20th November, 2010
After many successive weekends of heavy rain, we were a little bit worried… But the weekend of 20th/21st November turned out to be dry and warm, perfect for a night ARDF. We ran our event in conjunction with the Night Orienteering Championships, on the Mia Mia map near Maldon. The open bushland and extensive track network made the area ideal for night radio orienteering, and although a number of people did fall over, this did not deter anyone from finishing their course. David set the course with the aid of Google Earth; a lot of thought went into ensuring that signal propagation would be adequate. It was so adequate, in fact, that it was picked up by a couple of hounds in Maldon, 7km away! The entire course was set to be about 6.5km, straight line distance. Bruce stormed home first in just over 1.25 hours, despite having to waste ten minutes changing the batteries on his sniffer. Next in were Gary and Darian, half an hour later, who had ended up chasing each other the whole way after meeting up near the first control. Gary managed to pip Darian at the finish by 15 seconds. Arnneka and Adam came in next, having walked the whole course. Since they started fifteen minutes late, this actually meant that they completed the event in less time than Gary and Darian, to their consternation! Kristian, competing in his first ARDF after trying a couple of Fox-Oring events, came in next, having enjoyed himself and, moreover, having located all five transmitters! Well done, Kristian! Ewen came in afer him, and Suzanne a couple of minutes later. She went around with Geoff to pick up some tips on successfully completing ARDF courses, and found 4 Txs, so was quite happy. Geoff came in a bit later, since he wanted to finish off the course by grabbing nearby Tx 3, which was just outside the exclusion circle. The Henk, Pierre and Ryordan team came in 20 minutes later, having succesfully found 3 transmitters. Next came Mark, just before midnight, and then Peter M, who had started just as Bruce came in. Results are below:
| Competitor | Time | # TXs | ||
| Bruce | 1:18:00 | 5 | ||
| Adam and Arnneka | 1:42:40 | 5 | ||
| Gary | 1:48:15 | 5 | ||
| Darian | 1:48:30 | 5 | ||
| Kristian | 2:22:05 | 5 | ||
| Ewen | 2:25:40 | 5 | ||
| Geoff | 2:41:40 | 5 | ||
| Suzanne | 2:27:40 | 4 | ||
| Mark B | 2:50:00 | 4 | ||
| Henk, Pierre and Ryordan | 2:48:30 | 3 | ||
| Peter M | 1:40:00 | 1 |