[TexasARDF] New Member

[Kenneth E. Harker]

Welcome!

We should put together another on-foot, in-the-woods foxhunt.  

When we did the Texas ARDF Championship back in October, we had some 
significant timing issues with the five transmit controllers.  It turns out 
that the ceramic resonators were not very frequency or temperature stable,
so they drifted a lot.  We had some transmitters that were keying almost
exactly on top of one another by the end of the day.  I've since replaced 
the 3.800000 MHz resonators with 3.579545 MHz crystals, which are a lot more 
stable.  Now, the controllers drift maybe five seconds relative to each other 
over a ten hour run.  The problem is, though, that with the frequency change
from 3.800000 MHz to 3.579545 MHz, they all gradually lose time.  Nobody
makes a 3.800000 MHz crystal, and I don't have access to the PIC code to 
change its timing loop.  But, I think we could use them for another hunt
if we wanted.  Jen is going to build me a set of Montreal Fox Controllers
that should have better timing characteristics.

One of the things they did at the USA ARDF champs a couple of weekends ago 
inadvertently changed the timings on their controllers, so we were hunting 
on "72.3-second minutes".  But the transmitters were stable relative to one
another.

If we want to do another two meter event, maybe sooner would be better than 
later, or it will become too hot outside...

On Wed, Apr 26, 2006 at 12:59:39PM -0400, ALoneStarYank at aol.com wrote:
> I found your site while searching around the web. I found it interesting and 
> signed up! My QTH is San Antonio, Texas and about two weeks ago my local club 
> had the first "South Texas 2 Meter Shoot Out". It was very well received as 
> only home-brew antennas were allowed. There were even a few "tape-measure 
> antennas".
> Bob  W2IK  - http://hometown.aol.com/alonestaryank/webpages.html
> _______________________________________________
> TexasARDF mailing list
> TexasARDF at lists.texasardf.org
> http://lists.texasardf.org/mailman/listinfo/texasardf

-- 
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
kenharker at kenharker.com
http://www.kenharker.com/