CHCCS ARDF
2017-10-08, Fall #3, 80m Classic
Carolina North Forest - East
Equipment Notes
Island Creative TimeThe family website of Kelly and Patrick Sears
This page is an event report for one of the Chapel Hill - Carrboro City Schools ARDF events directed by Kelly and Patrick Sears. For comments, suggestions, and questions; please contact Kelly Sears [ksears (at) chccs (dot) k12 (dot) nc (dot) us].
Mostly the equipment was the same as in our last few 80 m classics. The homing beacon and foxes were set to put out 1.5 W into a 50 ohm load and were hooked up to a 6 m vertical with three 3 m radials. They all had either an antenna tuner or a transformer attached. That's all as usual.
During the last event, one of our antenna tuners broke. That was the reason for Fox #1 being weak during the Oct-1 event. For the Oct-8 event, the tuner was replaced with a transformer built just this last week. So we're back to having just the right number of tuners or transformers. Another problem averted was one of the radial systems having a wire rip out during course. We had a single spare. Phew ☺
We did have a few problems during this event also. Several of the antennas and radial systems have lost their banana plugs and have corrosion visible. We didn't notice major changes in signal strength. Time is short, so we'll do a temporary patch job to get through the season.
The course timing system was not out for testing. We had some problems with at the last event and the start time was too busy to set it up during this event. Mostly time was taken up with dealing with Fox 5 which didn't come on with the others. A field fix worked and we didn't have to replace it. Happy day ☺
Overall the equipment is holding up well. As we approach the end of the season, we've accumulated wear on the equipment and haven't had time to fix it. So, we may need to start setup a bit earlier to account for field fixes during the next couple events. One reason that we haven't been able to keep up with equipment fixes is because we've been also building totally new equipment for foxoring!
Yes! The next event will definitely be foxoring! We're still building the equipment but we're confident we'll be done by Oct-22. It's very exciting to be running one of these events for the first time ☺
Here are a few pictures of our preparation. Clicking pictures will bring up larger versions.
Bob Frey MCing at one of the US/R2 Championship medal ceremonies in the Cincinnati area this last August. He gave us the schematic for the foxo transmitters used at the championships. It's the schematic we used in designing ours. Thanks Bob ☺
Our first working protoboard. It's alive! ☺
Inside one of the foxo transmitter prototypes used in the event. This one used an early OSH Park board.
The PCB pattern we used in the last six foxo transmitter builds. We designed them using KiCad[1] and ordered them from OSH Park[2] .
Four of the foxo transmitters before they were put in their enclosure. Here, they had just been tested to make sure they could stay on all through an event and we were now seeing how long it would take to recharge them. The charger shows a red light by each charging connection. When the charge is done, it turns green. Three red lights can be seen for the three transmitters on the right. The transmitter on the left was done charging and disconnected.
One of the foxo transmitters with its 3D printed enclosure. It was our first time ever doing 3D printing. We designed the models using OpenSCAD[3] and had enclosures printed by Brian Henning[4] .
The eleven foxo transmitters used in the event. Finally got them finished (mostly) just Thursday evening. Phew!
Our full set of foxo posts before they were painted green and dark brown. They each have peice of PVC at the top with the foxo number and a red punch hanging from a string.
Close up of four of the foxo posts.
[1]. KiCad.
[2]. OSH Park.
[3]. OpenSCAD.
[4]. Brian Henning's 3D printing.
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