So on late Saturday afternoon it wasn’t looking too good. The weather forecast for Sunday was OK but dubious and it was pelting down rain at the time. One had pulled out due to ill health (something about a door, but I couldn’t get a handle on it) and the numbers were looking a bit miserly already.
Still, the day dawned clear and sunny (yes, I did actually have to see the dawn this morning) but cold with frost dampened grass and dripping fronds to increase my early morning enjoyment. I picked up the fixed-up antenna squid poles (thanks Gary) already running behind schedule, as per usual. Still, transmitter deployment went fairly smoothly, except at the end I had to retrace steps to TX#3 as it seemed to have somehow got itself out of sequence. Luckily it wasn’t far from the start and I detected the clash before I got back. I was surprised to come across grazing horses in the open paddock marked as ‘white’ (forest) on the map where I had planned to place TX#2, but with ARDF it’s easy to tweak things at the last moment and I found a suitably forested paddock (incidentally part coloured ‘orange’ (open ground) on the map) nearby. All TX’s can be heard from the start. Phew !
Ewen and Jack turned up early, so with only a moderate amount of faffing I was able to send them on their way, shortly followed by Henk. Now who else was going to show ? I certainly wasn’t expecting Peter yet, but figured he’d turn up sometime about midday (he actually beat that by 10 minutes). As it turns out I had 9 competitors, and 1 extra (Dennis M) who volunteered to pickup one of the transmitters afterwards.
The course, shown below, cunning arranged TX#3 and TX#2 to be in line from the start, and the same trick with TX#5 and TX#4, so the initial optimum order wasn’t obvious, and it was a bit more difficult for the full course competitors to get good cross bearings for the 2 distant transmitters. Short course competitors were told in advance the 2 distant transmitters (there was ‘even’ a way to memorise which ones), but were limited to 80 minutes, whereas the full course competitors had a 100 minute time limit. Late penalties applied rather then instant disqualification (so easier to use the simple OR program setup as a score event) with the penalties for the short course being much less severe.
There was also a fair bit of discussion about RadiO with quite a few orienteers doing the MelBushO, including an Amateur. Lets hope we see some giving it a try, at least, at a future event.
Results below !
Well done to Ian, a relative newcomer to ARDF, taking out the full ARDF course. Noone had enough time to fit in TX#4. Darian ran well to the physically challenging TX#5 (the map doesn’t do the ‘jungle’ terrain justice in this area, and the course setter had no idea how bad it was!) to take out the short course.
Results
ARDF Full (5 TX – 100 mins)
| Name | Class | Club | Time | Score | Gross Score | Penalty | Bonus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ian Dodd | DR | 93:03 | 50 | 50 | 0 | 0 | |
| 1 | Gary Panter | AR | 95:23 | 50 | 50 | 0 | 0 | |
| 3 | Ewen Templeton | AR | 109:20 | 0 | 50 | 100 | 0 | |
| 4 | Jack Bramham | AR | 109:35 | 0 | 20 | 100 | 0 |
Note: Each TX, including Homing beacon, assigned 10 points. Penalty 10 pts/min
ARDF Short (3 TX - 80 mins)
| Name | Class | Club | Time | Score | Gross Score | Penalty | Bonus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Darian Panter | AR | 67:23 | 40 | 40 | 0 | 0 | |
| 1 | Dennis Haustorfer | AR | 76:01 | 40 | 40 | 0 | 0 | |
| 3 | Henk DeJong | AR | 75:05 | 30 | 30 | 0 | 0 | |
| 3 | Tim Hatley | BK | 17:56 | 30 | 30 | 0 | 0 | |
| 5 | Peter Maloney | AR | 86:39 | 9 | 30 | 21 | 0 |
Note: Each TX, including Homing beacon, assigned 10 points. Penalty 3 pts/min
Splits ARDF Full
| (33) | (32) | (31) | (35) | (Homing) | F | ||||||||
| 1 | 4 | Ian Dodd | 93:03 | 14:20 | 38:45 | 55:57 | 82:31 | 92:36 | 93:03 | ||||
| DR | 14:20 | 24:25 | 17:12 | 26:34 | 10:05 | 00:27 | |||||||
| (33) | (32) | (31) | (35) | (Homing) | F | (90) | |||||||
| 1 | 6 | Gary Panter | 95:23 | 08:26 | 30:27 | 55:30 | 82:21 | 94:52 | 95:23 | 91:47 | |||
| AR | 08:26 | 22:01 | 25:03 | 26:51 | 12:31 | 00:31 | *90 | ||||||
| (33) | (32) | (31) | (35) | (Homing) | F | ||||||||
| 3 | 3 | Ewen Templeton | 109:20 | 22:17 | 47:12 | 67:14 | 93:39 | 108:50 | 109:20 | ||||
| AR | 22:17 | 24:55 | 20:02 | 26:25 | 15:11 | 00:30 | |||||||
| (33) | (Homing) | F | (33) | ||||||||||
| 4 | 1 | Jack Bramham | 109:35 | 18:17 | 109:03 | 109:35 | 18:20 | ||||||
| AR | 18:17 | 90:46 | 00:32 | *33 |
ARDF Short
| (31) | (33) | (35) | (Homing) | F | ||||||||
| 1 | 5 | Darian Panter | 67:23 | 22:06 | 30:48 | 56:35 | 66:55 | 67:23 | ||||
| AR | 22:06 | 08:42 | 25:47 | 10:20 | 00:28 | |||||||
| (33) | (31) | (35) | (Homing) | F | ||||||||
| 1 | 7 | Dennis Haustorfer | 76:01 | 20:59 | 36:46 | 60:37 | 75:32 | 76:01 | ||||
| AR | 20:59 | 15:47 | 23:51 | 14:55 | 00:29 | |||||||
| (33) | (31) | (Homing) | F | |||||||||
| 3 | 2 | Henk DeJong | 75:05 | 19:50 | 36:44 | 75:05 | 75:05 | |||||
| AR | 19:50 | 16:54 | 38:21 | 00:00 | ||||||||
| (31) | (33) | (Homing) | F | |||||||||
| 3 | 8 | Tim Hatley | 17:56 | 05:56 | 13:17 | 17:28 | 17:56 | |||||
| BK | 05:56 | 07:21 | 04:11 | 00:28 | ||||||||
| (33) | (31) | (Homing) | F | |||||||||
| 5 | 9 | Peter Maloney | 86:39 | 13:56 | 43:13 | 86:09 | 86:39 | |||||
| AR | 13:56 | 29:17 | 42:56 | 00:30 |