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

The November hunt was run by the MD / HRL / VR / MZ team. The weather was a good for hunting other than a little rain on one hunt and a lot of wind on another. 5 teams were up for the challenge.

The night started with light in the sky and the first hunt was to test the accuracy of the equipment and the accuracy of translating that to a map. No sniffers were allowed. Closest was FAST who were approximately 30m – 40m from the actual location. The were followed by CI, FOX, AI. BLN had gear problems with seating of a Win Radio card and did not complete the event.

The next hunt was on the Sth side of Paterson River which required a run of over 1km (to make up for not sniffing on the first hunt :-). Several teams tried the North side of the river as there was no close vehicle access on the South side. First in was FAST followed by FOX. CI and AI. BLN was still fixing their equipment.

The 3rd hunt location was chosen to split up the hounds from the different road options. MZ’s new 70cm Micro fox was used for the first time. First in was FAST followed by FOX, AI, CI and BLN who started late with gear working again.

The next hunt was in Keysborough in a water retaining basin. All but one team came in from a park on the North side of Dandenong bypass and had little trouble finding the source of radiation (fencing wire) or the hidden transmitter about 10m away. First was FAST followed by BLN, AI, CI and then FOX.

The 5th hunt was on a small spit on the Sth side of Mordialloc creek. Several sniffers could be seen on the Mordialloc pier which was the hope of the planner. First in was BLN followed by CI, FOX, AI and FAST

Hunts 6 and 7 were made into a multileg hunt to speed things up. On Hunt 6, (2m) hounds needed to run around the soccer complex if coming from the Sth. A short distance away was the 70cm leg (hunt 7) which was easy to get into if you knew how.

For hunt 6 the order was FAST, FOX, CI, BLN AI

For Hunt 7 the order was FOX, FAST, BLN, CI and AI.

Scoring for the night was order based and the final results were:

FAST (5)FOX (11)CI (16)BLN (20)AI (21)

Mark. VK3MD

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

Catherine and Marta put in a Marathon effort.
Here’re the scores:

(one point penalty for not getting in). We generally left the fox going for quite a while.

dB

Here’re the results – below. Scoring is order based, with an extra bonus point for not finding the fox. The first two hunts were single legged. As we went along we decided, to keep the night moving, to make the remaining two legged.The scoring for the second legs words exactly as the first; order based using elapsed time from the first leg.
We kept the fox running longer to allow teams to get; up to ~1/2 hour on the second leg.
GWS team, nice work. You didn’t hold us up! From bitter experience, when we started (>30 years ago), there’s nothing worse than not finding the transmitter all night, making it difficult to improve. One thing it took us ages to solve, is we could never get a good DF as drove close (<~100m) to the transmitter; the signal would leak into the receiver with the attenuator maxed out (70-80dB).
CheersXAJ/dB

Locations

Hunt 1

Hunt 2

Hunt 3

Hunt 4

Hunt 5

Hunt 6

For the July hunt we were pleasantly surprised to get 4 teams (MZ, BLN, FAST, FOX) despite a number of people being unavailable. The hounds gathered in Glen Waverley for a cold but fortunately dry night of hunting. All hunts were on 2m and single leg.

Fox team for the night was Ian (CI), Mark (BES), Suzanne (FSZI), Kostas and Pano.

Details of each hunt
#1: Pano and Ian were hidden in a bush at the northern end of a grassy laneway near Brandon Park. A few hounds tried to get in by simply saying it’s in the bush without seeing either us or the fox. All found us except MZ, with Darian first in.

#2: The fox was located at the north end of a long pathway that runs between shops/factories and a shipping container yard. The only way in was from the south but teams tried to get in from the east which was close to the fox (strong signal) and appeared to possibly offer access. Darian worked this out first and then Marta appeared a very short time later. Unfortunately MZ and FOX did not find this within the 10 minutes.

