The official blog of the Hudson Valley Digital Network
October 2021 is busy with many educational activities to get everyone ready for our big radio direction finding (RDF) event scheduled for October 30th 2021 at Ferncliff Forest in Rhinebeck, New York.
Here is a great video on some basic skills and understanding for using a map and compass.
I would like to thank everyone who has supported what is now going to be officially called the Ulster & Northern Dutchess Readiness Net moving forward following our October 5th 2021 over the air session.
We still get to keep the UNDR acronym and the reason for changing the word "radio" out for "readiness" helps us provide a more flexible resource and mission.
As we continue to determine if what we are doing will be a benefit to ARES, RACES or CERT capacities at some point in the future as covered in past articles and live discussion every Tuesday at 8:00 PM local Hudson Valley Time (0000 UTC)
One note sent in a few days after our last UNDR Net is the image that solved a problem for Brad KC2VVJ. Thank you Bob K2LD for sharing your below image via our webform and helping Brad out. Details on the issue can be read here.
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| Bob K2LD decoded this image with ROBOT36 using PD50 mode while stopped in his car. Read more details here |
October: Hudson Valley Fox Hunt Season
Fall is the perfect season for walking around with antennae and radio equipment to find cleverly hidden transmitters, which are some times referred to as "foxes".
There are many practical applications for radio direction finding and members of the UNDR Net team have put together a curriculum to help teach related skills that are useful to this sort of activity detailed below. From a CERT perspective, understanding land navigation and direction finding are important things to know.
With a total of 12 participants, now spanning across 3 state borders across no fewer than 6 different counties, the UNDR Net continues to show that great content attracts more interest compared to how many standard ARES/RACES net serve those specific purposes.
Continuing on with perfecting SSTVM over FM via the WA2MJM 146.805 MHz wide area repeater, we have increased our ability to decode fantastic images using the PD50 mode. This slow scan television mode only takes less than one minute to send an image with 320x256 pixel resolution.
Past articles show some practical applications for SSTV to communicate or inform on situational awareness and this week we have a little more free form fun.
Ken KD2TQS started off by sharing a photo of this rather nice butterfly, with photo accreditation going to some Ken is friends with.
The species of butterfly is battus philenor and is more commonly known as the blue swallowtail. Sharing an image like this, or a type of snake, could be interesting in a no-cellular network access scenario where sharing a photo of wildlife could be very important.
The next image by Brad KC2VVJ, while it appears a little choppy was part due to interference on the repeater, but the commemorative patch is clearly legible for most of the image which proves resilience in sending an image in less than optimal conditions.
The last official image of the evening sent by Steve K2GOG was used as a quiz to identify someone who might "already be your friend" or perhaps "was your friend" on an early form of social media known as MySpace. Sharing a photo for perhaps some type of lost persons scenario is important.
No fewer than six participants decoded the image just fine with perfect clarity and all would have been able to pick this person out in a crowd, had this been a current photo of Tom Andersen.
Discussion during a directed net goes by quick and the UNDR Net for October 5th concluded at 2122 local time. An "unofficial" round of images followed which included Tom N2FZC sharing his first sending results using EncoderSSTV and the image quality was reported well across multiple people.
Radio Direction Finding Plans
Here are the plans for the jointly organized RDF day planned for October 30th along with the Overlook Mountain Amateur Radio Club, who will handling hospitality via a nice lunch to thanks its members and for those that are pre-registered for the event.
More details will be shared each week and as part of our curriculum. If you are interested in attending our October event at Ferncliff Forest, please take the below survey.
We all knew that the ARRL Field Day was going to be different in 2020, so in early June I decided to gather 10 years of public data from the ARRL about past Field Days and build one mega database to compare annual results.
The end product of that first analysis can be found in the "ARRL Field Day: Independent Data Analysis" article I authored six months ago.
With December under way, the latest issue of QST has been released with the full results of this great event meant to showcase amateur radio at its best.
The ARRL has even been kind enough to provide a free PDF version of the article for those that do not have the member only magazine or access to the very limited outlets where you can find a print copy such as Ham Radio Outlet and other select specialty retailers who are trying to figure out ways to do business no thanks to COVID-19.
2020 ARRL Field Day Facts and Fallacies
It is really tough for the ARRL to compile the scoring for Field Day on a normal year, but this year was much tougher given rule changes that allowed participants to remain at home but still support a club by sharing logs and attribute them to a club entity.
Based on the official ARRL QST article and the official data found on the ARRL website CSV repository, there are some things that do not add up 100%. I am not sure why this is, but the overall numbers are not "that far" different, so I guess they are still ok to use.
What am I talking about you ask? Here are some random spot checks comparing the article data to the website data for a few ARRL sections:
Overall, the ARRL QST article tallied up an impressive 10,213 entries for 2020, but the data only shows 9,601 entries.
