14th April 2007
From the point of view of course setting, 14th April was a perfect opportunity for me to offer my services. It was during the school holidays, so my normal Saturday “taxi” services taking my children to various activities would not be required. Croydon Hills is a great map to set as the network of winding streets leads to interesting courses virtually regardless of where controls are placed. I decided to set the normal Saturday afternoon “Cake-O” on behalf of Dandenong Ranges, and in addition to set radio courses on behalf of ARDF. As course setter for both, liaison problems would be minimised, and I could put out both the normal and the radio controls at the same time.
After the success of the “Combo” format offered by Ian Holland at Woodlands recently, I decided to offer this format of event for the Saturday. Five 2m Fox-Or transmitters were placed in suitable parkland areas (these abound on the Croydon Hills map) close to or between the normal orienteering controls. Additionally, there were standard Fox-Or courses offered for those who wanted to compete in the normal Street-O and do a radio course either beforehand or afterwards.
The Combo event was a 75-minute score format with normal 2/3/4/5 point scores for the orienteering controls and 10 points for each radio control. All competitors “got” all five of the Fox-Or controls. Both Bruce and Marta also got all 20 orienteering controls, and were separated by less than 30 seconds in total time. This was a very good effort when compared to the Street-O results where only two of the fastest “A” runners managed all 20 orienteering controls in the 60 minutes available for A course.
I was very pleased with the way the whole event ran and it was good to see several orienteers have a go at the Fox-Or either before or after the main event. The only low point was the theft of the flag and punch (luckily not the transmitter) from radio control R1. I would also like to thank Marta for her helpful suggestions prior to the event plus the “surprises” at control 12. Thanks also to those who helped collect controls and others who helped out during the event. I think that this type of combined event should be successful in future and hope that we can do more when suitable event locations are available.
Results
Fox-Or
| Name | �Transmitters | Time (mins) | Place |
| Darian Panter | 5 | 66 | 1 |
| Greg Williams | 5 | 93 | 2 |
| Banks Family | 5 | 113 | 3 |
| Diggins Family | 4 | 106 | 4 |
| Tony Bird | 3 | 30 | 5 |
| Mike Hubbert | 3 | 47 | 6 |
| Keith Anker | 3 | 57 | 7 |
| Dianne Shalders | 2 | 57 | 8 |
Combo
| Name | 2 point | 3 point | 4 point | 5 point | Radio (10 point) | Late Penalty | Score | Finish Order | Time (mins:sec) | Place |
| Bruce Paterson | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 120 | 1 | 68:45 | 1 |
| Marta Salek | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 120 | 2 | 69:10 | 2 |
| Georgie Giles | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 117 | 4 | 72:05 | 3 |
| Gary Panter | 4 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 102 | 3 | 70:15 | 4 |
| David Beard | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 0 | 99 | 5 | 74:59 | 5 |