The penultimate transmitter hunt of the season and the turnout isn’t so good, just 4 teams. G6HRN, G4EKW, G0PSI and a welcome visitor from the Walsall area G8PWE.
First problem, morse practice transmissions on channel! We got occasional breaks of Adrian’s transmission and still the bearing was west. So, ‘plan A’, keep to the high ground and hope to get a lucky break with a clean bearing.
Down Woodborough Rd and right into Mapperly Rd, across the lights and along Forest Road East by the Cemetary.
Second transmission and the breaks in the morse give us a sniff to the west again, bearings on the map now point to the Ilkeston\Kimberley area.
Keeping this in mind, at Canning Circus we decide to take Ilkeston Rd. We haven’t seen anyone else hunting but we continue along the A609 towards Trowell.
19:50 Trowell Moor, “we must get a clear signal form up here” and sure enough the heading has swung South and is quite a bit stronger. Very strange!
The quickest route South (Coventry Lane) was blocked by road-works and so we carry on under the Motorway and turn left towards Stapleford.
20:00 Can’t hear a thing so we decide to get some height and head towards J25 of the M1. Still nothing, just really weak heterodynes. OK, more height required ‘head for the lightning tree’ and we set off to Stanton-by-dale and the well known 133 metre high spot.
20:15 At last we can hear Adrian although we can’t believe he is still so weak, he appears to be in the same direction as the morse tutor. As his transmission drops our polar display diminishes in amplitude but the direction reads exactly the same, North No easy route north from here so it’s on to the A6096 and then NW towards Ilkeston. (the place where we thought in the first place!).
Pitch black now as we follow the road up through Ilkeston and on towards Heanor, the readings slowly swing round to the east crossing in the area between the A6007 and the A610 Ripley by-pass. Two sewage farms down there and lots of country tracks.
Meanwhile G4EKW and the others have come to the same conclusion and have ventured down into the hollows of Shipley gate.
20:25 We decide to backtrack and head up the A6096, if the fox is in these hollows we should get a good reading to the left up the valley from here.
Next transmission and straight on, lets try Eastwood. Four minutes later and we are just heading up the main drag , ‘behind us’ bearings now cross at the junction with the A610. We turn round and arrive at the IKEA island and decide to wait in their car-park.
20:40 and the fox’s signal is massive, so we tour the carpark. Stronger and stronger till when we get to right outside the customer loading bay he is rock crushing.
We park the car and activate our close-in gear, walking between the rows of cars, we identify an estate wagon full of large cardboard boxes. Close inspection reveals that the boxes look empty, finally at 20:49 armed with a powerful torch we manage to coax Adrian to break his cover and pass the logging-in sheet through a slit in his brilliant camoflage.
All the other hunters arrived in the car-park shortly after but were unable to fathom the ‘boxed-up fox’ until it was too late!
A challenging hunt, nearly foxed us all well done Adrian!
19/4/01 | 17/5/01 | 21/6/01 | 19/7/01 | 16/8/01 | 20/9/01 | 18/10/01
copyright © silent design associates. 2001. all rights reserved.
| |
