A few weeks back I was driving on Seventh street and noticed a maroon Pontiac Thunderbird pull into the gas station across from the fire department near M&M's restaurant. That was not so unusual, cars drive up to those pumps nearly every day. What was odd was that the car looked like it might have recently been flying a bit too low over the rooftops of our fair town and accidentally collided with an old-style television antenna. Affixed right there on the front bumper of the car was what looked like and old-fashioned VHF TV antenna! The antenna itself was perched atop a three to four foot mast - complete with a trio of guy wires. A coaxial cable ran from the antenna to the passenger side window of the car where a man with a black box with sat, looking down at its electronic dials and switches. I decided to stop and ask the two occupants what in the world the unusual antenna setup on the front of their car was for.

What I had run into was one of several teams of people participating in the LBARC Fox Hunt. Now before any of you who are involved with PETA get upset, 'fox hunting' is a term used by amateur radio operators, (better known as 'hams'), to denote a game whereby participants use mobile radio equipment to find a hidden radio transmitter - NOT a cute furry animal.

The Los Banos Amateur Radio Club (aka LBARC) participates in fox hunts regularly. The activity allows ham radio operators to hone their skills in radio direction finding or 'RDF'. According to the American Radio League's website, "[Foxhunting] combines the fun of ham radio and wireless technology with outdoor activity and competition. Fox hunting has some very important uses besides just being a fun activity. RDF is used in search and rescue operations, tracking wildlife for nature studies, locating weather balloons and scientific instruments, and finding interfering transmitters."

On this particular evening however, the RDFing was just for fun. The fox hunt began at the police annex at around 4 PM when participants were given a sheet of rules which described the boundaries of the area where the hidden transmitter would be located. The territory covered most of Los Banos. The sheet also noted that participants in the fox hunt were expected to obey local speed laws, and that the transmitter would be located in a publicly accessible area within three hundred feet of a road. The handout also invited participants to a pizza dinner after the two hour hunt and it encouraged participants to bring their families.

On this particular evening Mike Soriano was piloting the Thunderbird as John Latronica attempted to 'ride the beam' as he controlled the rotating radio antenna from within the cab. The pair pulled out of the gas station and headed toward downtown Los Banos where, as they neared the abandoned creamery building, they came upon another vehicle, a Dodge Ram 2500 which sported a large home-made beam antenna. The antenna, which was protruding skyward out of the passenger side window, was held by a young man who was also participating in the hunt with his driver. Another car with a tall whip antenna was also driving around the area also apparently tying to find the hidden transmitter.

On occasion the vehicles would turn and sometimes even go in multi-block circles as they tried to find the strongest radio waves. When participants neared potential targets they would sometimes stop their cars and hop out of their vehicles with hand-held radios and mobile field-strength meters at the ready in an attempt to locate the transmitter while on foot. They looked for the little transmitter just about everywhere, in trees, bushes, garbage cans, inside a stack of old tires, and even in an abandoned shopping cart full of what looked like a homeless person's collection of cast-off debris.

Dave Anderson (whose red pickup looks more like a porcupine than a utility vehicle thanks to all of the antennas affixed to it) found transmitter early on. He found the hidden radio not too far from K-Mart. Some of the other participants in the LBARC fox hunt had mixed results. Using their RDF gear, beam antennas, and field strength meters, some found the transmitter in the allotted time and some did not. Despite having only come close, even those that never found the transmitter were smiling as they met up and filed into Me-N-Ed's for dinner with their fellow hams.

The Los Banos Amateur Radio Club is a fairly active organization in town. According to the activities link on their website they have all kinds of plans scheduled out each month for the rest of the year. LBARC also has regular meetings that are open for those who are interested in ham radio. LBARC meetings are held on the second Saturday of each month starting at 7:00 PM in the Police Annex, on J Street across from City Hall. (Meeting times change occasionally due to scheduling conflicts such as fox hunts or other activities.) For more information on LBARC contact Mike Germino - the LBARC Club President or Dave Anderson - the LBARC Vice-President via the club's website at http://www.aa6lb.org/

If everyone in Los Banos would just take 1 or 2 hours a month to do something to help their neighborhood or their community we could truly make Los Banos the gem of the valley.

The above is only my personal opinion and I strongly encourage readers to seek out more information from expert sources. Copyright 2010