We will have a foxhunt tomorrow, Saturday June 21st. This will be a hunt-at-your-own pace event. Here are the details:

Live foxhunt log

  • Fox can be heard from Baptist Hospital WLR parking lot
  • The fox will be placed in the morning…hopefully before 8AM. I will add my entry to the log linked above once it has been placed.
  • It will be inside the city limits of Little Rock in a place accessible to the public. Please don’t tresspass on private property looking for it. I will give a little better detail tomorrow including a specific place from where you could start and definitely hear it.
  • You will be able to drive to the fox and hopefully see the sign / scan the QR code from the car. I’m not intending to require a hike in this heat.
  • The fox will be transmitting on 432.5 MHz. It will transmit my callsign 6 times in 15 WPM CW at the top of every minute. This should give about 20-25 seconds of every minute transmitting.
  • Note that this is actual CW, not CW modulated on FM. On your FM radio, it will sound like a dead carrier keying up and down. If you have a radio with an all-mode receiver, you might want to bring it. In that case, you might have to tune a little lower to hear the CW.
  • If you have an SSB receiver, you might notice a hidden signal every now and then that could help you find the fox very quickly.

The fox for this hunt is a radiosonde that was been to near space thanks to the National Weather Service. It flew out of the North Little Rock office and I tracked it to Judsonia where it landed in a neighborhood next to a house. It has been reflashed with an open source firmware to move it from the original 400-406 MHz band to the 70cm amateur band. The firmware also gives it many other features and modes. Not bad for free (other than the time and fuel to track it down)!

If you are an experienced hunter, this first hunt might not be that challenging. I’m just hoping to get interest and then we can up the difficulty and variety as we go. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions.

73 and best of luck in the hunt! Luke - AE5AU