The Channel 6 Club Transmitter Hunts

One of the more popular activities, that the Montgomery County CB Club sponsored, was a series of CB transmitter hunts.  What's a transmitter hunt, you ask? Well in a nutshell, a transmitter hunt is an event where someone hides,  transmits a signal, and then everyone races to find him. The winner is determined either by the shortest time, or the shortest mileage used to find the hidden transmitter.  There are many similar DF hunting activities on the ham radio bands, so it was only natural that these activities found their way to the CB scene as well.  The idea, for our club sponsoring a CB transmitter hunt, was born when one of our members, Black Widow, related his experiences with formal CB hunts held by another channel group in the Green Lane area 5 or 10 miles northwest of our area.  He had a lot of fun and felt that something like this would be an activity that our club would also enjoy, as it combined CB radio with riding around in cars.  Something the younger members, especially, could relate to.  He floated the idea around over the air, and it seemed to generate interest.  I, being someone with some experience in signal tracking, especially liked the idea.  So when the idea was brought up at the next formal club meeting, the club voted in favor of starting this activity. All we needed to do was to create and approve a set of rules. 

The first rule that was penned, was that this would be designed both as a fun activity for the participants, and as a fund raiser for the club. There would be a nominal entrance fee, with the proceeds split between a prize for the winner, and the remainder going into the club's treasury.  We decided that we would pick a set of physical boundaries within which to hunt, encompassing a good portion of the local Montgomery County area, but avoiding the most congested urban sections.  We also chose a meeting place situated somewhat central to the area, in the parking lot of what was then the Clover mall, at the intersection of RT's 202 and 73.  Photocopies of the area map would be provided to all participants at the time of the event.  The person hiding, (hams refer to him as a "fox") would be the winner from the previous event.  The fox had some liberty in the place he could choose to hide, with a few restrictions. The rules stated that the "fox" had to hide on, or no more than 100' from, a public street or in a publicly accessible (by car) place, (so much for off-roading ;-( ) and must display their 4 way flashers while hiding. The fox was also not allowed to alter either his antenna or transmit power during the course of the event.  After an hour went by, if hunters were still out looking, the "fox" would start giving increasingly more revealing verbal clues as to his location during each transmission period.  So far so good. The rules up to this point seemed reasonable and I was feeling my excitement growing.  I was more than confident that I could easily win this contest, considering my past experience.  But as was typical for me back then, I let my mouth unknowingly ruin my chances........

At that time, I was one of the few people in the club who had any real experience with transmitter hunting. As we continued our on-air discussion of the upcoming inaugural event, rather than remain quiet about what I planned to do (What would the fun have been in that?), I started trash talking on the air like a professional sports player.  I made mention that I would be rigging for bear, and bringing along my D.F. Loop, attenuator, and field strength meter. I also made a prediction (more accurately bragged) that I would probably mop up the competition.  The club leadership overheard my rhetoric, thought about this a bit, and then came to the conclusion that my D.F. equipment gave me an unfair advantage over the rest of the group, so the very next  operational rule which they created, was the prohibition of any external devices to enhance tracking ability.  Each hunter's radio setup had to be a standard mobile configuration.  If the radio had an R.F. Gain or a Local/Distance switch built-in, that was allowed.  But no external attenuators (you could disconnect the feedline from the radio) would be allowed.  You could also use a standard magnet mount antenna and mount to the extreme back of the car to act like a cheap and dirty directional antenna, but no D.F. loops could be used.  Needless to say, I was quite a bit bummed that I had just been "neutered" by the mandatory exclusion of the tools of my trade.  In retrospect,  I should have silently planned and brought my equipment. Then, if I won the event, they could complain about how "unfair" it was.  But at least I would've had the win in the book.  Lesson learned: It's better to beg forgiveness, than ask for permission.   Even with that new rule, I still looked forward to the event and started thinking about ways to get around the limitations of the rules.  I was still keeping a positive outlook, at least until the next major rule became known.

In the final fatal blow to any demonstration of actual DF skill as a crucial element of the event, the club decided that the "fox" would transmit only once during each consecutive 5 minute interval (I think this was to conform to FCC rules at the time). Each transmission was to consist of a simple station to station call, using FCC call signs repeated 2 times along with a "nothing heard" signoff, for a total of three transmissions lasting less than 5 seconds a piece. That was hardly enough of a signal to get a real solid fix on.  In contrast, the transmitter hunts on ham radio usually involved sending a continuous carrier, which allowed ample opportunity to "home" in on the signal itself.  So on our hunt, during the 4 minutes of quiet time between transmissions, you were basically just running off blind in one direction or another looking for a car with 4-way flashers on.  It would seem then that the ultimate "winner" would be the guy who luckily headed out in the right general direction initially and then quickly covered the most likely streets, until accidentally stumbling across the fox.

