Radio Direction Finding Event - Give It A Go!

Facebook Event

Wednesday October 6, 2019

3 PM - 4:30 PM

Meeting Place

Ground floor entry
Trevithick Building
5 The Parade
CF24 3AA
Cardiff

Our first Give It A Go event for the 2019 autumn semester will be a hidden transmitter direction finding (DF) event.

Checkout our project page for more information about direction finding but here’s a quick summary of our DF event from earlier this year.

We hid several small radio transmitters around Bute Park which transmitted weak signals which were audible to the searchers using receivers and directional antennas. We provided all equipment and no previous experience was needed. After a brief introduction to the event the receivers were handed out and we walked to the entrance of Bute Park. From there groups had a set amount of time to find as many transmitters as possible. Every group found at least several and a few found all of them. We met up back at the entrance and moved back to the university to chat about future hunts and radio activities.

This search was entirely for fun, but at times it is useful and necessary to find the sources of interference on the radio frequencies we use for the rest of our activities. This can be locally within a room or building, such as a badly designed power supply, or miles away such as a pirate radio station. Additionally search and rescue teams sometimes use the same techniques to find hikers who have radios or emergency beacons with them.