#3: Pano and Ian were standing under shallow alcoves just under Ferntree Gully Rd at the end of another grass lane. Teams trying to access us from FTG Rd would have been only 2m from us but unable to see us or access us due to the large drop. Thanks to Bruce for discovering this while cycling to StreetO. Only 2 teams found us within time – Darian first, followed by Marta a minute later.

#4: We were in a clump of trees near where the bike path goes under the Monash Freeway. We had expected teams to come to us along the bike path, either from the west or north. But the teams all approached us from the south and crossed the creek. Fortunately it had not rained for a while so there was not too much water to cross! MZ seemed to get their act together in this hunt – despite earlier DNF’s they were first to arrive. This improved performance however was short-lived.

#5: The fox was located under the metal steps of a portaloo located behind houses along the north side of the railway line near Carnegie station. Pano and Ian were hiding nearby, behind a large signalling control cabinet to watch for any hounds crossing the tracks from the south side. That’s where we spotted Darian. Fortunately he kept running until he found the pedestrian crossing about 50m past us. Pano jumped into the loo and sure enough Darian thought the fox was inside and was greeted by a smiling face but no fox. Didn’t take him long to find it however. A few minutes later BLN’s car appeared almost opposite us in a street on the south side. Marta jumped out, yelled something at the car, jumped back in and they drove off. Roger also approached on foot from the south side and kept running past and crossed at the correct place but arrived a minute after time was up. BLN finally arrived close behind (as expected they drove in). David complained the signal was weaker than expected, probably due to the Faraday shielding of the loo steps and trailer. If Marta had stayed out of the car and run where Roger and Darian went she would probably have got in within time. We felt generous so gave Roger and David 8 and 9 respectively rather than 10. BLN had been within a couple of minutes of the winner in the previous hunts – maybe the change was due to David and Marta’s baby testing out the touch screen rather than fox issues? – Never too young to start fox-hunting. This was the first test of CI’s fox controller which was quickly thrown together to turn an old IC22 into a fox – cycles PTT with a (sinusoidal) morse ident added every 2 minutes. From reports it seemed to work ok. Not bad for < $5 plus some junk box bits.

#6: Suzanne and Mark located the fox in Sir Zelman Cowan Park west of the Monash Freeway in a narrow area between the freeway fence and some cricket nets. It seems that the wire fences shielded the signal in some directions. MZ were first to drive into the closest car park to our location but decided the signal was too weak so unfortunately for them went away and tried to approach via the creek under the freeway. Ironically we had earlier thought of putting the fox there but thought the creek was a bad idea if there was heavy rain on the night. BLN, FOX and FAST all approached from a different direction and ran to us across one of the ovals, arriving in fairly quick succession – but apparently a few of them had thought the creek was the likely location of the fox and had already done a run down the Gardiners Creek drain.

#7: When Pano & Ian arrived at the planned spot near the start of Whitehorse Rd we thought it might cause a problem with residents so we investigated the park neartby. Fortunately a small drain was found in a hill that fitted the fox perfectly. All teams found it pretty easily, most via the nearby side street, within a couple of minutes of Darian who was (yet again) first. Mark and Suzanne were surprised to catch up with the hounds while driving east along Toorak road on the way to the supper location. Knowing that the fox location was near Burke/Whitehorse Road, we were amused that no-one had headed north by the time we saw them well east of Burke Road. We resisted the temptation to yell out “turn left” as we passed them. By the time we reached Warrigal Road, the last of the hounds headed north and we proceeded to supper.

The late start and need to wait a couple of times for teams to gather their runners and assemble for the next hunt meant we were a little further than hoped from the supper location when we renamed hunt 7 the supper hunt and abandoned the remaining planned locations.

BLN and MZ both won a hunt, thus just preventing FAST getting a perfect score. Scores have been posted to the web site (note FOX is up next month), details below.

A big thanks to Olga and Pierre for braving the cold and organising a BBQ supper in Halliday Park for everyone – yummy!

And also thanks to Mark MD for loan of his baby monitor / fox and battery.

