Registrations are now being accepted for USA's annual championships of on-foot transmitter hunting, which will take place during the week and weekend after Memorial Day. The site will be the forests near Mt. Laguna Village, about 45 miles east of San Diego.

Activities will get under way on Wednesday and Thursday, May 30 - 31, when an optional two-day "training camp" will take place. The official championships opening will take place on Friday, June 1 with practice and equipment testing sessions. The two-meter contest will take place on Saturday, June 2, after which all will gather for a banquet in the evening. Sunday's schedule includes the 80-meter contest and an awards ceremony, timed to end in mid-afternoon to accommodate those who must hurry home.

Even if you have never competed in a formal ARDF event before, you are welcome at the USA and IARU Region 2 Championships. The courses will be open to all, beginner and expert alike, with or without a ham radio license. USA's best are expected to attend and they are always helpful to newcomers. The training camp is an outstanding opportunity and highly recommended for first-timers.

National ARDF Championships are for individuals only. No teaming or assistance on the course is permitted. Participants are divided into six age categories for males and five age categories for females in accordance with standard IARU rules. Medals for first, second and third places will be awarded in each category on each band.

The official event Web page at www.homingin.com has the registration form. It is important for participants to register right away. The organizers need an accurate head count and assurances that there will be sufficient attendees. It's also important to make reservations now if you want to stay at the event headquarters, which is Laguna Mountain Lodge. (Nearby camping is also available.)

Transportation and lodging information is on the event Web page, as well as the daily schedule, competition rules, transmitter and map information. For questions and regular updates, you can subscribe to a group mailing list for participants and others interested in these championships.

If you have been attending and enjoying your local ARDF sessions, it's time now to take the next step. We look forward to seeing you at the USA Championships!

Joe Moell K0OV
ARRL ARDF Coordinator
www.homingin.com

The mountains east of San Diego, California will be the site of USA's annual championships of on-foot transmitter hunting during the week and weekend after Memorial Day, 2012.

Activities will get under way on Wednesday and Thursday, May 30 - 31, when an optional two-day "training camp" will take place.  The official championships opening will take place on Friday, June 1 with practice and equipment testing sessions. The two-meter contest will take place on Saturday, June 2, after which all will gather for a banquet in the evening.  Sunday's schedule includes the 80-meter contest and an awards ceremony, timed to end in mid-afternoon to accommodate those who must hurry home.

These championships are a qualifying event for ARDF Team USA, which is forming to compete at the Sixteenth IARU ARDF World Championships in Serbia during September.  Team members will be selected based on performance in these 2012 USA Championships and the 2011 USA Championships near Albuquerque.

National ARDF Championships are for individuals only.  No teaming or assistance on the course is permitted.  Participants are divided into six age categories for males and five age categories for females in accordance with standard IARU rules.  Medals for first, second and third places will be awarded in each category on each band.

Even if you have never competed in an ARDF event before, you are welcome at the USA and IARU Region 2 Championships.  The courses will be open to all, beginner and expert alike, with or without a ham radio license. USA's best foxtailers are expected to attend and they are always helpful to newcomers.  The training camp is an outstanding opportunity and highly recommended for first-timers.

The official event Web page will be available soon with lodging information and registration forms.  In the meantime, the latest information is posted at www.homingin.com.

Joe Moell K0OV
ARRL ARDF Coordinator
k0ov@homingin.com

I recently bought a Ramsey DDF kit for a special project and because of your posting I scanned both sides of the main board.  If you contact me off-forum (homingin-at-aol.com), I can send you the scans.

BTW, this board and its components are for sale, but not the antennas or antenna boards/components.  Anyone interested contact me off-forum.

Joe Moell K0OV

Com-Spec has just what you need for tracking in the 222 MHz ham band.  Go to

http://www.com-spec.com/rcplane/index.html

and click on PRODUCTS.

Then contact Spence Porter at Com-Spec and ask if he can make a version of the PT-1B or AT-2B in a collar that's suitable for whatever critter you want to track.  I'll bet he can do it easily.

