Amateur Radio Direction Finding – a sport that involves using a map, compass, and handheld receiver to locate transmitters placed in the forest, has been practiced worldwide for years. Although it has thousands of passionate devotees, it has been slow to catch on widely. We believe that the cause of its sluggish growth has much to do with the equipment the sport requires. Both the participants and the organizers have a good deal of hard-to-find, hard-to-maintain, complex, and not inexpensive equipment to acquire and care for. Below is a list of the radio equipment currently required to support all current ARDF events:
Organizers’ Radio Equipment List
o 80m “Classic” Transmitters – at least 6
o 80m “Sprint” Transmitters – at least 10
o 80m “Fox-O” Transmitters – at least 8
o 80m Transmit Antennas – at least 24: one for each transmitter to be used in each event
o 2m “Classic” Transmitters – at least 6
o 2m Transmit Antennas – at least 6: one for each 2m transmitter
o Batteries (plus chargers if rechargeable) – enough to support all the transmitters
Participants’ Radio Equipment List
o 80m Receiver and antenna
o 2m Receiver and antenna
o Batteries (plus chargers if rechargeable) for all receivers
o Headphone(s) compatible with receivers
Most of the ARDF radio equipment available today is complex to use, prone to failure, too expensive to maintain, unintegrated and relatively bulky. In the United States the majority of competition-grade equipment is foreign made, comes with no warrantee, no user manual, no technical reference manual, and not even a schematic diagram. If it breaks, and the problem is non-trivial, the only recourse may be to locate the manufacturer and ship the equipment off for repairs, if that service is available. Since it can take weeks or months for equipment to be shipped, repaired, and returned, one must maintain a supply of backup equipment or risk being unable to compete or put on a competition.
This site seeks to address ARDF’s radio equipment problems by identifying existing sources of equipment, kits, and designs. The focus in on those with an open-source approach, and permissive licenses that apply to both hardware and software. The goal is to identify competition-grade equipment that is tightly integrated, robust, configurable, maintainable, and simple to use.