Pune Hams VU2RCP support Fox Hunt 2023 – A Great Success!
The G.S. Moze College of Engineering, Balewadi, Pune in association with Pune Hams VU2RCP (Amateur Radio Club of Pune) has successfully held the Fox Hunt event from 3rd & 4th of March 2023 under their Annual National Level Technical Symposium, Technobash 2023. There were several events under Technobash 2023, including Roborace, blind coding etc. but most of the entries from students were received for Fox Hunt Event.
Pune Hams VU2RCP (Amateur Radio Club of Pune) has extended support for the fox hunt event.
Over 160+ students from across the college participated in the event, making it a great success.
Preparation for Fox Hunt started with an Antenna Workshop (Yagi-Uda Antenna Workshop) on the 25th of February 2023. VU2ANM OM Commodore Ashish Saxena provided all bits and pieces about the Yagi antenna in theory as well as providing a practical demo on the subject.
Students were excited to see the practical demo using the field strength meter. Students learned everything about Yagi Antenna and conducted various measurements like Vertical & Horizontal polarisation, directivity, gain, SWR, front-to-back ratio etc using the Field Strength meter and MFJ Antenna Analyser. After that, the students assembled 10 Yagi antennas in College Workshop.
Students also had the hands-on activity of Radio Direction Finding, by VU3YEJ OM Kunal, for the Fox Hunt which created a lot of excitement. VU2VPR, OM Vilas shared some interesting facts and stories with the students which excited students more.
The Fox for Fox Hunt was made by student SWL Vishnu under the guidance of VU3YEJ OM Kunal and VU2OOM OM Mangesh using Raspberry Pi 3
For D-day, there were 12 handsets provided by the following HAMS:
1) VU2ANM (OM Commodore Ashish Saxena)
2) VU2VPR (OM Vilas Rabde)
3) VU2OOM (OM Mangesh Patil)
4) VU2AMK (OM Ajit Karnik)
5) VU3OPY (OM Atul Kulkarni)
6) VU2MSB (OM Milind Bhagwat)
7) VU3YYO (OM Arvind Hrishikar)
8) VU3YEJ (OM Kunal Gautam)
With the knowledge gained by students, the fox hunt event was conducted on the 3rd and 4th of March 2023. As accommodating 160+ students was a tough task, a group with 2 students in each group was formed. Due to the limitation of Handsets and Antenna, there were 9 rounds conducted with each round having a maximum of 7 to 10 groups in each round. On the first day, a total of 6 rounds were concluded. On the second day, 3 rounds were conducted.
Winners of each round were invited again for a final round, and First and Second prize winners were decided based on the Final 10th round. The final round was quite interesting, as there were two foxes hidden at random places by the VU2RCP group. The first fox was found in 5 Minutes and 51 seconds by Mr Harsh and Mr Atharv. The second fox was found in 21 minutes by Mr Anand and Mr Bhavik. VU2RCP group felicitated the First prize winners and Mr Vishnu for his hard work and coordination.
The teamwork of the VU2RCP group was seen in this grand successful event. Thanks to the following HAMs for being present physically to make this event smooth and efficient:
1) VU2AMK (OM Ajit Karnik)
2) VU3YEJ (OM Kunal Gautam)
3) VU2OOM (OM Mangesh Patil)
4) VU3YYO (OM Arvind Hrishikar)
5) VU2VPR (OM Vilas Rabde)
Apart from the Fox Hunt event, we at VU2RCP encouraged Faculty members and students to prepare for the ASOC examination and form a Radio club to enhance the study of radio technology. Various digital modes were also discussed. VU2RCP group provided useful information about various interesting projects like NOAA Satellite image capturing and LoRA technology.
The event was a great success and all the participants, faculty members and HAMs had a lot of fun. This event was concluded with end notes by VU2OOM OM Mangesh and VU3YEJ OM Kunal with encouraging words to everyone. The college hopes to organize more such events in the future to promote the spirit of competition and camaraderie among the students.
73’s
Kunal Gautam
VU3YEJ
For VU2RCP