The Philip B. Petersen Collection Broadcast April 11, 1990

     There are many kinds of competitive fun activities in amateur radio.  One of them is fox hunting.  The fox is actually a small, compact, low-power radio transmitter that is hidden in a most unlikely place.  The sport and fun is to see which radio amateur can locate and find the hidden fox transmitter first.  To make it more challenging, the antenna for the fox is arranged to blend into the surroundings.
     I have been on a number of these foxhunts.  One time the transmitter was hidden inside a fenced-in backyard chicken coop, along with a couple dozen chickens.  You should have heard the cackling when we finally found it.
     Another time, the fox was hidden in the watch repair section of the town jewelry store.  The watchmaker forgot to tell the owner about it and he became nervous and much concerned when six men using their radio direction finders were running around outside focusing on a homing signal coming from his store.  It ended happily when we found it hidden under the watchmaker's bench in the back room.
     A few years later, at the American Radio Relay League convention in the Asbury Park Convention Hall and Berkley Carteret Hotel, the foxhunt drew many radio amateurs who developed new circuits and innovative techniques in radio direction finding.  Others developed small portable equipment that was very effective when closing in on the fox.  The fox was hidden in Russ Schadt's fish store about 5 miles away near Collingswood Circle.  The first radio amateurs located the area in 30 minutes, soon followed by others.  Then the fun started as more arrived and their direction finders zeroed in on Schadt's fish store.  The clerk, of course, was playing dumb when asked about the radio set.  He was trying to sell fish and they, of course, had nothing but the fox on their minds.  Finally, one of the amateurs spotted the antenna concealed with the telephone line.  He followed the lead-in through the store where he found the fox transmitter covered over with 50 pounds of freshly iced fish.
     This is all fun and games; however, some of us later used many of these circuits and techniques when developing both ground and airborne radio direction finding equipment that was very successfully used by our Armed Forces in World War II.

April 11, 1990

** Broadcasts recordings preserved and presented here by Mr. Robert Buss and Mr. Bernie Ricciardi, Phil's friends and fellow Marconi Chapter 138 QCWA members **

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