The hounds met at the Pinewood Shopping Centre and were set off from there by Neale Banks (thanks for helping out Neale).
The night was run by Ian VK3YQN, Bruce VK3TJN, Roger VK3HRL and Peter and consisted of a mixture of single and two-leg hunts with a 70cm leg thrown in as well.
Hunt 1 Leg A
We were worried that the 70cm signal on this first hunt of the night might be a bit weak way back at the Pinewood start location, but it turned out the hounds had a good signal all the way. The fox used was Ian MZ’s 70cm intermittent unit that put out a good signal on the 3 element beam in the tree beside the creek, at the back of Greaves Reserve, Noble Park. All hounds had difficulty with overloaded 70cm sniffers and a fair delay till they looked upwards into the tree. VK3YDF took the longest time dithering around, but BLN and MZ teams were also experienced considerable frustration. MZ was in first followed 3 minutes later by YDF and OW with BLN arriving 6 minutes after them.
Hunt 1 Leg B
This 2m fox-or transmitter was located by Peter a short run from the first leg (provided you knew where the bridge was) in a drain pipe on the Eastlink construction area. First in was MZ followed by YDF, OW and finally BLN with similar timing to the first leg.
Hunt 2 Leg A
Ian (and his brother John) hid this transmitter in bushes at the East side of the lake in Karkarook park. First on the scene was Adam YDF followed a minute later by Geoff and BLN 3 minutes after that. OW arrived 4 minutes after that.
Hunt 2 Leg B
Though physically not more than 300m from the 1st leg location, this 2nd leg was meant to be a real bastard. Shortly after we heard that teams were in on the 1st leg, we could here car doors slamming in the industrial estate off Warrigal Road….so near, yet simply no access in from there, except perhaps over nasty looking security fences with alarm systems. The BLN team happened to know someone who knew someone who’s dog knew about the spot we were hidden, but they were the last to find their way in from the South, off the end of Henry St. YDF was first, followed by MZ with OW narrowly beating BLN for third place.
Most took some time to actually find the fox hidden under some discarded polystyrene foam halfway up (down ?) a steep embankment.
Somehow the MZ team got a runner in from the North, through the trotting track, even though we thought we’d discounted this possibility pretty thoroughly in our explorations the weekend prior. Something mumbled about “easy to squeeze past gates”….hmmm, well we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
We’d considered hiding the fox within the ex-tip right beside our secluded laneway, but thought that this might create too many objections about not-particularly-accessible-property, despite the nice hole in the fence nearby. As it turns out one runner (another MZ one I think!) did come into our location via the tip….more mumblings about “no fences the way I came”, where we knew this to be patently impossible.
Hunt 3
Peter was located in the “Urban Forest” off Waverley Road. This was a fairly easy location and not surprisingly all teams arrived within 3 minutes of one another – YDF then MZ and OW together and finally BLN.
Hunt4 Leg A
Bruce dropped Roger out of the car near Darling Station on his way to supper for a spontaneously created extra leg on this hunt to pad the night out to the correct length due to the hounds finding some of the trickier spots faster than anticipated.
Roger was on foot on the east side of Monash Fwy near Darling Railway Station transmitting intermittently on the T7H. Most teams were observed before alighting from their vehicles so Roger took every opportunity to confuse them. The YDF team’s beam-swinger seemed to stop the beam at 12 o’clock every time, and as Roger was at his 3 o’clock he would transmit until he saw the beam start to turn, then turn off as the beam went past 1 o’clock. Nasty! MZ saw him before he could hide properly and were in first, followed by BLN, YDF and eventually OW.
Hunt4 Leg B
The fox was located up an embankment on the side of the Anniversary Trail near Winton Rd. Easiest entry was via a lane near the corner of Nicholas street. Having arrived at the spot and turned on the transmitter Ian realised he probably should have the clipboard to record the score and, given that the first team had just found Roger, thought he could make a quick dash to the car and back before hounds arrived. Unfortunately just as he was locking the car, the MZ car arrived so he ran back, managing to get ahead of Geoff and out of site up the embankment before runners came after him. First in was Geoff followed very quickly by 3 other MZ runners coming from different directions. A couple minutes later Adam YDF arrived followed by BLN another 2 minutes after him. OW arrived just over time.
Hunt 5
This was the supper hunt and was handled by Peter. It was located in the new estate on the site of the old Arnott Factory near a fence at the end of a drain extending beyond the west end of Cox Lane.
The location was found by Bruce when creating the “Hashwood” map. Similarly to Hunt 3 all teams found this within 3 minutes of each other with MZ first, followed by OW, YDF and finally BLN.
Final scores are slightly different from those announced on the night due to double checking however the placings are unaltered:
1st MZ 6 pts
2nd YDF 8 pts
3rd OW 18 pts
4th BLN 27 pts
Cheers,
Ian
VK3YQN