        VK3CI July fox hunt report

For the July hunt we were pleasantly surprised to get 4 teams (MZ, BLN, FAST, FOX) despite a number of people being unavailable. The hounds gathered in Glen Waverley for a cold but fortunately dry night of hunting. All hunts were on 2m and single leg.

Fox team for the night was Ian (CI), Mark (BES), Suzanne (FSZI), Kostas and Pano.

Details of each hunt
#1: Pano and Ian were hidden in a bush at the northern end of a grassy laneway near Brandon Park. A few hounds tried to get in by simply saying it’s in the bush without seeing either us or the fox. All found us except MZ, with Darian first in.

#2: The fox was located at the north end of a long pathway that runs between shops/factories and a shipping container yard. The only way in was from the south but teams tried to get in from the east which was close to the fox (strong signal) and appeared to possibly offer access. Darian worked this out first and then Marta appeared a very short time later. Unfortunately MZ and FOX did not find this within the 10 minutes.

#3: Pano and Ian were standing under shallow alcoves just under Ferntree Gully Rd at the end of another grass lane. Teams trying to access us from FTG Rd would have been only 2m from us but unable to see us or access us due to the large drop. Thanks to Bruce for discovering this while cycling to StreetO. Only 2 teams found us within time – Darian first, followed by Marta a minute later.

#4: We were in a clump of trees near where the bike path goes under the Monash Freeway. We had expected teams to come to us along the bike path, either from the west or north. But the teams all approached us from the south and crossed the creek. Fortunately it had not rained for a while so there was not too much water to cross! MZ seemed to get their act together in this hunt – despite earlier DNF’s they were first to arrive. This improved performance however was short-lived.

#5: The fox was located under the metal steps of a portaloo located behind houses along the north side of the railway line near Carnegie station. Pano and Ian were hiding nearby, behind a large signalling control cabinet to watch for any hounds crossing the tracks from the south side. That’s where we spotted Darian. Fortunately he kept running until he found the pedestrian crossing about 50m past us. Pano jumped into the loo and sure enough Darian thought the fox was inside and was greeted by a smiling face but no fox. Didn’t take him long to find it however. A few minutes later BLN’s car appeared almost opposite us in a street on the south side. Marta jumped out, yelled something at the car, jumped back in and they drove off. Roger also approached on foot from the south side and kept running past and crossed at the correct place but arrived a minute after time was up. BLN finally arrived close behind (as expected they drove in). David complained the signal was weaker than expected, probably due to the Faraday shielding of the loo steps and trailer. If Marta had stayed out of the car and run where Roger and Darian went she would probably have got in within time. We felt generous so gave Roger and David 8 and 9 respectively rather than 10. BLN had been within a couple of minutes of the winner in the previous hunts – maybe the change was due to David and Marta’s baby testing out the touch screen rather than fox issues? – Never too young to start fox-hunting. This was the first test of CI’s fox controller which was quickly thrown together to turn an old IC22 into a fox – cycles PTT with a (sinusoidal) morse ident added every 2 minutes. From reports it seemed to work ok. Not bad for < $5 plus some junk box bits.

#6: Suzanne and Mark located the fox in Sir Zelman Cowan Park west of the Monash Freeway in a narrow area between the freeway fence and some cricket nets. It seems that the wire fences shielded the signal in some directions. MZ were first to drive into the closest car park to our location but decided the signal was too weak so unfortunately for them went away and tried to approach via the creek under the freeway. Ironically we had earlier thought of putting the fox there but thought the creek was a bad idea if there was heavy rain on the night. BLN, FOX and FAST all approached from a different direction and ran to us across one of the ovals, arriving in fairly quick succession – but apparently a few of them had thought the creek was the likely location of the fox and had already done a run down the Gardiners Creek drain.

