should note that Kristian had some issues using MapRunG, and was forced to return to his car part way though his run, as well as locating 3 of his transmitters by sight. As the transmitters had been very carefully hidden, as they were going to be out in the wilds for quite some time, this would have been particularly difficult. He also didn’t take out a paper map, complicating things for himself.
Darian, Pierre & Cameron, I’m told, also somehow forgot to use MapRun (?), so also had to eyeball locate some of their transmitters. I’m not sure I completely understand that, but anyway, Darian-et-al’s track was loaded up retrospectively. Unfortunately they were over the 90min time limit, so I had to mark down as overtime, but all their results are still shown. A welcome to first-timer, Cameron.
Jack was so keen he decided to have multiple goes at the event, finding a different set of 4 transmitters each attempt. On his first attempt, he was never able to hear TX#3, so after that I decided to swap TX#3 and TX#5 positions, as the latter was a much stronger TX. Jack returned a second time to check the new TX configuration, and then yet again on a later weekend to post his 2nd result, which I’ve shown at the bottom as unofficial.
Rod notes the event was an excellent start to his weekend, and he & Monica liked the course layout. Their course length is also excellent, only 400m longer than Geoff’s. Di mentioned that she & Henk might well have found all 5 transmitters under the time limit, if Henk hadn’t wanted to actually see all the transmitters (see above!), but as they were running a bit short on time decided to cut out the one over the other side of the creek. Good to know all the transmitters are still working fine after 3 weeks, as they went for a stroll on Saturday 7th.
The first event upload to MapRun didn’t successfully set it up as a Score event as wanted, but unfortunately the second attempt didn’t seem to either. I’ve therefore extracted the results here, taking into account those who eyeball located some TXs, and the TX location swap. Beware that the Track files linked will have TX5 & TX3 swapped still. Many thanks to Geoff for promptly doing the MapRun submission – if you can prepare a (correct), MapRun compatible, kml file for him detailing the TX locations, this is a lot of the work required done.
| Ashwood South Sprint ARDF Results | |||||||
| Name | Place | Txs | Track | Time | km | Age | When |
| Kris | 1 | 5: 5, 4, 1, 2, 3 | Track | 00:43:37 | 5.75 | M30-34 | 31/10/20 |
| Geoff | 2 | 5: 2, 3, 1, 4, 5 | Track | 00:45:48 | 3.78 | M65-69 | 26/10/20 |
| Ewen | 3 | 5: 2, 1, 4, 3, 5 | Track | 48:18:00 | 5.35 | M70-74 | 26/10/20 |
| Monica & Uncle Rod | 4 | 5: 3, 2, 1, 4, 5 | Track | 00:58:20 | 4.2 | W25-29 | 31/10/20 |
| Mark | 5 | 5: 4, 1, 3, 2, 5 | Track | 01:03:23 | 5.52 | M60-64 | 01/11/20 |
| Jack | 6 | 4: 2, 1, 3, 4 | Track | 00:59:18 | 5.18 | M65-69 | 22/10/20 |
| Doug | 7 | 4: 5, 2, 1, 4 | Track | 01:14:57 | 5.79 | M50-54 | 05/11/20 |
| Jenelle | 8 | 4: 5, 2, 1, 4 | Track | 01:16:52 | 6.11 | W65-69 | 26/10/20 |
| Henk & Di | 9 | 4: 5, 2, 3, 1 | Track | 01:27:18 | 5.62 | M70-74 | 07/11/20 |
| Jack (unofficial) | N/A | 4: 5, 4, 1, 3 | Track | 38:47:00 | 3.12 | M65-69 | 01/11/20 |
| Darian, Pierre & Cameron | O/T | 5: 3, 1, 4, 2, 5 | Track | 01:39:29 | 5.49 | M25-29 | 31/10/20 |
Here’s the actual transmitter locations:
Sprint Ardf Training begins again!
Sprint training Covid style is available now in Ashwood South. 5TX 2m (on 145.300MHz). Each TX runs for 12s, so 5 TXs form a 1 minute cycle. There is a 90 minute event time limit.
Start location in in Harlequin Dve, at the main park sign. Off Power Ave., Ashwood South.
Transmitters run for 4 hours daily, 3-7pm. I’ll finish the event once everyone has had a chance to try who wants to.
Use MapRunF to register at the controls. Event name is under Victoria/RunFree/ARDF/Ashwood_south_ARDF_Use_this_one_ScoreV90, or “Events Near Me” should have it top of the list if you use that near the Start. Please avoid cheating by looking at the map on the phone, even though it’ll be mostly purple.
PDF version: https://www.ardf.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Ashwood_south_ARDF_Score90-2.pdf
You can currently train on this event in Melbourne if you live within this 25km circle:
Jan 2020 Foxhunt
Congratulations to the VK3MZ team for a job well done in taking out the January hunts results were as follows. Many thanks to Kristian and Megan for opening their home and providing supper. Also thanks to Tom, Brendan and Greg for running the hunts. The formating looks great on my scree lets see what happens to it through the list!!
