[ARDF] ARDF Trends

[bruce]

I agree radio orienteering better describes the sport, and we generally use
that term. It does depend on your audience. If you are writing for a Ham
magazine, ARDF may still be better (it has "Amateur" in it), but your
observation about hams in general is also our finding. We have many Amateurs
in the club, but almost all are involved in mobile foxhunting to some extent
as well, so were already willing to get out of the shack.

Interestingly, we have 4 new Foundation Class Amateurs (referred to here as
F calls) who all came in contact originally through orienteering, so it
works both ways.

All but a handful of our radio (or "RadiO" short for radio orienteering),
are held in conjunction with orienteering events. There are a number of
reasons for this, but the hope is to also attract orienteers. It's gradual,
even glacial, but it does draw one in every now and then.

Homing Beacons we use intermittently. Often they are more trouble than they
are worth, because if the Start and Finish are co-located, they can cause
interference when competitors are starting. To be honest the main reason to
use them, when we do, is to make sure we retain the ability to run a
International Rules style event, rather than a real need for the
competitors. Can be handy if you break/lose your compass, however, not just
to get home, but to estimate bearings to other TXs.

Interested in ways people find to attract more to the sport, because it's
not easy !

Cheers,
Bruce

-----Original Message-----
From: ardf-bounces at kkn.net [mailto:ardf-bounces at kkn.net] On Behalf Of Gerald
Boyd
Sent: Thursday, 16 July 2009 9:39 AM
To: 'Marvin Johnston'; ardf at kkn.net
Subject: Re: [ARDF] ARDF Trends

I have been thinking about no longer using the name ARDF and switching to
using "radio-orienteering" to try to get orienteer's and non hams interested
in the sport.  

Using T-Hunting, fox hunting and ARDF is appearing to cause lack of interest
and the numbers to decline in our area. 

Just a thought. I Welcome any ideas, comments etc to get this sport to
expand. The average ham population does not appear to be interested in this
type of contest. They just want to sit in front of radios. That's based on
local experience with trying to get new people out or to attend ham fest
talks.

Also considering no longer using homing beacons at our meets. 

Starting with our July 25th orienteering / radio-orienteering meet. Finish
is marked on the map. Runners should know where they are on the map at all
times and how to re-locate if map contact is lost.

This is based on my experience at the 2006 world championships when the
homing beacon quit. I had to orienteer to the finish with the aid of that
thing. I think the homing beacon is an unnecessary distraction. Maybe that's
because I have been doing orienteering and have been getting more in touch
with O-maps.

Jerry

-----Original Message-----
From: ardf-bounces at kkn.net [mailto:ardf-bounces at kkn.net] On Behalf Of Marvin
Johnston
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 8:24 AM
To: ardf at kkn.net
Subject: Re: [ARDF] ARDF Trends


Okay, I took a look at the terms radio-orienteering, foxhunts, t-hunts,
t-hunting, foxhunting, and radiosport plus a few others, and none of them
had enough data to show a graph.

Google trends is at http://www.google.com/trends, so try it out.

Another interesting article that might apply to not getting people involved
in our sport is:

Is the iPhone Killing Your Creativity?
http://lateralaction.com/articles/iphone-creativity/

I think a KEY to getting people involved is to get them involved, and not
just tell them how much fun it is. Very few people seem to be such that they
will take an idea and run with it; most need to have some hand-holding ...
and a group to do it with.

Marvin, KE6HTS



Jay Hennigan wrote:
> Homingin at aol.com wrote:
> 
>> Could it be because "ARDF" has not caught on as a popular term for 
>> what we do here in the USA?  We long-timers use the term, but not the
average ham.
>> When I hear people talking on the air about our events in the park, 
>> they call them transmitter hunts, foxhunts, direction finding hunts 
>> (sometimes even "directional" finding) and T-hunts, but they hardly 
>> ever call them ARDF sessions.
>>
>> My guess is that there are plenty of people searching for hidden 
>> transmitter hunting information, but they use so many different terms 
>> to find it that no single term rises up onto the Google trends list.
> 
> And even true ARDF (as opposed to other forms of transmitter hunting) 
> goes by "Radio-orienteering" and "Radiosport" among different groups.
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