Category: Fox Hunting

The June 2-metre foxhunt was held in cool but clear conditions. The fox for the month was Jack, VK3WWW. 7 teams assembled for an 8PM start at the K-mart Burwood carpark.

There were 3 hunts for the evening. The first two hunts were split into 3 legs each with foxes running on both 2 and 10 metres.

The first fox for the evening caught the 8:10PM Burwood tram to the Burwood Campus of Deakin university. One of the hounds who worked out what was going on boarded the tram at the same stop that the fox got off. The fox then went for a walk through the university campus. Both VK3PW and VK3TVB found this fox first at 8:32PM followed by VK3BLN and VK3TKQ some 3-4 minutes later.

The second leg of this hunt took the hounds to the rear of the Wheelers hill hotel car park. A newly erected wall at the rear of the car park with no openings forced many hounds to try to find alternative routes. VK3YQN found this fox at 8:59PM followed by VK3PW just 2 minutes later. 4 minutes on, VK3TVB arrived to take third place.

The last leg of this hunt took the hounds to the rear of Kingsley Business park in Rowville. This hunt proved particularly troublesome for most hunters. This transmitter was giving short bursts of carrier which are often hard to find. The transmitter was hidden in a clearing in amongst some very prickly bushes. VK3YQN were first on the scene and very quickly burrowed through the bushes and by 9:14PM had found the 10-metre fox. Many other teams arrived soon after and spent considerable time trying to find an opening in the bushes. One hound burrowed his way
straight past the fox and out the other side. No other teams found the transmitter in the 15-minute time limit even though some were there for almost 10 minutes.

The second hunt for the evening took the hounds to the Knox Arboretum in Boronia where the fox was hidden in the playground. VK3YQN was first to find this fox at 9:58PM followed by VK3TVB 7 minutes later. VK3PW (who started the hunt late after enjoying a cup of coffee or two) and VK3TKQ both took 3rd place a minute later.

The second leg of this hunt took the hounds to a 4-wheel drive track in Ferntree Gully. VK3YQN maintained their lead finding the fox at 10:11PM followed by VK3BLN and VK3TVB just 5 minutes later.

The final leg of this hunt was hidden in amongst bush beside an unmarked 4 wheel drive track in Upwey. This was a real test of skill, especially for the 2-metre hunters. Since the 10-metre signal was intermittent and the 2-metre signal continuous, all hounds decided to hunt on 2-metres. The fox was attached to a 3-element beam antenna mounted on top of a motor rotating continuously at about 30RPM. Mark VK3JMD found this fox at 10:38PM. Some 10 minutes later, about 4 hounds ran down the rather steep and slippery track. Concentrating on the track rather than the signal meant that they all ran straight past the fox. No other teams made the 15-minute time limit.

The final fox for the night was near a disused pumping station in Vermont. VK3YQN found this fox with nearly all other teams finding the fox 5 minutes later, followed by VK3TUG.

Supper was held in Vermont where the following scores were announced:

1: VK3YQN 	15 points  
2: VK3TVB 	26 points
3: VK3BLN  	47 points
4: VK3PW   	51 points
5: VK3TKQ  	59 points
6: VK3TUG 	66 points
7: VK3TXG 	85 points 

TXG – (A commendable effort since they persisted despite numerous equipment problems.)

A coolish evening greeted the 7 hounds who turned up to VK3YQN’s March foxhunt. Start was in Lytton Street in the city as the fox was heading West this evening.

The first hunt was a two legged affair, the first leg a very tricky to approach wasteground behind a chemicals factory in Altona. Both 10m and 2m was run for this hunt. The second leg was the set to be the traditional long bastard of a YQN sniffer hunt, and this one was no exception. Judging by the comments on the liason frequency we were very successful in making this a challenging hunt. Hunters were given credit for both their absolute and relative times on the second leg, so a reasonable score for the sniffer hunt was still possible even if a team did poorly on the first leg. Jack, VK3WWW was the definite winner of the first leg, later followed by VK3PW (using a new runner), David for VK3BLN and Geoff, this night hunting as VK3TVB. For some reason David thought his score might be dangerously low, so he spent a couple of minutes chatting to his team on the liason frequency a few metres from the 1st leg fox before checking in just to make sure they didn’t do _too_ well. Looking at the final scores shows this cost them a place ! Questioned later he stated he hadn’t bothered to read the Fox information sheet provided at the start. Only two teams made it in to the sniffer leg before the timeout ( but judging from the howls of protest when it was turned off, a couple more were quite close… Bad Luck VK3BLN & VK3TKQ ). VK3PW did the best absolute and relative times for this leg, piping VK3TVB by 1 minute. No sign of VK3WWW…..time to build that new sniffer Jack ! Both successful teams were found hotly accusing each other of cheating by using vehicular transportation. Both accusations turned out to be unfounded.

