ARRL East Bay Section

Hi all,

Steve turned on the fox at 6pm, right on schedule although it was hard to tell at the start point. I stayed with Gary AJ6AMG at street level while everyone else went up the hill to try to hear it.

Steve was modulating a very weak signal with white noise so it was hard to recognize it from the usual noise level but I detected a slight increase in noise at the 146.565MHz fox frequency with my HT. Forehead fade seemed to indicate more or less 280 degrees, towards the south end of Coyote Hills.

Gary hooked up his newly built home made 4 element cubical quad beam to his hand held scanner and discovered why a scanner may not be the best choice for such work. Having a very wide front end it was being overloaded by out of band signals so he could not detect the fox. We then tried my HT (Alinco DJ596) and we had maybe an S4 signal from the direction of the Dumbarton bridge toll plaza. He also has a DJ596 he could have used but better still would have been his Radio Shack HTX202. I know because I also have one. The front end is very tight, 2m only, and has great sensitivity. If you can get one of these long out of production HTs, preferably with the AA battery pack, do so. Even if the TX is dead they are excellent for 2m transmitter hunting.

Eventually the rest came down from the mount including my partner Pete N6YIF and off we went.

Pete had the same bearing (280 degrees) as Gary so we set coarse for the toll plaza by the shortest route. We had no signal in the car, not on the doppler or the mag mount. As I recall we had no signal on the mag mount until we were north bound on Cherry crossing Stevenson. There was not enough signal for the doppler until after Mowry. We made a left turn on Central and seemed to get a false doppler bearing to the right as we crossed the tracks but we stayed on coarse towards the toll plaza.

The signal then went dead so we stopped at Willow and Enterprise (in Newark) to wait for the signal’s return. Pete got out his home made yagi to see if he could receive the signal. I was going to bring a camera. I sure do wish I had. He made the yagi with metal tape measure “tape” for the elements. An excellent Idea since it allows it to be folded for storage. There is one major problem with the design though. In high winds it folds up on it’s own. The wind was gusting over 40mph ;>. What a great picture that would have made.

After maybe 20 minutes Steve got the fox back on the air and the hunt resumed.

There is a problem with getting a weak start point bearing towards Coyote Hills. It is usually a reflection from a fox in north Fremont or Union City near the hills. Not last night though. It was in a parking lot at the west end of Thornton right where it turns north.

Pete and I were the first to arrive but more importantly, with the lowest mileage so we won, again. We spent most of the time waiting for the others in our cars because of the nasty chill factor.

Two hunters gave up. Gary (KJ6AMG) headed for home because he felt he was getting a re-lapse from a cold he hoped he was over, and Bernard who joined us for pizza at the Round Table in Centerville where we had the usual excellent pizza and conversation.

Don Safer  KC6IPO