Boston ARDF - 2009 USA and Region 2 ARDF Championship

Anyone who at least ones was trying to setup an ARDF course will remember a heavy and bulky TX boxes you had to carry with you into the forest. Now try to imagine how much easier it would be for anyone to setup same course if you would not have to carry all this heavy metal boxes and how much faster you could set it up if you could run with transmitters instead of walking.

ARDF transmitter must be simple, durable, reliable, small, cheap and forgiving to changes to outside conditions - i.e. rain and not critical to changes in voltage supply.

All of this implemented in the newest design - single band ARDF transmitter build with surface based components and protected by heat shrinking tube.

Each transmitter has its own fox number and work only with 5 minut cycle. Transmitter has no switches - it has only one wire to connect external battery source - 9V in my case.

5 transmitters weghth about half of pound - just put it to your pocket and you can run to  setup course. Because transmitter is so small you can easily hide it in the forest. With 9V power supply transmitter can be heard up to 3km which is good for short training cources. For competitions higher voltage power supply can be used to increase output power. Transmitter will work within 5-15 volts range, and will not shut of, but will simply loose power gradually in case battery voltage will go down, and draw less current from battery.

80 meters transmitter has 2.5 meter antenna and 2.5 meter grounding wire.

2 meter transmitter has dipoles soldered right into the PCB

No maintenance or any other adjustments are required. Everything is very simple - just plug battery in the correct minute and transmitter will start to transmit its signal (MOE-MO5) immediatelly.

I used transmitters few times to setup our trainings and found them very reliable and easy to use. Low cost - about $20 each including delivery charges makes them very affordable as well.

Equipment