73
Greg VK3VT for the VK3FOX team
| Hunt | MZ | FAST | OW | CI | BLN |
| 1A | 0 | 3 | 4 | 9 | 10 |
| 1B | 1|1 | 1|4 | 9|13 | 0|9 | 1|11 |
| 2A | 1|2 | 2|6 | 7|20 | 0|9 | 4|15 |
| 2B | 2|4 | 0|6 | 10|30 | 3|12 | 1|16 |
| 3A | 1|5 | 0|6 | 8|38 | 1|13 | 3|16 |
| 3B | 3|8 | 7|13 | 10|48 | 0|13 | 1|17 |
| 4 | 0|8 | 1|14 | 9|57 | 1|14 | 3|20 |
| Place | 1 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 4 |
Vic ARDF Christmas Party
Thanks to all those who made to the Vic ARDF Christmas Party.
The weather turned out perfect, considering the scorcher only 1 day earlier.
The results from the two fun 2m events have been unearthed and are below. Thanks to Darian for working them out. A couple of the 2m FoxOrs had somehow ended up on low power (?), and unfortunately they were some of the more distant ones. One was in constant carrier mode, which was a bit confusing with so much other RF noise around.
2m Sprint Course (~1.5km) 4 TX (something went wrong with TX#4 on the day, but it seems to work fine now!)
Darian 22mins 4TX
Monica 39mins 4TX
2m FoxOr Course (~5km) 9 TX on different frequencies
Bryan 70mins 9TX Darian 50mins 8TX Adam 57Mins 8TX Jack 56mins 6TX Monica 53mins 4TX Henk & Di 78mins 4TX Suzanne 80mins 4TX
Ewen also presented us all with an intriguing ARDF word puzzle that was quite a challenge. No-one got all the words, with I believe the closest being Monica with 15 ARDF words. Other placings went to Mark, Bruce and Henk.
Nibblies and BBQ followed, then we viewed the Legend of Burnout Barry, featuring the well known Invermay Drive in Monbulk. Many also stayed for the feature, chosen by a popular vote of 2 Vs 1, of Jasper Jones.
Both AR relays teams place at Vic Relays
The AR club only entered two teams in the Mixed category (Short,Long,Medium) of the Victorian Orienteering Club Relays, but they placed 2nd and 3rd, so everyone competing got a certificate. Dry and warm autumn conditions at Eppalock.
Vic ARDF scoop at Street-O presentations
The small AR club had an impressively high placings hit rate at the Street-O Monday/Wednesday Summer series presentations on 3rd April.
We even had the 1st/2nd/3rd tri-fector in one of the Power Walking categories !
Congrats to Bruce, Suzanne, Mark, Dianne, Henk, Jenelle, Ewen and Ian (not in picture – he had to head off home earlier).
Feb 2019 Foxhunt
| Team | Hunt 1 | Hunt 2 | Hunt 3 | Hunt 4 | Hunt 5 | Hunt 6 | Total | Place | |||||||
| 80 M | 10M | ||||||||||||||
| VK3CI | Err:522 | 9 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 16 | 1 | |||||||
| VK3BLN | 10 | 10 | 10 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 3 | |||||||
| VK3FAST | 10 | 10 | 10 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 36 | 4 | |||||||
| VK3FOX | 4 | 0 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 17 | 2 | |||||||
February 2019 fox hunt report
The February fox hunt was run by the VK3OW team. The hounds were VK3CI, VK3BLN, VK3FAST and VK3FOX.
The first event was a two legged hunt with the first leg being somewhat unusually on 80 meters with the second leg being on 2 meters. Both transmitters were in Plenty George Park Melway map 10 . 80m on a knoll at ref E7 and 2m in the bush at about J5. The two foxes were a 1.5 Km run or a 10 Km drive apart. The 80M fox gave, as it turned out, rather too cryptic comments suggesting the the hounds should bring a 2m sniffer when hunting the 80m fox. Or was it my rather rusty CW too difficult to read? The FOX team found both foxes within the time limit. The CI team found both foxes and although strictly over time for the 2m leg were given a point for actually finding the fox. Bruce in fact found the 80M fox first with Kristian 4 minutes later. Kristian was however first into the 2m fox, I suspect because the FOX team were better organised getting a 2m sniffer to Kristian. There appeared to be harsh words spoken in the CI team! The BLN team gave themselves somewhat of a penalty by starting from Doncaster or there abouts rather than Greeensborough. The hunts were run by VK3OW (80m) and VK3SLH (2m)
The next hunt was on 2m with the fox located in Cherry Street Grasslands, Melway map 20 A6. CI were first in followed by the FOX team sometime later. The BLN team arrived in good time but then tried to drive in and ended up getting their antenna tangled in a tree which slowed progress considerably. The hunt was run by VK3AI and VK3FVXN.
