FOXPURSUIT™Your club's fox-hunt site.
Radio direction finding for amateur radio operators — on your club's own site, or on your own, anywhere. Where the lines cross is your fox.
Two editions available
Where the lines cross is your fox.
The trick is triangulation: from where you stand, the antenna tells you the direction to the fox, not the distance. Take that bearing from two or three spots and the lines cross right on top of the transmitter. Fox Pursuit turns your phone into that plotting tool — capture your position and the bearing toward the signal, and let the map do the crossing for you. When you are confident of the fox's location, tap Drive and your phone's own navigation app opens with the route to it.
It also tells you how much to trust the crossing. When bearings meet at a good angle you get a tight probability area; when they run nearly parallel you get a long thin one and a nudge to move before you take the next reading. That is the difference between a map and a direction-finding tool.
New to fox hunting? What is a ham radio fox hunt?
A fox hunt — also called ARDF (Amateur Radio Direction Finding), a transmitter hunt, or a T-hunt — is a game of radio hide-and-seek. Someone hides a low-power transmitter, "the fox," and everyone else uses radio receivers and directional antennas to track it down by its signal.
One engine, built for how you actually hunt.
The same triangulation and the same maps. Team is a fox-hunt site your club hosts; Solo is for one operator, anywhere, with nothing to set up.
Fox Pursuit Team
Fox Pursuit Team is a fox-hunt site your club hosts. Every member hunts from their own phone. They may hunt alone, or collaborate with others as a group where each group's bearings land on one shared map. A club event may have one, a few, or many hunts running at once. Nothing for your members to install: they open a link, enter a callsign and hunt.
- Unlimited hunters; one, a few, or many hunts at once
- Collaboration when you want it: a group's bearings on one shared map, in real time, no net control needed
- Works online, or offline after downloading an area map
- Live probability area, not just a crossing point
- Full street-level offline maps for your hunt area
- Drive button: hands the fox's location to your phone's navigation app for the route there
- Admin and analytics pages for whoever hosts the application
- Hosted on your own web space with a free Firebase project — about an hour and a half to set up, following the included guide
- Free updates. License verified offline. The app keeps working even if support stops.
Fox Pursuit Solo
Direction finding for one. Take a bearing, move, take another; Solo plots each on your map and shows where they cross — with the same probability area as Team. Open it on your phone and hunt — anywhere the coverage map reaches. A Team site is bounded by the region its host chose; Solo is not.
- No account, no sign-in, no hosting
- Works online anywhere, or offline once you've downloaded an area
- Ready-made street-level maps for the United States, Canada, Mexico, the UK and Ireland, much of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and South Africa — with more being added. See the coverage map for your area.
- Installs to your home screen and runs like an app
- Drive button: hands the fox's location to your phone's navigation app for the route there
- Six-minute free trial, no purchase needed
Bought Team for your club? Every Team installation carries a referral code worth $2 off Solo for your members.
A live Team site, open to anyone.
The demo is a real Fox Pursuit Team installation. Enter any callsign, create a hunt or join one that's running, and take bearings with your phone's compass. Hunts on the demo are public and close by themselves after half an hour.
Its map covers south-west Missouri. Elsewhere? The app will tell you you're outside the map area and outline it — tap inside the outline to place yourself and try it from your armchair.
foxpursuit.com/demo
Phone, tablet or PC. iPhone users: Safari, then follow the Getting Started steps once.
Street-level maps that work where the signal doesn't.
Fox hunts happen in the hollows, past the last bar of coverage. Both editions download your hunt area to the phone before you go, and keep working with no connection at all.
Ready-made street-level maps cover the United States, Canada, Mexico, the UK and Ireland, much of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and South Africa, with more being added — streamed from our map service and stored on your phone with one tap. A Team site uses the region its host chose; Solo can download any of them. Every Team package also ships with a sample area so the map works the moment you publish. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
From purchase to first hunt.
Team is software you host, not a service you subscribe to — that is what makes it outlast anyone. It does mean a setup session; here is the whole of it.
Buy on Gumroad
You get the package and a license key on your receipt. Keep the receipt.
Create a free Firebase project
Ten minutes with a Google account. It holds your hunt data; nobody else ever sees it.
Upload the files
To any web host with HTTPS, or to Firebase's free hosting. Paste in four values from the guide.
Activate once
Paste your Gumroad key on the setup page. From then on the site never contacts anyone.
If you have ever set up a club website, this is well within reach. No programming.
Your phone is already the antenna's best friend.
Runs in the browser
No app store, no sideloading, no store account — the same app on iPhone, Android, laptop, or PC.
Compass & GPS bearings
Point with the compass when you're still; use your GPS heading when you're moving.
Works in the field
Built to keep working where the signal is weak and the data isn't — including offline.
Built to outlast its maintainer
Licenses are verified by mathematics in the browser, with no license server to depend on. If this project ended tomorrow, your installation keeps working. A license is only ever suspended for a copied site, and only after we contact or make attempts to contact its owner.
Live triangulation
Bearings cross on the map as they come in, narrowing the fox's likely area.
Made by a ham
Built by WAØMCS for real club hunts in the Missouri Ozarks — not a generic mapping toy.
Anyone chasing a hidden signal.
The ones we get asked.
Does it work on iPhone?
Yes — Safari, added to the home screen. The app walks iPhone users through a short one-time set-up (location and compass permissions, and the home-screen icon). Android and desktop browsers need nothing special.
Is there an app to install?
No. Both editions are web applications. No app store, no sideloading, no "allow apps from unknown sources", no store account. It's a web application: the same app on an iPhone, an Android phone, laptop, or PC. A member opens a link and hunts; on iPhone there is a one-time add-to-home-screen step the app walks you through. Updates arrive when the host uploads them — nothing to update on the phone.
What do I need to host Team?
Any web host that serves HTTPS, or Firebase's free hosting; a free Google account for the Firebase project; and about an hour and a half following the included step-by-step guide. No programming.
Is there a subscription?
No. Both editions are a one-time purchase with free updates. Team is licensed per site with unlimited hunters; Solo is licensed per operator.
What happens if Fox Pursuit shuts down?
Your installation keeps working. Licenses are verified offline against a public key shipped in the package; the maps can be self-hosted; a Team site is a folder of files you keep. Nothing running on our side is needed for a hunt.
Can I try it first?
Yes. The demo is a fully functional live Team installation anyone can use. However, it is limited to 10 simultaneous hunts of 30 minutes each. Solo is also fully functional for six-minute free trials.
Where is my club's data?
In your own Firebase project, under your own Google account. Fox Pursuit never sees it. The app keeps a few anonymous totals for your own analytics page — how many hunts, how many bearings — nothing about who or where.
Refunds?
14 days, no questions, for either edition — write to us with your receipt.