Radio Direction finding by VK5ZBR

These pages are all about my adventures in radio direction finding.

I will showcase some of my equipment I built, stories failures.

The AREG is now doing hunting in Adelaide if you’re interested.

I became aware

I was introduced radio direction find , we call it fox hunting. It the art of finding a hidden transmitter just radio equipment and directional antenna.

We in Australia like to use out cars for the first bit and then on foot for the last part. Some hunts can clock up nearly 100km or a whole tank of gas on a bad day. I really is exciting to find a thing or person just using radio signals.

The other thrill is what you made actually works.

Where I worked we had probably 10 ham radio operators, this was an awesome place to be. A work college Adrian VK5ZSN introduced me to fox-hunting. My other work college who I worked closely in HF was Rod VK5ZFQ (now VK5UDX), he was super keen too. We went to Adrians ham shack many long nights to build stuff. We built yagi’s antennas, modified radio’s for receiving the fox and made car parts. My friend Ashley VK5ZDX my best friend from school also was in the group. He was very good at programming and mathematics.

South Coast Radio Club

The South Coast Amateur Radio Club was the place to be if you’re into fox hunting. So we all joined. The club held night and day hunts often, we each got a turn to hid and be a fox. Each event we had built new stuff or tweaked old stuff till it did what we wanted. We kept hearing about the SREG convention down at Mt Gambier where the big fox hunting competitions were held annually. So that became our aim to get good enough to compete. We didn’t know what we were in for,.

SERG Convention

It was 1991 at the South East Radio Group fox hunting championship we first competed. Our set up was crude and we used a hire car. A yogi mounted to a broom handle through an open window. It was winter and raining and loosing your fingers to frost bike was not an option. Gloves worked well but the rain was a problem. We didn’t know we would be driving this car through pine forrest body tracks. We hired a Commodore sedan and its not made for bashing around pine forrest muddy tracks.

We did manage to get the car back in sort of good order, nothing that a good clean would hide the evidence. Our team hired car for years till the rental got too high.