The next hunt was on 10m with the fox located in Price Park, Melway 20F11. The hunt started after a delay due to an air gap in the fox antenna system and the FAST team finally lived up to their name arriving quickly with BLN a minute later, followed by CI a minute after that with another minute gap to the FOX team. Hunt was run by VK3OW and VK3SLH. We were sitting at a picnic table in what we thought was a fairly plain view but all the hounds ran wide of us, finally spiralling in after running past.
The next hunt was on 2m with the fox located in Lenister Farm Melway 21J11 As we were runnning later than we wanted to be the fox was turned on while Stephen was still mobile. To ensure a good signal he “mounted’ the antenna in the sun roof. We had also planned to hide the transmitter but decided to leave it in the car. First in was the BLN team followed by the FOX team and then the FAST team who would have done better if Monica had seen the fox antenna on the roof of the car before running around it more than once. The CI team arrived a minute later.
The final hunt, on 2m, was located in Finns reserve Map 33D2 where VK’s 3AI, FVXN and FJTE were preparing supper. First in was the BLN team, followed by the CI team then FOX and FAST.
My thanks to the hounds for participating, and not lynching me for the 80M hunt. Also to Dianne, Jenelle and Henk for organising and preparing supper with a big thanks to Jenelle for the unexpected birthday cake.
Final results were CI the winners on 16 points, followed by the FOX team on 17 points, then The BLN team, 31 points, and the FAST team on 36 points.
Posted: 24 February 2019, Ewen Templeton
2m Sprint-TX test practice
2m Sprint-TX test practice
Today was a lovely sunny spring day here in Melbourne, a perfect opportunity to test the new set of 2m Sprint transmitters, following a Street orienteering (Cake-O) event in the far eastern suburb of Chirnside Park. This was also a brand new map, the first time a street-O has been run in Chirnside. The Start/Finish location was the beautiful and manicured Delemere Reserve.
A number of ARDF regulars decided to make the trek to dabble in a bit of Sprint practice, as well as most also competing in the orienteering event prior (which wasn’t quite as hilly as I’d expected beforehand).
The results for the Sprint TX testing appears below too.
Rough Results
Competitors self-timed, as this was only an informal practice, but for the heck, here are the recorded results. You’ll note for both Jack and Jenelle I’ve only awarded 4 TXs. Perhaps Jenelle forgot to get TX#3 ? There’s no punch there anyway. In Jack’s case, he has the wrong punch mark for TX#5. Now I don’t know quite how he managed this, as there was only one punch at each TX. I can only assume he has punched at some random orienteering control, or perhaps at the grey practice FoxOr, instead (in the big tree just near the start) !?!
| Name |
#TXs |
Time |
Place |
| Kris Ruuska |
5 |
10:14.00 |
1 |
| Monica Lo Presti |
5 |
30:30.00 |
2 |
| Ewen Templeton |
5 |
33:00.00 |
3 |
| Jack Bramham |
4 |
26:00.00 |
4 |
| Jenelle Templeton |
4 |
35:00.00 |
5 |
| Uncle Rod |
1+ |
? |
6 |
Testing, Testing…
Another reason was to test the new sprint transmitters in the field for the first time.
Successes:
- They all turned on at 2:30pm that afternoon, as programmed to 2 days before, and the transmit sequence was perfect, with no overlap between transmitters.
- Battery voltage tests afterwards show all transmitter batteries had barely discharged at all, after running for a couple of hours (and 2 days sleeping). Even the Homing Beacon, which has the highest duty cycle, the LiIon cell was still above 4V. Lowest was 3.77V on the test FoxOr transmitter.
Room for improvement:
- Some had difficulty DFing and IDing the transmitters at the same time. This may be because the CW is achieved by turning the final off and on, but the exciter stays on during the whole 12s. This means in practice, in whoopee mode, the sniffers alternate between a high and low tone, rather than being a definite OFF between the CW pulses, and this is harder for the brain to figure out. Another test version of firmware from Byon turns on and off the entire transmitter, but this suffers from a slow PLL re-lock time, making the pulse ‘soft’ and too short (the lock time was nearly as long as a dit). Perhaps a new special version that pre-turns on the PLL before each final stage pulse could help. Alternatively, something kludgey that shorts the exciter output during the OFF might improve things.
- There is currently no modulation on the transmitters. Only FM modulation is available, and this seems to spread the power available over a wider frequency band, reducing the range of the transmitters significantly (liatening on whoopee, the exciter alone produces a higher whoopee tone than the modulated FM with final on, effectively inverting the morse, making it very hard to read!). Jack had problems with the Nick Roethe 2m sniffer, as it only engages whoopee when close-in, and with no modulation not much could be heard on AM. No easy solution to this one.
- Perhaps the dits could be a bit longer. This can be manipulated somewhat in the MicroFox programming, but any changes would then need to be re-cal’d on all transmitters so the on-time window is correct for an integral number of morse words.
- The Homing Beacon seemed to be down on power at the end. The battery was not the cause of this. Needs investigation. Is the PA getting warm ?
- Feedback on anything else ?