Assembling a Fox for Fox Hunting

 


Last week I was having a conversation with a friend about what there is to do in ham radio.  One of the things that I always thought looked fun was fox hunting (otherwise known as radio direction finding). Since I tend to be a little spontaneous, I hopped onto the Byonics web site and made some orders.

First into the cart was the PicCon Foxhunt Controller, I threw in the cables for programming and power, and an antenna too.  Then I got to thinking how it would be fun to have a micro size fox so once you find the higher power one you have to get out on foot and really work to locate the other.  So back I went and placed another order for a MicroFox.  Cool unit, all self contained, so not much to say about the MicroFox yet.  Will have to break that one in hunting.


Finally everything showed up!  I had a few of the needed items already, I had a dusty 6ah LifePo4 battery sitting around, like many people I have way too many Baofeng radios, and I also had a plastic ammo can from Harbor Freight.  So I figured I’d build the fox into that using the UV-5r.  I started out by figuring out where everything needed to sit within the can.  The jumper cable I got for the antenna was really short so it limited where I could put the radio and still be able to fully open the lid.

Once I determined where that needed to go I knew where to place my battery.  Using some 3M Dual Lock I secured the battery to the bottom of the can.  Just enough to keep the battery from sliding around during transport.
 

Once I had that positioning figured out I was able to drill the hole for the antenna jumper and install it.  
 

I then took out the Byonics PicCon and hooked it up to a laptop for programming.  I needed to power it on and hunt down the appropriate COM port.  Once I had that squared away I was able to get the settings corrected.  I entered my callsign and adjusted the length of the beacon cycle.
 
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1upHw1cIGM_b9gWFI__1r6dTUe5OLkh63https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1N0OXgH-enj3PDCSaINauXB21aS8V2poh

I then put it back into it’s enclosure and secured it to the inside of the can using Dual Lock.  I made sure not to cover the screw on the back in case I needed to open it up in the future for programming changes.  I added the power cable and connection to the Baofeng.  It was a pre-made cable from Byonics.  Looks simple enough to build, but this saved me a bit of time.  While I enjoy building stuff and making cables, the real fun from this project will be in finding them.
 

With everything ready to go, I cleared all of the programming in the Baofeng and changed some settings to conserve battery life.  Like turning off the backlight and when the display is illuminated.  Eventually I’ll swap out the battery on the Baofeng for the 12v adapter and let it run off the LifePo4 as well.
 
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1x_Clb_sUQfh5xhhjKCvIV4y5JOBP4hYG

Then it was time to power everything up and give it a listen. Seems to work pretty well.  Now I just need to find some time to actually get out and hunt them.  I still need to build a good Yagi antenna, so that will likely be coming soon.


~73s K7WJV

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