Tag: Foxhunt

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2026 Mount Gambier – Railway Lands & Wulandia 2m ARDF sprint

UPDATE: TRANSMITTERS ARE ALL ON DIFFERENT FREQUENCIES. SEE FURTHER DOWN FOR DETAILS.

Returning for 2026 is the Sunday morning Sprint ARDF style event for those who want to have a run around. This event is just for fun and will not contribute to convention results.

Event arena: The area that is bound by Bay road, O’Halloran terrace, Wehl st south & Railway terrace / Eleanor street. (see map below) The only street that you may need to cross is Margaret street. Please use caution when crossing roads.

There is access from railway lands through to Margaret street in 4 places. At both ends (Bay Rd and Wehl St S), next to the Woolstore brewery (36 Margaret St) and at the public toilets (22 Margaret St).

There is also access from Margaret St through to O’Halloran Terrace in 4 places. At both ends (Bay Rd and Wehl St S) and either side of the Wulandia stadium (Between the Scout hall and the stadium and between the stadium and the courts).

Access to the Reidy park school grounds around the school buildings and playground is prohibited for this event. (Access to the oval is allowed and can be used to get between O’Halloran terrace / Wulandia and Wehl St S)

Start/Finish location: Mount Gambier scout hall, Margaret street

Transmitters: 5 Transmitters on different frequencies. Each will each transmit for 12 seconds in sequence each minute with the following morse codes: All can be heard from the start.

The frequencies for each transmitter correspond with the same number on a VK3YNG sniffer in mount gambier mode except for Tx2 which is number 9.

  • TX1 – MOE – 145.300Mhz
  • TX2 – MO – 145.700Mhz (on all the time)
  • TX3 – 144.500Mhz
  • TX4 – MOH – 144.750Mhz
  • TX5 – MO5 – 145.000Mhz

Start time: Anytime between 8:30am and 9:00am (transmitters may be on before 8:30am, if they are you are welcome to start early.)

Time limit: 30 mins from your start time. (10 point penalty per minute (or part minute) late, transmitters will turn off at 9:30am)

Recording method: Maprun app

Please make sure you are using the most recent version of Maprun from your app store. Please do not use MaprunF.

If you have never used the Maprun app before please see these friendly instructions.

To find the event go to “Events near me” and make sure you select the 2026 course.(MountGambierARDFSprint2026)

Each transmitter is worth 20 points (100 is the maximum points for this event)

There is no physical marker or punch at each transmitter. You do not need to actually find the transmitter, you just need maprun to register that you were close enough.

Warning: If you pass close to the start/finish then your event will automatically finish. Please only go close to the start/finish when you intend to finish. Keep in mind that GPS can be very inaccurate.

Special thanks to Bruce and Mark for their assistance with creating this event.

Transmitter locations

Results

Will be added to this page at the conclusion of the event.

NamePointsTime
Monica8025:18
Bruca8028:34
Mark4028:36
Suzanne0 (-60 late)35:46
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December Foxhunt 2025

The December hunts tends to be a bit unusual, deliberately planned for a short night. It’s a good opportunity to try some novel ideas.
This time, the CI team had a street orienteering map with many good fox hidey holes all in the one area, so instead of drip feeding the hunts out over years, we decided to put all the foxes out at once. What started out as a 5 TX concept grew out to the standard 10 frequencies, to add more choices, tradeoffs & hard decisions to make. Strategy!

There were 10 transmitters, all on the Mt Gambier mode frequencies, for ease of sniffing.
However, the hunt differed somewhat from the Mt Gambier sniffer hunt:

  • The TXs were were different point values, ranging from 1-7 points
  • A combination of car and running were envisaged to get the best result
  • Points were set not only on distance from the start, but difficulty in getting to the TX. The two highest scoring 7 pointers were relatively close to the start.
  • Scoring based on a Score event format with a 1 hour time limit (with late penalties). Order into a TX was irrelevant.

Teams took varying strategies to cope with all this information. Just getting the maximum number of TXs did not guarantee the best score; in fact, prior to late penalties, the best scoring team, FOX, only found 5 TXs but with 23pts. FAST found 6, but scored 21. However, FOX would have been better giving up after only 4 TXs, scoring 19 pts, instead of a whopping 7 pt late penalty hit, moving them from 2nd to 3rd on 16pts. MD only found 3, but remarkably ended up in 2nd with 18 pts, only 28s late (1 pt off). OW threw away more than half of their points in penalties. Despite being accused of “sending them out again”, the fox did no such thing, only telling them they were 10mins early; did they want to finish early?. The decision to head out again was theirs entirely!

TeamTX #s foundScoreScore with lateFox Score
FAST2,5,7,8,9,10212119
MD4,5,6191822
FOX2,3,5,7,8231624
OW2,9,109436

Here’s the Fox-eyes-only map (you can figure out TX# from frequency noted):

Can you spot the error?

E was further in along the creek.

The only TX not found by any team was H on 144.000 (#1) . I could hear it from the start, so it was certainly running, but with only 2pts maybe wasn’t worth the effort.

Since the TXs are all programmed up this way, the ARDF Christmas hunt might be a smaller, on-foot variant on the same theme. Perhaps with an extra twist?

Hunt 2

Hunt 2 was are more traditional two legged vehicle based hunt. OW and FAST decided to not trouble the 1st leg fox, and in fact OW elected to not get in on either leg, preferring instead the other side of the creek. We had to start the two missing teams 2nd leg times based on when the 1st fox was turned off. This could give them up to a couple of minutes advantage on the 2nd leg, depending on where they are located at the time, but missing the 1st leg is hardly a winning strategy!

FOX won both legs convincingly.

Supper Hunt

Park not far from the Supper location, carefully set to encourage teams to entert supper from the correct entrance. All teams found this fox, with FAST taking the honours, with MD right after.

Many thanks to Olga for laying on the banquet supper.

Scores

Hunt/TeamFOXOWFASTMD
124361922
2A010106
2B01059
Supper5801
Final Score29643438
Place1423
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SERG Homebrew entry 2025

I was little bemused at the summary given of my homebrew entry this year. It was for a semi-automated tester for our foxhunt systems, and we actually did end up using it quite a few times over the Mt Gambier foxhunting weekend, amongst our multiple gear failures.

The description given of the tester itself was fine, but the SDR timing problem that prompted the tester in the first place was a bit misrepresented.

The issue had nothing to do with SDR software ‘not keeping up’ due to lack of PC resources, but more the discovery that the particular SDR software I was using, GQRX, has what can best be described as an underlying design flaw, rather than a software bug.

It’s a bit of task to re-write GQRX to remove the fault, so at present I get around the problem by effectively automatically restarting the SDR periodically; whenever the fox channel is changed, or every 10 minutes, before any time delays can manifest significantly.

As our SDR rotating system was only available less than half the time, due mainly to water ingress problems, I can’t say for sure, but I believe we didn’t experience any more timing problems.

Here is the Homebrew entry documentation. Of particular interest may be the story of the hunt for the timing issues in Appendix 1.