Fox Hunt teaches antenna basics, tactics

Photo By Kimberly Brown | Phillip Porter assembles a made-from-scratch Yagi antenna during a two-day “Fox Hunt” class hosted June 11-12 by Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division in Point Mugu, California. The class helped participants gain a better understanding of antenna and signal behavior. (U.S. Navy photo by Kimberly Brown)  

POINT MUGU, UNITED STATES

06.17.2019

Story by Kimberly Brown    

Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division

Several Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division employees can add “successful Fox Hunt” to their list of professional accomplishments after a two-day class held at Point Mugu June 11 and 12.

No, not that kind of fox.

In this case the fox is a small radio transmitter, and the hunters are armed with receivers, directional antennas, and a variety of search techniques. They use their antennas to sweep for the transmitter signal, then move and search again, attempting to triangulate the location of the “fox.”

For the class, participants also built their own Yagi antennas, a directional antenna that consists of multiple parallel elements arranged in a line. Older television antennas were Yagi designs.

“Building the Yagi antenna provides a great introduction to antenna design,” said Brian Hill, NAWCWD’s Collaborative EW Branch supervisor, who also arranged the class. “Every dimension has a connection to how the antenna will perform.”

Gaining a better understanding of antenna and signal behavior is one way to improve the practical understanding of some of the electronic warfare principles that underpin much of the work done at Point Mugu.

“We got to experience signal bounce off rocks and other surfaces, which is basically the bread and butter of what we do at Point Mugu with electronic warfare. It was very interesting to see that firsthand as an ESDP,” said Jesus Ramos, mechatronic engineer. An ESDP is a participant in the Engineer and Scientist Development Program, a five-year program designed for newly hired NAWCWD personnel.

Another ESDP, computer scientist Alex Collins, joined the class because it sounded fun; he’d taken an amateur radio class late last year, and this seemed like an interesting follow-on, he said.

“However, while the instructor was explaining the best tactics to locate the transmitters, it reminded me of how the Navy uses very similar tactics to find foreign entities,” Collins added. “The class allowed me to get firsthand experience about how a receiver would be receiving line of bearings to triangulate exactly where the emitter entity is. It gave me a better understanding of some of the technology we use here at Point Mugu.”

The Fox Hunt event’s hands-on approach, coupled with classroom instruction and practical radio frequency handling exercises, helped people grasp the concepts better than they would through “death by PowerPoint,” Hill said. The hunt rewarded team-based problem solving while also encouraging competition between the teams.

“That environment of teamwork and competition, tied to the types of electronic warfare missions naval aviation uses, could really spark some great ideas from the teams,” Hill said. “There’s no way to predict where inspiration might strike next.”

• Date Taken: 06.17.2019
• Date Posted: 06.25.2019 19:21
• Story ID: 329161
• Location: POINT MUGU, US