Finding a Treed plane

[JasonK]

I got some use out of my HAM license education today when I brushed a tree branch and crashed my plane. While I know roughly were it ended up, the area was covered with lots of brush, so not easy to search by hand.

At the request of my son who was helping me look, I took one of my FPV googles with, his thought was that the camera image would help find it (it didn't, couldn't see anything useful), but as we were looking I remember that my linear antennas have a nice null on them. So I pulled one off (so the diversity wouldn't mess with me) and did some fox hunting.

The fox hunt got us withing a yard or 2 of it (via triangulation) and by the time we got there, the ESC was beeping the motor which helped us find it from there.

I ended up proceeding back to the pavilion to get a ladder (it was 8-10ft up in a tree), which my son used to get it down.

End of the day, the plane just had a few new 'blemishes' in the foam and that was it.

 

[PsyBorg]

I do the same when I lose my quads out in the corn or worse when the field was thick alfalfa. I use RSSI now on the radio most cases. I face backwards from the direction I know the quad is. Then twist a little to find the weakest signal to start. Turn 180 and start walking. Do this every so often to get a more accurate fix and I usually find my stuff pretty quickly now. Not like just walking the brush turning the beeper on and off. Old ears and wind noise made that near useless until I was right on top of the quad in that thick Alfalfa.

 

[JasonK]

I am just supprized that I haven't seen anyone point out the fox hunting techniques for finding downed stuff, glad to see other people know how to do it.

 

[Sly Fox]

Well I put mine in a tree today. Not sure how to "Fox" hunt. Not sure I could anyway as the radio is just a small one that came with the RTF plane. I knew ruffly where it was. Got close, hit the throttle and could hear the motor. Just kept pulsing it until I found it. Then had to climb up to get it down. (To damn old for that). Was wiped out by time I got up and back down. Lost the prop. Have some more on order. Seen this plane has a mind of its own sometimes.

 

[JasonK]

@Sly Fox ,
you 'fox hunt' by using various characteristics of antennas and radio transimissions to direction find a radio transmission source. In this case, the linear antenna has a significant null (weak reception) at the tip of the antenna (this is stuff you learn about when studying for a HAM license), so I pointed the headset around (looking for the signal from my VTX), and when the signal went bad (or in this case out completely), I knew the antenna was pointed generally at the transmitter. Then by doing this from 2 locations, I was able to triangulate the location of the plane (I basically had 2 arrows/lines. overlapping point of the 2 lines is were the transmitter was).

 

[Sly Fox]

@Sly Fox ,
you 'fox hunt' by using various characteristics of antennas and radio transimissions to direction find a radio transmission source. In this case, the linear antenna has a significant null (weak reception) at the tip of the antenna (this is stuff you learn about when studying for a HAM license), so I pointed the headset around (looking for the signal from my VTX), and when the signal went bad (or in this case out completely), I knew the antenna was pointed generally at the transmitter. Then by doing this from 2 locations, I was able to triangulate the location of the plane (I basically had 2 arrows/lines. overlapping point of the 2 lines is were the transmitter was).

So was the transmitter from a fpv in to he plane? For a plane without fpv, there isn't a transmitter, just a receiver (unless telemetry I guess)?

 

[JasonK]

So was the transmitter from a fpv in to he plane? For a plane without fpv, there isn't a transmitter, just a receiver (unless telemetry I guess)?

Correct, to fox hunt it, does depend on an active transmitter in the plane. However, my recievers do have telemetry in them, so I should have been able to do what @PsyBorg indicated if I had needed to.