Even if subtracting the 58 DX entities which are not represented in the website date very well, the difference is still over 1,000 off and I would like to know why that is, especially when some of the data does line up from both sources.
Taking another spot check comparing counts by class summary, the ARRL QST article says there were 517 "A" class participants in 2020, but the data adds up to only 481, which is 7% less. Looking at the rare "F" class, 84 are claimed by the article but only 78 are found in the data which is a little more than 7% difference. This makes me really concerned even if thinking about margins for error. The data should line up!
Transmitters & Classes!!
Diving even deeper, the QST article claims that 12,297 transmitters across 60 categories were used in the 2020 Field Day, but the data found on the website is 10,977.
You would think that transmitters and classes would always match up for a 1:1 SWR, but many field day participants, especially at the club level, know this might vary over the contest duration on how many stations they have on the air which makes the ARRL's job in keeping things straight really tough.
I think this is ok to have this slight mismatch though, since we all know a 1:1.89 SWR is ok, if we tried add some ham radio humor here, but still, we need to to depend on the ARRL for accuracy when guiding our hobby forward. As we learned this year, every point/vote counts!
This being said, lets compare the 10 years of average top 5 classes against just the 2020 data, but only using the website data because, that just seems a bit more accurate than the article that seems to use some sort of imaginary math.
Please do not worry, this story is going to get way more positive, so please stay with me here.
The exciting thing is that almost 60% of participating transmitters were those playing "ham radio" from home as single operator home based stations (1D) being cautious due to COVID, where 16% over the last 10 years were those more rare operators.
Home stations, but operating on emergency power (1E) increased 8% on average compared to past years, so this tells us that some people made an attempt to at least try to operate in the true spirits of Field Day while they were confined at the home QTH in 2020.
Interestingly, the fragmentation of so many different operating classes in years past shrunk from 45% to 12% which shows that COVID-19 really impacted the ways that even portable, temporary operators approached Field Day 2020 which was too bad, as there were many open green spaces to still attempt to play amateur radio this past June away from home and still be safe from COVID.
The most popular club run double transmitter 2A stations over the past 10 years shrank from 13% to under 2% in 2020 and this is not surprising given health concerns.
If anyone would like to help me analyze the master database that I have created to see how many of those 2% were part of that averaged 13% of years past, they may need some special award for treating Field Day the same as any other year, while still likely being very COVID compliant.
Participation & Contacts
Its time to reach for the sky pilgrim, as John Wayne might have said when it comes to participation this year for Field Day.
This gets confusing because tabulated web data shows a super steep drop off in the total number of participants from an average of 36,800 over the past 10 years to only 17,777 in 2020.
Some people might say that the death of ham radio is finally here, but I disagree after looking at the total number of contacts made.
Now, how can so many contacts be made with so much fewer participants you ask?
Easy, people had more time from home to operate and play radio rather then get stuck spending hours putting up antennae, running feed lines, avoiding mosquitos, having intellectual discussions while waiting for time at a club radio or being distracted by meal times and countless other "what happens at field day, stays at field day" sort of moments.
Most people who operate field day at the club level probably know that some participants like to operate while others do the physical labor. This drop off could have been worse and it was not.
Normal levels of participation should bounce back next year, I hope and I suspect a huge increase.
Mr. Mic says: Amateur radio is finally here?
Could someone like Jason AF7JP from Ham Radio 2.0 been ahead of the curve just like HVDN and other forward minded people and organizations in the hobby today? Yes, they were! Digital was coming in every form possible and the entire hobby needed to get ready for it!
Dissecting the total contacts in 2020 into voice, digital data and Morse code, it looks like the complexities of more people doing digital during field day has finally come thanks to COVID.
Personally, as part of the 6A Overlook Mountain Amateur Radio Club (OMARC) team in 2020, we ran a really safe COVID compliant outdoor operation this year at Ferncliff Forest in Rhinebeck NY.
Everyone noticed that voice contacts were pretty much the same as years past and we suspected that field day overall was disappointing for many people across the land.
In past years, certain OMARC club members operated digital modes which gave the clubs valuable points thanks to portable go kits, but they decided to stay home this year and we missed those QSO's and friendly faces a lot. The logs do not even show them participating in field day this year which is too bad, especially when it came to digital contacts.
OMARC still had a pretty good score considering and we generally thank Joe N2LL for this since he is a pure CW operator. Since we put extra special attention into his favorite 80m vertical antenna this year, he made more personal contacts than the year prior to help close the digital gap for the club.
Where OMARC totally missed out was no digital station for the duration of the event, but everyone who worked the overnight and early morning shifts knew that all the activity was on non-voice modes after scanning the bands and hoping to avoid duplicate voice contacts.
