On June 24, 2006, Dick Arnett, WB4SUV, set a 2m ARDF just before the start of Field Day 2006.

I'm pretty sure we will continue to set ARDF events on Field Day in the future, but looking at the event this year, there are some obvious obstacles. The biggest obstacle is the fact that everyone can't set their full focus on the radio orienteering.  Most people brought a lot of gear to the park, and even getting together our 5 transmitters was a challenge. Although we were hoping to get some of the assembled hams to try ARDF, we also advertised the event through our orienteering club. Interestingly, no one new from the radio club tried to find any transmitters, but we did get three people from the O'Club announcement: One repeat, Mike Minium, and two completely new radio orienteers, Gerald Yip and Penny J.  (Gerald recently qualified for Boston with a 3:09:xx in the Flying Pig Marathon.)

Because we brought the still relatively new gear together at the last minute, there wasn't time to actually turn them on and verify the settings, and we ended up with several transmitters sending MOE (1) on the first minute, plus MOI (2) and MOS (3).  Since MOH (4) and MO5 (5) weren't on, we assumed three MOEs.  Since the start of Field Day was fast approaching, we just started anyway.  The corridor was along a high ridgeline trail, and I saw no reason to leave it until I heard a full cycle.  MOE, transmitter 1 (three of them) was going to be tough.  After 11 minutes, I saw the first MOE was close, and got it in 1 cycle.  I got into a high position on the end of a big spur and waited for several minutes.  I didn't hear anything south of me, but I heard several MOEs together.  I was close to MOI (2) and got it in a cycle.

As I was leaving 2, I made a bad decision to check to the south for that third MOE (1), since I wanted to get all five transmitters.  I wasted about 18 minutes verifying that there was no MOE to the south. I went east, and got the second MOE (1) off cycle about 2 1/2 cycles later.  I didn't hear any more MOEs, so I checked for MO3 in an area behind a big spur, and then made a really good choice---I took the trail north.  MOS (3) was really tough for me because there were some briars and it was hard to run it down.  I was within 100m of it, and it took me 10 minutes (got it on the third cycle).

The map is here. It turned out that there were only 2 MOEs, and that MOH just hadn't come on (I marked it X on the map). This is due to pure human error, and that everyone was busy because of Field Day. Bob Frey and I helped Penny and Gerald. There was miscommunication, and we turned off transmitters before the newcomers found them. One thing I noticed was that our new TRO-2 keyed-carrier foxes are really hard for beginners. When we have hunts for newcomers, we might want to dig out our old transmitters with MCW-FM.  They're a lot easier to find.

Results:

One transmitter failed to turn on, and there were two number 1's.