Jippy’s Story

Free-For-All

May 31, 2008

 

This note describes some of the tricks I used for hiding transmitters for a FFA and how I hunt transmitters in a FFA. It is not your usual stuff found in the T-hunt books and other places.

 

Hiding:

 

Realize that there will be a lot of transmitters on at the same time. Not just a few sharing a frequency but a din of background noise caused by a fair number of transmitters that are always on at the same time. This requires a different mode of hunting, but also allows some interesting forms of hiding.

 

I hid 9 transmitters in the same place (within a 50 ft circle) that all sounded identical. They were one 2 watt AF6O box iding T9 with some tones and 8 squawkboxes using recordings of this T9. Everything was set to transmit every 30 sec but not quite so there was no noticeable pattern. One was never found and one broke so there were 7 in the hunt.

 

This led to some interesting effects. Most of the hunters arrived at the transmitter laden cul-de-sac and found two or three and concluded that that was it and left. You cannot get a count, it is just noise. Later they all came back and found the rest, but by then they had figured it out and were mostly searching for the physical units and signin sheets and not sniffing.

 

Three of my transmitters had changing patterns. One had two “voices” using random CW tones and random code speed, and one had five “voices” with changing code speed and tone, but not random. Both of these used the same ID throughout. One changed ID every 20 minutes, from T10 to T11, to T12 and repeat. A couple folk found this transmitter more than once but were too embarrassed to sign in twice.

 

Due to the scoring, it is important that your transmitter be found. But if they are too easy, then everyone will find them all and you will again lose. Note that I hid 11 transmitters in this hunt and everyone found 10 so all that only gave me one point. I could have gotten the one point by hiding one transmitter. Mine were too easy.  Bob his 4 transmitters but only one was found. He only got one point, his were too hard. Realize his hide wasn’t too hard but his unfound transmitters were too weak to be discriminated from the noise and never found. They would have been found in a 4 transmitter hunt. So the techniques for hiding are tricky and require some thought.

 

Hunting:

 

Hunting in a FFA is unique. There is always more than one transmitter on at any one time and often so many it is just noise. You cannot identify any single one unless you can remove most of the rest, so to find a transmitter you must do something other than swing you beam around.

 

I find that to add attenuator until the transmitters are reduced to two or three and work on them now that you can single them out to get bearings. This works well for the strong transmitters and you can find about 4-5 of them this way. To find the weak ones you have to move to where they are. Since you have no bearings you drive to the likely spots and try to get geometry to make the weak ones the strong ones so you can isolate them. This is not as impossible as it sounds as all of the transmitters are hidden with in one hour of the restaurant, so the most you have is about a 15 mile radius to cover.

 

We all did this drive around thing covering at least 5 miles in all directions and 10-15 miles in logical directions and never heard Bob’s three transmitters.

 

This was a great hunt of this type and offered some interesting problems. Note that over the years the FFAs are being won by the same folk. There is a lot of unique skill being developed.

 

I lost it. I thought I had it but I didn't. I brought home the battery, the signin sheet and the antenna, but not the transmitter. I have searched everywhere around here and even drove all the way back to the hide spot but no transmitter. Since the battery was outside the transmitter it came home and was charged right away. I also charged the other four transmitters that had rechargeable batteries as I like to keep them up when stored. I didn't notice the transmitter was missing until I wanted a nice load to test some rejuvenated batteries and it was no where.

Now this was not just any transmitter. It was my favorite and the dread of a lot of hunters. I have had it for about 6 years and it has performed without a flaw and was my most reliable transmitter. It was built by AF6O and consisted of a Ramsey FT-146 transmitter outputting 2 watts into a Ramsey 40W amplifier. It only made 30 watts, but it was a nice 30 watts. The controller was a PicCon that for the last 5 years has been programmed with two random voices both with the id of WB6JPI T7.

I am keeping a light in the window. It may come home or crawl out from under whatever I hid it under around here. Until then I will miss it.

I am working on a replacement. It will be a 40 watt transmitter and PicCon controller and in memory it too will be programmed like T7. However, it will also have the property of being remote programmable.

Jippy