When I heard this, I was floored. After all the anticipation and excitement, I had just gotten the proverbial wind knocked out of me. This had gone from a contest of skill to one of mostly luck.  How could anyone, in all honesty, call this a "transmitter hunt" when you might get a grand total of 60 seconds worth of "transmissions" before the "fox" was discovered by sheer luck?  In my disgust, I decided to boycott the event entirely out of protest.  I made my objections known, and hoped that I might be successful at swaying the club leadership into backing off or changing the rules to better emphasize the element of skill.  But I was unsuccessful, and I suspect that my lack of diplomacy in presenting my case was probably the reason they refused to budge.  But not wanting to back down though (that pride thing), I held on stubbornly to my protest of the event.

Well, the night of the big event finally came. The weather was good and, as expected, the turnout was also good as several curious contestants met up at the designated meeting place.  Since this was the first time for the event, Mickey Mouse volunteered to be the "fox" and once everyone was there, he drove off to hide.  Even though I was officially protesting the event, I still couldn't ignore it,  my curiosity predictably getting the better of me, and I stayed home monitoring the happenings from my base.  When the "fox" made his first transmission, I was ready and naturally swung my beam around to find his direction.  I then looked at my wall map and figured where the most likely hiding spot would be considering his direction and signal.  Finally, after another transmission had gone by,  I decided that while I was not a part of the "official" event, there was nothing stopping me from looking for him on my own, and in my own way.  While I didn't have the time to rig my DF gear, I figured I had enough of a bearing from the beam heading to do the trick.  So I quickly jumped out in the car and headed off in the direction of the signal. Already 15 minutes into the event, I caught the next transmission and the +20 db over S9 signal confirmed my initial assumption of where he was most likely located. I was no more than 1/2 mile from him at that point, so I  began searching the streets in the area, of which there were not too many, in that sparsely populated section of Worcester Township.  A minute or two later and I caught sight of the "fox's"  4-way flashers and I found him. I was shocked (well, not really) to find that I was the first one there, considering the time I had wasted sitting on my base before deciding to give it a go.   But about 4 or 5 minutes later the first "official" hunter rolled up alongside. As more people started pulling up, I was naturally the butt of some ribbing.  But by unofficially "winning", I had proven both my point and the club's,  and that only strengthened their resolve to continue to "equalize" the playing field by reaffirming the rule barring D.F. equipment.  As it turns out though, as successful as the first event was, it was not without some controversy. It seems that the road the "fox" chose to hide on was in a fairly new development, and consequently was not shown on the map that everyone was given at the start of the event, and there were some sour grapes complaints from some of the "losers" about it.  But it was ruled ok, since it was a legal street.  But in the future it was promised that the hiding spot would be one located on the map.

I eventually softened in my protest (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em), as the event was still a ton of fun despite the marginalization of the skill aspect of it. The club would sponsor several more hunts over the next year or so. During the next hunt, I decided to bring my big Midland 13-885 base along to take advantage of the R.F gain control and the huge meter, which was far more precise than the meter in my regular mobile radio, the SBE Cortez.  With the big base radio loosely leaning against the passenger side of the console of my '67 Mustang, I also had 3 other people along with me, which made for less than ideal hunting conditions.  But I hoped that I could still put on a good effort.  I flipped a coin and drove off in one direction after the "fox's" first transmission.  But I got a bit distracted due to the extra people, and ended up wasting time looking outside of one of the boundaries, and missed the next transmission.  By the time I corrected my error, I had wasted too much time, so needless to say, I didn't win that one. There was also a little controversy during yet another event where the person winning found the "fox" in barely more time than what it would have taken to drive directly there. This brought up allegations of cheating, but the whole incident was quickly swept under the rug.  I actually managed to win once or twice, and when it was my turn to finally hide, I tried my best to find an especially tricky spot to hide in.  I hid along a one-way gravel "road", just north of the southern most boundary, which was ruled legal since it was a named street and marked on the map.  But its main purpose was as a driveway access to a local swim club's parking lot.  Most of the people who lived in the area mentally discounted this place and they drove on by while looking in other close by places.  The area was surrounded by large trees and I was parked far enough off of the main road, that I couldn't be seen by those driving by.  I was also careful in orienting my car so that the 4-way flashers could not be seen until you were actually on the entrance road itself.  One of the clues that I remember giving was "If you enter this street from any road other than a boundary road, you are breaking the law", as a hint to the one-way nature of the street, which should also have been a dead give-away as there were very few one-way streets in our area. I was already giving clues when the first hunter found me, and some people complained about my choice of spot.  But they backed down when it was shown that it was indeed a public street.

The transmitter hunts faded away when interest in the club also fell off a little more than a year later.  While these events fell short of my expectations as a test of skill, they provided, nonetheless, a very enjoyable night of fun for those who participated. There are some local ham clubs who offer fox hunting events, but it's a shame that this kind of activity is noticeably absent from the CB scene today.