Across the country, it seems the data backs up our experience that digital is here to stay and is coming into its own against CW even, which as a 200 year old technology is still used to make contacts.
Could voice QSO's be a thing of the past? Are we losing some social aspects in the hobby? Not likely, but it does seem the magic of rubbing two wires together or bashing bits and bytes together will help maintain the legacy and future of amateur radio for years to come.
2020: Field Day lessons learned
It is encouraging to see such growth in digital modes during field day, that it is in every club's best interests to focus some time on building out a dedicated digital station to not miss out on points in the 2021 version of field day.
Many people say that Field Day is not a contest and I agree with that, but if we are going to think of this event for a reason to create emergency communications capabilities, digital needs to be front and center for anyone looking to participate in field day.
Hudson Valley Perspective
HVDN is based in the beautiful Hudson Valley section of New York and we need to now shift from the national picture to that of our local region, known as ENY.
Our ARRL section is actually one of the few in the United States to keep up mostly with national trends and actually come close to showing growth, where other parts of the country are stagnating against the national averages.
For ENY to continue showing this strong leadership, we need to encourage more of our communities to get active in other "non-contest" aspects of amateur radio such as Summits On The Air (SOTA), Parks On The Air (SOTA) and even Islands On The Air (IOTA).
These sort of converged activities will not only help future participation and modernization in Field Day, but also help those who only get outside once a year for Field Day to try some other ways of operating.
Comparing ENY to the less than the 2 hour away Long Island section know as NLI, which also has roughly four times the population and number of amateurs, the contact trends are not as active as the neighbors to the north. Considering that so many fewer ham's live in ENY compared to NLI, this is pretty interesting!
Even when looking at the entire FCC Call Letter Section Two which covers New York and New Jersey, the Hudson Valley seems to be the place to be when it comes to amateur radio if we use Field Day as a small example.
I hope you can come for a visit either for Field Day, upcoming Fox Hunt adventures or even to explore our many, many SOTA, POTA and possibly IOTA destinations plus Winter Field Day operations which OMARC also seems to have taken a lead on here in the Hudson Valley.
So how can I get this database you have?
To gain access to the tool used to visualize the charts used in this article, we are currently offering this as one of the HVDN member benefits, so if you would like a copy, please consider becoming a supporting member for $12 USD even if you do not live in the Hudson Valley.
The database will let you:
Help HVDN grow as a supporting member
and you even get to learn something for less than $1 a month, not just limited to data analysis and visualization
As the article title suggests, the recent radio direction finding (RDF) event in the Hudson Valley (HV) thanks to both the Overlook Mountain Amateur Radio Club (OMARC) and Hudson Valley Digital Network (HVDN) was a fun time to be socially distanced and educational simultaneously.
Here is a summary of the first "Fox Hunt" to take place in northern Dutchess County since COVID-19 disrupted normalcy while using directional antennae to find a hidden transmitter.
Did we find Alf at Ferncliff Forrest?
Funny things happen when amateur radio operators invade local nature preserves when waving around strange looking antenna contraptions.
The goal of this joint radio direction finding event between two great organizations and its membership was to hide a remotely controlled transmitter box known as a "Fox" and participants were going to try to find it/catch it somewhere in the well maintained Ferncliff Forest Game Preserve located in Rhinebeck, NY.
Ahead of the hunt which took place on November 21st, many hunters constructed a directional antenna known as a Yagi which was optimized for finding the location of transmitters thanks to Joe WB2HOL, formerly of the Hudson Valley and charter member of the Putnam Emergency & Amateur Radio League (PEARL) club before relocating to warmer weather in North Carolina.
Made from inexpensive materials such as PVC pipe and discarded tape measures, each hunter was able to find the peak and null of the hidden transmitter to help find which direction to travel and be the first to find the transmitter hidden which was inside a common case found at Harbor Freight Tools.
While conducting some pre-event education in the parking lot and during the hunt, a number of families who were out enjoying the day commented about our antennae and some children thought we were looking for aliens when they heard the signal coming from each hunters radio.
1st Hunt Near Success Story
Steve K2GOG was the organizer of the event and was tasked with hiding the fox after a basic demonstration of antenna and radio direction finding theory for those who would go and try and find the transmitter.
Beyond the easy to build Yagi antenna designed for the amateur radio 2m wavelength band at a frequency of 146.565 MHz, Steve showed off other options he has used such as a handheld TDOA from Rainbow Kits (Time Delay of Arrival) and UHF half Egg Beater, of Steve K2GOG own design and inspiration for the HVDN HASviolet antenna V1 on 900 MHz.
Lloyd K2JVX brought his Arrow DF loop antenna which amazed other attendees at how small it was. Rob W2RWS was eager to try his Arrow II antenna and its 70cm capability for tuning to the harmonic of the transmitter found on 439.965 MHz. All these mentioned types of antennae are easy to build or purchase and each offers unique benefits and challenges when used for RDF.