Of course these 222 MHz transmitters can only be used by licensed hams, since they exceed Part 15 limits.

73,
Joe Moell K0OV

The 50.5 MHz signal went away when TV channel 2 finally went off the air last month.  CH2 was a "nightlight" station, so it didn't sign off on June 12.

Joe Moell K0OV

As you may know, there are two distinct types of competitive radio foxhunts, vehicular and all-on-foot.  Since you mentioned ARDF, you probably are interested in the on-foot type.  The nearest hotbed of such activity to you centers in the Cincinnati area and it draws participants from three states (Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky).  Contact WA6EZV or WB4SUV to find out about upcoming events in the forests.  I won't post their e-mail addresses here, but if you send me a private e-mail via the address on my Web site, I'll send them to you.

If you would prefer the vehicular type (which sometimes include a bit of on-foot "sniffing" at the end, the closest activity to you is probably in Chicago.  There is also a hunt at least once a year in Kankakee.  Links to mobile foxhunting groups around the country are here:

http://www.homingin.com/links.html

Of course it might be easier to just get your local ham club interested in having its own hunts!

73,
Joe Moell K0OV
www.homingin.com

If you use the "Part 15" cat collar at 218 MHz, you will have rather limited tracking range.  As a licensed ham, you can upgrade to the AT-2B transmitter, which puts out 50 milliwatt "dits" in the 222 MHz ham band.  These transmitters are pre-programmed to ID your callsign in CW every ten minutes.  I have copied these transmitters over four miles away on the PR-100, which has 0.025 microvolt sensitivity.  The receiver IF is very narrow and the AT-2B channels are between the standard 125 cm band repeater channels, so there isn't any mutual interference.

The AT-2B is primarily marketed to licensed hams who fly model aircraft and rockets.  It is also great for introducing youth and Scouts to ham radio via foxhunts in parks or on schoolgrounds.  See my review in the Spring 2008 issue of CQ-VHF Magazine.

Sales information is here at http://www.com-spec.com/rcplane/products.html

73,
Joe Moell K0OV

Information on the video is here:

http://www.homingin.com/video.html

It would make a good club program and might stimulate some club ARDF activity.

I have had some MD contacts in the past but haven't heard from them for a while.  Will contact them off-list to see if they are interested.

73,
Joe Moell K0OV

Registration is now open for the next USA ARDF Championships, June 5 - 7, 2009.  Radio-orienteers of all skill levels will gather for two days of intense competition, first on two meters and then on 80 meters.  The events are open to all persons, with or without a ham license.  This year's USA Championships are being combined with the championships of International Amateur Radio Union Region 2 (North and South America).  Visitors from any country are welcome.

Organizing and hosting the 2009 championships is Vadim Afonkin KB1RLI, one of USA's most accomplished radio-orienteers.  As a youth, he learned ARDF and won awards for it in his native Russia.  After coming to America, he first participated in USA's national championships in 2003, where he won silver and bronze medals in the five-fox M21 category.  He has competed in M21 at every USA championships since then and has had the best five-fox time of all stateside participants every time.  Last year, he finished in fifth place worldwide in the M40 category on 80 meters at the ARDF World Championships in Korea.

Site of the contests will be the Blue Hills Reservation, a 7000-acre open space that is about ten miles south of downtown Boston.  Effective immediately, the Reservation area is off limits for anyone who will be competing in the 2009 USA ARDF Championships.  To avoid any unfair advantage, potential competitors may not go to this site until competition time.

To encourage first-timers and foreign visitors, the competition fee will be waived for persons who have never participated in the USA ARDF Championships and for persons coming from outside North America.  Those persons will have the option of purchasing event T-shirts.  The competition fee for all others will be $50 per person, including T-shirt.

The championships Web site, with registration form, is www.bostonardf.org.

More information about ARDF in the USA is at www.homingin.com.

