[ARDF] Re: My first ARDF event...

[Homingin at aol.com]

Congratulations to you Matthew, for your willingness to put on an ARDF event and your baptism by fire.  I'm sure you learned so much this first time that your next time will be a snap.  Just a couple of comments:

I don't understand why almost everyone tries to remote-start their PicCons by radio, considering all the possibilities for failure that way due to HT problems, propagation, and programming errors.  My ARDF boxes don't even have receivers in them.  I always use the delay-start timer feature and it hasn't failed me yet.  I power up all the boxes, program them and issue a start command* just before I leave the house.  I don't have to worry about it again, as everything is preprogrammed to come on in sequence just before hunt start time.  I simply make a quick check on the first cycle to make sure all boxes can be heard, and start the hunt.  The delay-start feature is great, try it and you'll like it!

(* I start them with a DTMF 1 through a cable that goes to all PicCons at once, so perfect sync is maintained)

I made it a point to build the boxes as ruggedly as possible so that there won't be any power intermittents that could cause the PicCon clocks to reset during the delay time.  (Once or twice, my foxboxes have fallen out of trees to the ground while I was placing them, with no ill effects.)  I have the older PicCons with telephone connectors, but they are mounted on a plate and all the wiring is harnessed and clamped to the plate so it can't move around.

Somebody asked how to get DTMF audio to the PicCons without receivers in the boxes.  It's easy if your HT plays the DTMF tones through its speaker when transmitting.  Just hook an audio cable from the HT's earphone jack to the PicCon audio input and transmit the tones on the HT.  Since my HT has to actually be in transmit mode for the DTMF to appear, I put a little dummy load on the HT while programming to prevent any possible problems from RFI.

Hope you're already planning your next event.

73,
Joe K0OV