The AREG January saturday foxhunt event was a great success with 4 groups participating in the foot hunt around the south Adelaide parkland wetlands . We had a couple of family teams out there as well. 6 low power 2m (144 MHz) beacons were scattered through the wetlands. All teams managed to find these within about 45 minutes which was a great effort.

One of the groups checking in that they found a fox transmitter

After the foot hunt, we took on the vehicle hunt challenge. Tony VK5AH and company took on the task of hiding the transmitters for this event across the NW suburbs of Adelaide. Three teams set out to find the foxes, two of which were on the 144 MHz band and one on the 439 MHz band. Tony set quite the challenge for us as we couldn’t hear any of the transmitters from the start.

After heading to high ground in North Adelaide, several of the teams caught a weak signal from one of the 144MHz beacons and we were then off north. That beacon was ultimately located near the Dry Creek rail yards. Next was 439 MHz, which took us across to the Port Adelaide Canoe club and finally, we caught a signal from the 2nd 144MHz beacon which lead us to the eastern boundary of the Adelaide Airport.

Fox Beacon 1 – 144 MHz

Fox 2 – 439 MHz hidden inside the polypipe

Fox 3 – buried under brush in a reserve on the east side of Adelaide Airport

The equipment used varies by team. Mark VK5QI has developed a system based around a Kraken Synchronous SDR Time of arrival system which allows his team to track while driving. Most of the others need to stop and take bearings along the way.

VK5QI team with a Kraken TOA Direction Finding System

Here you can see the route taken by the VK5QI time finding these three rather low powered fox transmitters spreadout across Adelaide.

Thanks to everyone who took part. This new Saturday format is something we will consider going forward for foxhunting throughout 2026!