The hidden transmitter was based around the combination of a Byonics Piccon V2 and a Lanch HG-UV98 radio. This arrangement provided the primary ability to remotely control the transmitter by sending a DTMF tone to sequence the transmitter which sent out a combined set of random tones followed by a cryptic Morse code message on 146.565 MHz that the hunters used to find the fox.
The secondary ability was to also transmit an APRS beacon on 446.500 MHz which allowed GPS, temperature and voltage to be sent back to Steve K2GOG should the fox become abducted by someone or malfunction in some way.
Lloyd K2JVX was the first to find the transmitter hidden towards the rear of the pond. Rob W2RWS was close behind and both hunters almost found the fox before it stopped responding to command codes, which meant a rescue operation was needed.
Bob KD2QAK used a different method to find the fox by taking signal readings at known locations and plotted the direction of the signal on a map. He drew lines to see where they intersected and clearly defined the general area where he thought the signal was coming from.
This first hunt was very successful as it taught everyone that multiple techniques and equipment could be used to find the general location of a fox, but the strong 1 watt signal actually made it hard to find the fox as each hunter got pretty close to it, even within the last 15 feet. Other equipment designed for closer detection was needed.
Attention about attenuation
While a 1 watt signal radiated from a simple Radioshack telescoping antenna sounds like it would be easy to find, its strength made it hard for all hunters, so a demonstration using a dummy load as the antenna was done to show how to better tune to the null of the fox or how to attenuate the received signal through the use of methods like the "body fade" method using a standard rubber duck or better design or selection of antenna or receivers.
Certain radios like the Kenwood TH-D74 and Icom IC-R20 seemed to work the best due to advanced attenuation and RF gain features. Much more inexpensive radios like the Yaesu FT-70DR, Yaesu FT-4XR did not due as well since the receivers in them were easily overloaded by strong local signals.
Guy KD2TLF found success by tuning away 10 or more kHz away from the actual signal to attenuate the signal in his Yaesu FT-4XR while both Bob and Zina focused on using the harmonic and null to get closer to the fox with the FT-70DR.
We also learned as a group that the dummy load Steve used radiated its signal horizontally compared to the RadioShack antenna which was vertically polarized. This knowledge may come in handy for the future to confuse future hunters.
Walk in the woods: 2nd hunt results
As Lloyd found the first fox, he was elected to hide the transmitter for the next round. After an unexpected malfunction with an external blinking safety light on the fox, the hunt was declared open season and the hunters took off to see where Lloyd hid the fox.
Steve K2GOG decided it may be an unfair advantage to use some of his more advanced tools like the TDOA array or even his specialty field strength meter, so he started the hunt using nothing more than the standard rubber duck with his Kenwood TH-D74 and relied upon the body fade method of signal detection.
He got his bearing by holding the radio close to his front and rotated around until the signal decreased towards his rear. Walking another 15-20 away, he took another bearing and did this every so often to see if he was headed in the right direction.
Not too much later, he came across Ken KD2TQS (Official event photographer) who had followed Lloyd into the woods to hide the fox. Steve knew he was getting close and pressed onward.
Soon after Steve got to a location that the transmitter must be close to, he found Lloyd sitting on a nearby log having a snack. Just after a few minutes later while trying to get closer to the fox, Rob W2RWS and Guy KD2TLF showed up from a different direction trying hard to find the fox.
Because Lloyd was tricky in where he hid the fox next to a thick tree that was tilting over at about a 30 degree angle and some rocks that are known to contain iron ore, it took the 3 hunters more than 20 minutes to find the fox which was covered with leaves and its antenna just barely poking out.
Steve followed by Rob and Guy finally found the fox and we decided to call it a day after roughly 3 hours and 10,000 steps in Ferncliff Forest.
Final words
After the group met back up with Bill KD2UEN and Zina KD2UEO back at the parking lot, some prizes were awarded to commemorate the event. An offset attenuator kit courtesy of KC9ON was awarded to Rob, a dual band rubber duck was given to Lloyd and a set of orange and black zipties were given to all other participants.
Much was learned during this on foot fox hunt and the day was enjoyed by all who came out to brave the nice weather and clean air away from home.
We are going to be planning future events like this and weather permitting, the next fox hunt will likely take place during the Winter Field Day event that OMARC has done the past few years.
Please visit the 146.805 MHz repeater broadcasting from high atop Overlook Mountain in Hurley NY to talk to those mentioned in this article and to learn about Winter Field Day 2021 or other OMARC activities.
OMARC/HVDN Fox Hunters pictured right to left are Guy KD2TLF, Zina KD2UEO, Bill KD2UEN, Rob W2RWS, Lloyd K2JVX and Steve K2GOG