#7: When Pano & Ian arrived at the planned spot near the start of Whitehorse Rd we thought it might cause a problem with residents so we investigated the park neartby. Fortunately a small drain was found in a hill that fitted the fox perfectly. All teams found it pretty easily, most via the nearby side street, within a couple of minutes of Darian who was (yet again) first. Mark and Suzanne were surprised to catch up with the hounds while driving east along Toorak road on the way to the supper location. Knowing that the fox location was near Burke/Whitehorse Road, we were amused that no-one had headed north by the time we saw them well east of Burke Road. We resisted the temptation to yell out “turn left” as we passed them. By the time we reached Warrigal Road, the last of the hounds headed north and we proceeded to supper.

The late start and need to wait a couple of times for teams to gather their runners and assemble for the next hunt meant we were a little further than hoped from the supper location when we renamed hunt 7 the supper hunt and abandoned the remaining planned locations.

BLN and MZ both won a hunt (impressive for MZ as it was only Ian and Roger), thus just preventing FAST getting a perfect score. Scores have been posted to the web site (note FOX is up next month), details below.

A big thanks to Olga and Pierre for braving the cold and organising a BBQ supper in Halliday Park for everyone – yummy!

And also thanks to Mark MD for loan of his baby monitor / fox and battery.      

The hounds all gathered down south in Keysborough with ideal conditions for a foxhunt. The foxes for the night were VK3s VR, MD, MZ and HRL. Daylight savings can make hunts easier but not in the case of the first hunt where on 10m where no sniffers were allowed. The fox was less than 800m from the start but the accuracy of the bearings and the navigators skill resulted in the the hounds being spread out over 10 minutes. FAST was first and were surprised to be, followed by OW and CI 5 minutes later and FOX coming in just before time was up.

Results for the VK3CI July hunt are as follows.

5 teams commenced the night at Clayton Railway Station for a night of semi-chaos with many teams, including the fox, having equipment issues.  BLN was the worst effected and they retired after hunt 1 (we needed Fitzel when one of the sausages hit the ground at supper). We understand their equipment is just clinging to life in ICU and we hope it recovers in time for the August hunt.

VK3FOX had 10m issues and actually headed North for hunt 3A and so didn’t find it in time. They have been given a start time for 3B of 2 minutes after 3A finished. That just allowed them to get into 3B before the 10 mins were up but didn’t change the overall placings.

No really low total score tonight – every team except MZ got at least one 10 and every team got at least one 0 (except BLN who still managed a 1 for the only hunt they were able to compete in).

FAST won overall (21), followed closely by MZ (25), then a gap to XJM (39) & FOX (41). BLN unfortunately get the worst score ever for them (71).

Scores have been posted on the ARDF site and it looks like FAST are running August and MZ running September.

Thanks to Ewen for helping out the fox team, to Kostas & Sophie for hosting supper and an honourable mention to Hamish who almost found us twice on hunt 3B (within 2m each side of us) without a sniffer before most other teams even got close.

(this was a much nicer table with a style sheet but the list server rejected the message for being too long so now it’s a boring table)

The following are the results of the FoxOr event which was run in conjunction with the normal Park Street Orienteering event run on the Woodridge map in Eltham.

Congratulations to Bruce and Ian who were able to visit all 20 orienteering controls plus the 6 radio controls within the 75 minute time limit. Ian also had the handicap of using an unfamiliar sniffer.

Dennis’s score was good enough to pick up 3rd place despite being a few minutes late finishing.

Jenelle may have done a little better had the last fox not gone mobile just as she started looking for it.

Dianne did well considering the terrain on the Woodridge map.

Thanks to those who helped with control collection, Di, Bruce, Hamish etc.

regards Ewen

The March foxhunt was run by the OW/BLI/FVXN/Pierre team and started in the car park at the eastern end of Ruffey Park Lake.

The first hunt was on 10 metres with the transmitter hidden in a park off the end of Orchard Grove in Warrandyte. Melway 34 G3. First in was Darrien followed 7 minutes later by the CI, FOX and BLN teams with MZ a minute later. BLN may have done better if Marta had been shown how to use the OW sniffer before she had to use it. We ran carrier for this event, from an old valve transmitter I’d built decades ago for testing 10m loops. It seemed a pity not to use it in an actual hunt. The need to carry a 100AH battery to drive the genemotor high tension supply limited how far we would carry it into the bush!

