Yesterday I returned home from HamCon Colorado 2025, which was held in Grand Junction. This was not my first time attending an ARRL Rocky Mountain Division Convention, but it was my first time at HamCon specifically. Colorado hosts the division convention every ~4 years, and we all know how 2020 and ‘21 turned out.

Luckily for me, my connections allowed me to be part of the organizing committee. I ended up helping with the foxhunt in lieu of Dan Meyer, N0PUF, who was unable to attend for health reasons. Dan was kind enough to loan his equipment to me, including a matched set of five fox transmitters consisting of Alinco DJ-S11 HTs with homemade FoxMox controllers designed by Larry Benko, W0QE. Also in the kit were several hides like a hollow landscaping rock and a pet cleanup bag dispenser.

I ended up driving up on Thursday afternoon, which gave me time to help set up the venue and get the lay of the land. We were based at the DoubleTree by Hilton Grand Junction, which was a very nice hotel with plenty of room for the event. I spent much of Friday programming a replacement for Indico, the presentation management system we used, since nobody really liked it (too complex for what we need). It wasn’t strictly necessary to start this during the convention, but I felt I had the necessary focus time to make major progress.

Most of Saturday was dedicated to the foxhunt. I was up early to set up the five foxes around the hotel property. Four of them I considered between easy and moderate, with hides like the landscaping rock and the pet bag dispenser, and one behind a bush. The fifth fox was the “evil” one, which I placed on the eighth floor of the hotel near the ice machine. They could hear it all around the property, but would have to realize there was a vertical component to the hunt to find it. Many of my participants ended up being relative newcomers to foxhunting, and on average found three of the foxes in an hour or two. Only one impromptu team found all five! Most of the participants agreed that it was fun and that foxhunts should be held more often by more groups.

Unfortunately, there was a small tragedy when I was collecting the foxes after the hunt. The fox on the eighth floor was missing! After a thorough search of the area and foxhunting for my own fox, I tracked it down to the hotel’s main compacting dumpster. It appears that a hotel staff member had mistaken it for trash and thrown it away. Given that the dumpster was potentially dangerous to access, I concluded it wasn’t worth the risk to retrieve it. So I had to break the news to Dan that his fox was lost. I’m going to have to build him a new one.

Sunday was mostly taken up with tear-down and travel. I had a great time at HamCon Colorado and look forward to attending again in the future!