4 Stories: 2nd Annual Great Hudson Valley Hidden Transmitter Hunt Results

The 2nd Annual Great Hudson Valley Hidden Transmitter Hunt has come and gone, so its time to share a few stories how the event went this year regarding radio direction finding also known as RDF or "fox hunting"

Story #1 - Attendance

Saturday November 9th 2024, the weekend of Veterans Day seems to be working well and this year we again had three different geographic search areas spread across the region.  Kingston, Poughkeepsie and Wappingers were the areas chosen based on a survey.  People tend to be lazy when it comes to travel in our area, so there is no better way to get participation then bringing an event as close to them as possible.

​We had 12 attendees of 16 who took the pre event interest survey.  75% conversion rate is a success!!  Below in GREEN are where the RDF search areas were located. BLUE is where those who attended traveled from and RED is who surveyed but were not able to make attend the event.  The number in each grid is for total number of people surveyed who live in that grid.  Each grid is 4x6 miles in dimension to give sense of scale to below map if you do not live in the area to see how far people did travel.

Story #2 - Popularity

For each search area location, a common starting point was arranged for each area given the expected mix of new and experienced participants for this event.  This also helped gauge how to pair people up and how many hidden transmitters to hide based on where people were planning to be.  The survey results matched pretty well with where people actually ended up searching and further data shows that most people stayed on the side of the Hudson they live on, which was not surprising at all.

The Kingston site only had 2 participants, and Dutchess had 10. For next year, we need to improve participation in Ulster County, but this was also a challenge last year when hiding a transmitter in New Paltz at the opposite end of the county from Kingston. Last year we had 3 people in Stone Ridge area which is mid way both Kingston and New Paltz.  Maybe people in Ulster Co. are just too busy..... Still, three foxes were deployed in the Kingston area for the event so the capacity was there for a good event on the west side of the Hudson River.

Initially it seemed like more participants would start within FN31BR in Dutchess County, but since those transmitters came on close to 10:30, many started at FN31CO search area first at 10:00 instead.

The transmitter hid in FN31CO was also found pretty quickly by all but one hunter, but that same person also got to the FN31BR faster than all the others who started in FN31CO.  Not mentioning callsigns here to protect the innocent!  ​

The biggest learning is that making sure all transmitters are on the air at the start time is important and also to continue making announcements and chatter on the repeater network covering the event to entice others to maybe participate at the last minute. But, this did not impact participation as there was ample pre event promotion and discussion on the chosen repeater network , plus only one transmitter of the total of seven were all online at 10:00 AM.

Story #3 - Equipment

Since this event was publicized far in advance and a few different mini events focused on educating about radio direction finding plus a few antenna build days took place beforehand,  this was the first event I remember where almost all participants had proper equipment and knew how to use it all.  This was a major success and many were new to this type of event.  Five of the total twelve never participated in such an event before.

This year, the inexpensive TID and Quansheng radios proved popular again and those that had modified radios with new firmware also seemed to do much better than those that did not. 

Only two participants had Kenwood and Yaesu radios and both seemed able to find transmitters more quickly due to better engineering that handles strong signals. However,  the low cost radios continue to get better and its worth everyone looking into the TID Radio H3 or Quansheng UV-K5 if you have not already. 

A range of antenna were used to find the transmitters with all but one being home made design. Using all set to horizontal polarity was the best way to reduce signals and find the transmitters and most everyone used additional attenuation devices. Here is a survey of what was most popular.
​

• Radio with SMA regular connector = 43.8%
• Radio with SMA-J connector (Baofeng, TID, etc) = 87.5%
• Radio with BNC connector = 12.5%
• 2m VHF Antenna = 50%
• 70cm UHF Antenna = 68.8% 
• VHF/UHF mobile radio & antenna = 18.8%
• Other advanced equipment (SA, Kraken, TDOA, etc) = 18.8%

Story #4 - Not getting lost and not losing equipment

It is important to be safe and this was a safe event. One hunter did venture onto private property but was able to explain what they were doing and nothing bad happened. At a different site, some additional "sports memorabilia" was found and distributed to those who may have a use for it.

Permission for the more public sites thanks to local police and town workers were obtained to help cut down on potentially lost transmitters or to explain people roaming around with funny antennae. Here are some photos of just the hidden foxes at a few sites.

The actual locations where the transmitters were hidden is only known to those who participated, but a basic map is in the photo scroll below for anyone interested.