The second hunt was also 10M but this time it was SSB to make things a bit more like Mt Gambier. Location was in the general area of Laughlin avenue in Nunawading. 48 E10. First in again was the FAST team, followed 3 minutes later by 3CI, then MZ 2 mins later, then BLN 4 minutes later and then FOX 15 minutes after FAST.

The 3rd hunt on 10M was in a small fairly clear area between Aurum Cr and Hygeia Pde in Ringwood North 49E6. Fox was first in very closely followed by FAST, MZ and CI. BLN were unfortunately outside the 10min time limit. Vacuum tubes and the genemotor once again supplied the 5 watts of RF. I promise to build something more modern to use the next time I run a 10m hunt.

The 4th hunt was in a fenced off area off Reilly St in Ringwood. 49H11. This looked like a good spot when we checked earlier in the week but when Henk and Di got there they found the soccer field next door ablaze with lights which spoilt things a bit. VK’s 3CI and 3FOX  arrived at much the same time so started the clock, with Fast +3, MZ, +6 and BLN +7 minutes later.

The next hunt was a 3 legged affair using foxO TX’s for the second and third legs. The location was Ringwood Lake Park, 49 J/K8. We let this event run until all the hounds had found all transmitters, some more than once,  so considerable normalizing was done to arrive at the final score which was FAST with 0 points, BLN with 1 point, FOX and MZ both with 6 points and CI with 10.

The last hunt was not at a planned spot but as we were a bit later than hoped for at this stage of the night I drove back to somewhere in the vicinity of supper and found a high spot. I must have dozed off a little at this point as the next thing I was aware of was a loud banging on the roof of the car. Bug… I thought, must have parked under tree which has dropped a branch in the roof. How am I going to explain a second occurrence of this to the insurance company? Actually it was Bruce trying to tell me he’d found the fox. I made him convince me this was the case which a bit mean of me considering it was about 2m in front of the car and raining. He was very closely followed Roger I think  from the MZ team with FOX +3  and FAST and BLN +4 mins.  These are the correct times. The ones I read out initially at supper were actually the scores for the first leg of the previous ,multileg, hunt. As a result the final scores are slightly different to those quoted at supper. Positions remain the same.

Thanks to all for coming and particularly to Di who did most of the supper preparation. I should also thank Pierre who did most of the heavy battery transport.

regards Ewen

Results of the 2013 February 2M fox hunt

Fox for the evening was the VK3FOX team. The first hunt was Kristian quietly paddling on the Yarra in his kayak, this took teams a little to time to figure out but three teams did find him before time was up.

Second hunt was a two legged affair on 70CM and the lack of signal at the start was enough to spread the teams over a wide area. Eventually the hiding spot at an athletics track in Ringwood was found by all teams and they were off to the second leg. This was not far away on the bike/walking track beside Eastlink (there was some consternation when this was used as a vehicular track but as the fox was not without fault in this area in the past no drastic decisions were made.  I hate to suggest it but perhaps we should draft some rules some time.) This second leg was calculated on leg times and the scores below vary slightly from those announced on the night as the fox was confused!

Hunt three was in Warrendyte park in a old mine, I am told this was up a steep hill.

As time was running a bit short we decided the next hunt would be a simple affair and so a spot in Eltham near the historic trestle rail bridge was chosen.  The plan for a two legged hunt involving water  obstacles was abandoned.

Final hunt was on a walking track in Greensborough overlooking Partington’s flat sports grounds, one team came the easy way down the walkway from a nearby street but others were seen clambering up a rather steep and overgrown cliff to reach the hiding spot.

Teams retired to the home of Greg VK3VT for a supper of sandwiches, sausage rolls, zucchini slice, chicken wings and cake with hot and cold drinks.

Results are as follows

73
Greg VK3VT for the VK3FOX Team