The second hunt was a fairly straight forward but long hunt to a railway crossing out beyond Werribee. The fox apologises for the drop in signal towards the end of the hunt. A suspect fox battery may be the reason the power of the fox dropped so much it was no longer able to trigger the linear amplifier. First was again VK3PW. VK3TKQ and VK3BLN took the minor placings.

The third hunt brought hounds back to a yet to be developed grassland near Hoppers Crossing. Again 10m as well as 2m was run. Ewen, VK3OW was the first to negotiate the reed choked marshy creek, followed by Geoff for VK3TVB with VK3PW and VK3WWW equal third. VK3TKQ and VK3″NBC” were in fact the only teams to come in the “dry” route, but unfortunately it took longer. At least we got Geoff wet as usual.

The supper hunt was a John Munsey KB3GK special. Possibly gum trees don’t load up as well as pines trees, or maybe we can blame the long dry spell we’ve had recently. The many decoy antennas and coax worked perfectly, mis-leading David VK3BLN and Adam for VK3WWW into thinking they had found the fox many times. Suggestion David: Only call out your callsign when you have actually _found_ the fox (and use the team callsign rather than your own). Jack VK3WWW and David VK3BLN then somewhat violently uncovered the real fox followed by VK3TKQ, VK3PW and VK3OW in a group. Since the fox had now been destroyed by the victors the rest had to find a handheld. VK3TVB was unable to participate in this hunt since they had to search for a lost handheld.

An earlier than usual supper (to allow for the long way Hopper’s Crossing is from anywhere) was held at nearby Roger’s where the following placings were announced:

1st VK3PW, 2nd VK3OW and equal third VK3BLN & VK3TKQ.

Full scores are below.

Team Hunt: 1A 1B(abs) 1B(rel) 2 3 4 Total Place
=======+===========================================+========+====== 
VK3PW  | 3 0 0 0 3 1 | 7 | 1 
VK3WWW | 0 5 5 8 3 0 | 21 | 2 
VK3OW  | 10 5 5 8 0 1 | 29 | 3 
VK3BLN | 5 5 5 4 10 1 | 30 | =4 
VK3TKQ | 10 5 5 3 6 1 | 30 | =4 
VK3TVB | 6 4 1 9 2 (10)| 32 | 6 
VK3NBC | 10 5 5 10 6 5 | 41 | 7 
=======+===========================================+========+====== 

NB: VK3TVB did not participate in the final hunt. They could not have done better than 3rd however.

The July hunt was run by the VK3FOX team and saw hunts conducted around the Northern suburbs.  Fences and rivers featured in the hunts with hounds often finding themselves on the wrong side of one of these obstacles.  Seven hunts were planned but due to problems in locating runners and foxes this was reduced to just four. For the first and third hunts 28.450MHz was provided as an alternate band. On the first hunt this led the YQN team on a merry chase with them ending up in Eltham while the fox was in Bundoora (some 180 degree ambiguity?) OW on the other hand used their 10 metre gear to good effect winning the hunt outright.

The Second hunt was in Plenty beside the Plenty Gorge.  As expected most teams found themselves on West of the river while the fox was on the East. Most drove around but Bruce from the YQN team crossed the river (more than once due to its meandering course!) and clambered up the side of the gorge to arrive in second place.

Regulation style hunts were held on hunts three and four. Three was in Eltham and Four in Mont Park.

Supper was at the home of Greg VK3VT and after a supper of soup, sandwiches, sausage rolls, party pies, quiches, chocolate biscuits and cake the following  results were announced. Time of arrival after first hound scoring was used.

Team	Hunt1	Hunt 2	Hunt 3	Hunt4	Placing
VK3OW	0	6/6	7/13	10/23	3
VK3YQN	10	4/14	7/21	7/29	4
VK3BLN	7	10/17	0/17	3/20	2
VK3TXO	9	0/9	5/14	0/14	1
VK3FAST	10	6/16	10/26	4/30	5

Congratulation to the TXO team for an excellent effort. As you can see from the scores OW was leading till the last hunt and YQN just managed to bump FAST into 5th spot.  Fox for August is to be announced. Greg has the VK3 fox.

Cheers
Greg VK3VT from the VK3FOX team