Saturday, Oct. 09, 2010

A different kind of race

Raleigh woman gets world honors in radio competition

On a sunny afternoon at Lake Johnson, Ruth Bromer trotted the walking trails with a six-pronged antenna made from steel rulers and PVC pipe hoisted over her head, Statue of Liberty-style.

"People will stop you in the woods and ask if you're looking for aliens," Bromer said.

It's not Martians the Raleigh resident is tracking - it's a radio transmitter, calling to Bromer in Morse code through her homemade Yagi antenna and receiving device. Bromer is a silver medalist in Amateur Radio Directional Finding, a little-known racing sport that challenges competitors to find a hidden transmitter using only an old-fashioned radio receiver, map and compass.

Bromer's just a two-year veteran, but she's learned fast. She and a teammate snagged second place in the 60 and older women's division of the recent ARDF World Championships in Croatia, competing against racers from Sweden, Germany and Australia. Between competitions, Bromer practices at parks around Raleigh. Her husband, Joseph Huberman, hides the transmitter, and Bromer navigates the woods with antenna, topographic map and thumb-compass. At Lake Johnson, it was dangling from a tree, nearly invisible against the foliage. Bromer's challenge was to find it as quickly as possible, triangulating its position from the signals on her receiver as she ran.

The transmitter sends signals for 60 seconds every five minutes. Bromer has that brief window to try to track the signal before it shuts down. And those signals can bounce off nearby terrain in "reflections" that send her sprinting the wrong direction.

As Bromer tells it, the sport started as serious business - during combat, the radio transmitters soldiers used to communicate could also be used by the enemy to track them down. They turned them on as seldom as possible, just long enough to get their message across. Now, the signal's short duration just adds to the challenge, Bromer said.

Bromer's daughter, Boston resident Lori Huberman, 25, sparked her to the sport about two years ago. Huberman placed fourth in the Elite division in Croatia. Joseph tried joining them at first, but quickly decided to be ground support.

"It was too frustrating for me," he said. "The waiting drove me nuts."

So he and Kiwi, the couple's border terrier, follow along behind, watching Bromer as she freezes among the trees, antenna up, waiting for the next code to call her to action.