Joe Moell K0OV
USA ARDF Coordinator

Back in the analog days, cell phones put out a continuous signal during a call, which could be monitored with an ordinary UHF receiver and tracked with an ordinary directional antenna.  But now all cell phones are digital and they only put out short pulses (the di-dit, di-dit, di-dit you sometimes hear in a nearby appliance).  Multiple phone signals are multiplexed on each frequency so it's impossible to tell whose phones are transmitting on a given channel with an ordinary receiver.  Without some very special equipment, a searcher cannot know which of many frequencies is the right one and which of many pulse signals on each frequency is the right one to track.

To add insult to injury, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act makes it illegal for individuals to monitor and/or attempt to decode signals on cell phone frequencies.

So we have to leave it to the pros at the cell phone providers.

Joe

Has the missing person's cell provider been contacted about this?  About two years ago, cell signals were used to help save the family of James Kim, a Senior Editor for CNET, who perished while seeking help for them in the mountains of Oregon after a severe snowstorm.

From an article in the Winter 2007 edition of CQ-VHF Magazine:

"The very remote spot where the Kim family vehicle became snowbound was blocked from all the towers of his provider, Cingular Wireless.  They could not call 911.  But two clever engineers from Edge Wireless, the regional operator, scoured the call data records and found a single 'ping' from James Kim's phone at 1:30 AM to a tower near Glendale, Oregon.  This brief transmission was acknowledgement of a waiting text message.

"Kim drove out of that 'sweet spot' before picking up the message, but the automatic transmission exchange was enough for the two Edge engineers to determine that his phone was less than 26 miles southwest of Wolf Peak in the little-used 'Z' coverage sector.  They then employed computer models to determine areas of mountain shadowing and combined that data with their own knowledge of the region to direct searchers toward Bear Camp Road, which is where Kim's family was found in the vehicle.  Kim had driven down that road by mistake because a vandal had broken a lock and opened the gate to it."

Joe

Your Yaesu receiver works only in the AM and FM modes.  Therefore it cannot produce the "chirp" sound usually associated with wildlife transmitters.  Researchers use receivers with CW/SSB detectors.  There are some amateur receivers that also have these modes.

There is a lot more information about using amateur equipment for wildlife tracking on this page of my Web site:

http://www.homingin.com/joemoell/owlfaq.html

And this page describes the characteristics of wildlife transmitters:

http://www.homingin.com/joemoell/squegg.html

I hope this is helpful.

Joe Moell K0OV

Glad you found the problem.  It probably isn't a good idea to put the attenuator right on the driven element anyway.  I worry when people put anything in the space between reflector and driven element, and also when they hold the antenna by the boom between reflector and DE.  I'm sure that this proximity adversely affects the antenna performance, especially on 70 cm.  I encourage people to mount attenuators and receivers behind the reflector and to use some sort of handle so that the holding hand isn't inside the beam.

It's great that you are doing the demo at church and I hope that the kids can try it for themselves.  On Saturday, we'll have a dozen or more transmitters in a park in Long Beach for the Scout-O-Rama.  If it is like years before, there will be so many Scouts that it will keep five hams busy all day giving the kids a chance to hunt two or three of them each.

If any of your kids show an extra amount of interest in foxhunting, tell them about the ARDF events we have here in soCal and encourage them to come out.  That's how we got Monique, the 12-year-old girl who went to the USA ARDF Championships last year.

I have to ask the obvious question:  You have your receiver tuned to the offset frequency, not the transmitter frequency, right?

If it's tuned to the offset frequency, then the only thing that I can think of right now that might cause this would be a bad connection on the ground side of the potentiometer.  That would put nearly full oscillator signal into the mixer no matter what the pot setting.

Are you using the Marvin Johnston board or did you build it from scratch?

If you can't fix it, bring it to our next ARDF session and I'll take a look at it.  For anyone interested, our next session will be June 14 in north Fullerton.  More information at www.homingin.com

Are you saying that you have the receivers but not the special matching RDF antenna sets?

What are the model numbers?  I might have some data on them.

73,
Joe Moell K0OV