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History of ARDF, "Foxhunts" in Sweden
It began in 1947
Once upon a time - that is, in 1947 - this sport was well known in many countries, but not in Sweden. Something must be done. We began in a very small scale. The first equipment was very bulky and weighed, including a 90 volt battery, between 5 and 6 kilograms! It was equipped with two obsolete tubes...(Left picture)
To the right you see a very popular DF receiver, "Folksaxen", with three tubes and a loop antenna, constructed by me. Almost 500 build-it-yourself-kits were sold, beginning in 1953. Besides, you see my receiver from 1956, a four tube superhet with ferrite antenna, with which I have taken part in competitions in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and also in Moscow, Vilnius, Belgrade, and Sarajevo.
By the way, "Folksaxen" also became popular in Norway and Austria. Here is an example from the Austrian ham radio journal OEM:
Today, a DF receiver is so small that if you slip it into your pocket you have to remember which pocket, otherwise you will have to search for it when you need it.
- - and it continued in 1948
On June 6th, four teams - about 20 persons, with bikes - started from a place outside Stockholm trying to find one single transmitter about 8 kms away. And they finally found it! I and some friends had arranged the event.Three weeks later, Västerås had its first competition. And then the sport became more and more popular, mostly among radio amateurs.
In the beginning we used bikes. Hunting three foxes in August 1948, I was number two and had spent 5 hours and 37 minutes to find all three. When I came home I saw that I had covered 140 kilometers that day!
I was the so called Fox Hunt Manager of the Swedish Amateur Radio League, SSA, from 1948 to 1958. By the way, do you know from where the name Foxhunt came? If so, please let me know. We - like most other countries, used it for 30-40 years before it was officially named Amateur Radio Direction Finding ("Radiopejlingsorientering" in Swedish, instead of the old "Rävjakt").
The first Swedish ARDF Championship competitions were held in 1952 (and each year since then) with about 60 competitors taking part. The annual fights against Norway began in 1955.
Artist's view of me in typical Swedish terrain (1953)
In 1956, four Swedes visited Belgrade to take part in an ARDF competition and to discuss fox hunting. You can read the sad story about one of the participants if you choose "This can happen to an ARDF man", part 3.
In 1957, three Swedes went for the first competition against Denmark. We met 16 top-trimmed Danes. I won, and the other Swedes became 2nd and 4th. We enjoyed it very much.
In 1958, Savez Radioamatera Jugoslavije arranged "Unofficial European Championships" in Sarajevo. I took part and succeeded to get the second place among the 18 competitors, in spite of the terrific heat.
The first European Championship competitions took place in Sweden in 1961 with eight participating countries. For the first time we used 2 m too, in addition to our usual 80 m transmissions. With the Soviet team came the legendary Ernst
Krenkel, callsign RAEM, Hero of the Soviet Union since 1935, pioneer in the Arctic, head of the Central Radio Club, which is
now named after him.
And in 1994, we arranged the 7th World Championship competitions in this country, with 270 participants from 27 countries, the most distant ones being New Zeeland, Australia, PR China, Korea, and Japan.
What is a "fox hunt" like?
We always use our feet, not our cars like in certain (lazier) countries. A Swedish speciality is ARDF when it is dark, and imagine being out in the dark forest, with receiver, torch, compass, map, skis - and it is 12 degrees below zero (Celsius). Your fingers are stiff, but you have to measure the directions to seven transmitters and transfer them to your map (if you can find your pencil). Then you have to repeat that from another place (which you have certain difficulties to locate on the map) to obtain seven intersections, which should represent, and even in the best case may represent, the locations of the transmitters. I assure you it's big fun!Click here to see a short demo! It does'nt work in Netscape, however.
The seven transmitters transmit in a ten minute frame, one after another, which means that each one is on the air about one minute and a half every ten minutes. The equipment is small, unmanned and covered with leaves or grass. You must rely entirely on your receiver and your skill. If you succeed in visiting the transmitters in the most favourable order, and if you succeed in running between them along straight lines, from the starting point all the way to the last "fox", the distance would be between 4 and 7 kms. But in Swedish terrain straight lines are of theoretical interest only.
The most common wavelength used in this country is 80 m, but 2 m is slowly becoming more popular.
I hope I haven't scared you from meeting Swedish ARDF fans. But we never force our guests to take part in competitions. So if you don't ask for it, you will be perfectly safe.
We don't always take it seriously
If you take part in an ordinary foxhunt, you are not forced to run. You may behave like on a Sunday walk with the family, if you like. And sometimes we have very special hunts, which are far from serious. The classic example of such an event is from Stockholm, and took place on a cold and sunny day in the early 50's.In a park, a man with a baby carriage was slowly moving around. Every ten minutes he came back to approximately the same spot and seemed to look after the baby. By now, you have certainly figured out that there was no baby in the carriage.
Right! There was a ten watt transmitter, a car battery and a short antenna, and what the man did was to key the transmitter.
The first one to unmask the "baby" was a female competitor, who found it unlikely that a good father was walking back and forth like that with his baby, when it was minus 16º C which equals +3º F. (At the next hunt, a month later, innocent baby carriages within the area were brutally searched for electronic equipment by suspicious participants.)
In the park there was also a young couple standing under a tree. She was feeding birds, and he held his left arm around her, and with his right hand he manipulated something hard in his pocket (the telegraph key, of course).
There was no third fox. But I had put up an easily detectable red wire in a tree, and had thrown the other end of the wire into
a dark cave, where the ice on the water was very thin. After the foxhunt, when I collected the wire, I saw that someone had
apparently tried to track down the presumed transmitter somewhere in the dark, because the ice was broken. Many years after, recalling what I had seen, I remembered the steps into the cave. But were there also steps coming out of the cave, or....? I've never dared to take a look.
