Author: brucep

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2m Sprint ARDF practice

To give those going overseas soon some more practice, I’ve set one of those Any afternoon Covid style events on 2m.

The 2m TXs will turn on every afternoon at 1pm and run till 5pm (4 hours) on 145.300MHz. It’s a half-sprint, in that there are only the 5 transmitters. There is no Homing beacon – you will have to navigate yourself back to the Start (sorry Jack!). 1 minute full cycle (12s per TX).

The time limit is 60mins, but if you start after 4pm, you could be making things more challenging for yourself, as the transmitters will turn off at 5pm (there is no Maloney mode).

Maprun

Using Maprun, you just need to get close enough to hear the Maprun beep, you do not need to sight the actual transmitters, which will be concealed as much as possible anyway, as they will be out there for a while. In fact, I’d really prefer you didn’t go searching to actually see them, as someone curious might see you doing that, and then go to investigate once you leave.
Controls will appear on Maprun screen once you find them, so you can keep track of which ones you’ve found. 20pts/TX, 10pts off per min over 60mins.
The Maprun event name is: nettleton ardf. Located in Victoria/OV-Clubs/ARDF if Events-Near-Me doesn’t work for you for some reason, but it did for me.

Practice

If you are going to be competing at an International Sprint event, try to treat it like you would there:

  • you have only 1 minute to prepare/view your map before starting
  • prepare your sniffer before you leave home
  • you should not turn on your sniffer till you start (get the Maprun start beep)
  • try to start close to the 1 minute boundary

The Map

It’s set in a much smaller area than the recent 80m half-sprint event, so hoping to see some short times coming in!
You will need to print your own colour map to use, or ask someone (eg. me) to print one for you:

nettleton_ardfDownload

Summary

Commencing: Saturday August 1st
Finishing: Sunday August 17th (extension on request – TX battery dependent; no guarantees, so best go as soon as you can)
Start Location: NW end of fence on oval, Nettleton Park (red triangle on map). The tall black fence can be seen in photo above, next to the playground.
Frequency: 145.300MHz. 5 TXs. 1 min full cycle
Time Limit: 60 mins
Transmitters on: 1pm to 5pm daily
Maprun event name: nettleton ardf

Please leave feedback comments on the blog.

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SERG Homebrew entry 2025

I was little bemused at the summary given of my homebrew entry this year. It was for a semi-automated tester for our foxhunt systems, and we actually did end up using it quite a few times over the Mt Gambier foxhunting weekend, amongst our multiple gear failures.

The description given of the tester itself was fine, but the SDR timing problem that prompted the tester in the first place was a bit misrepresented.

The issue had nothing to do with SDR software ‘not keeping up’ due to lack of PC resources, but more the discovery that the particular SDR software I was using, GQRX, has what can best be described as an underlying design flaw, rather than a software bug.

It’s a bit of task to re-write GQRX to remove the fault, so at present I get around the problem by effectively automatically restarting the SDR periodically; whenever the fox channel is changed, or every 10 minutes, before any time delays can manifest significantly.

As our SDR rotating system was only available less than half the time, due mainly to water ingress problems, I can’t say for sure, but I believe we didn’t experience any more timing problems.

Here is the Homebrew entry documentation. Of particular interest may be the story of the hunt for the timing issues in Appendix 1.

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Victorian Foxhunting Championships 2025

Note: Apologies for the delay in getting this report out – there were some scoring issues to resolve. I also only got home an hour ago or so.

The Victorian foxhunting championships this year returned to a full day event, after a bit of a lull since Covid. Based around the Castlemaine area.

Morning VHF/UHF hunt
The day started sunny but cool in Walmer, at the new(ish) abode for Peter. Hounds headed off only a few minutes after the planned 11:00am start heading for 23cm. This was located atop an old gold mine north of Maldon.
The 2nd leg on 2m was on the Muckleford Diggings MTBO map to the south of Maldon, atop a hill (which Pierre remembered riding!). WWW team managed to lop their antenna mast off on a track somewhere in the forest, so their time on that hunt was impacted.
Final leg was on 70cm, with a beam, in a twisty turny maze of tracks behind the Castlemaine Golf course, which also featured on the recent MTBO champs event.

Each hunt leg was treated separately on leg time, so was like 3 independent fox hunts.
Overall the morning hunt was won by FOX team with two 0’s and a 7. Runners up FAST with 12 and OW with 19. Full scores below.

Sniffer hunt
I believe the only rain for the day of note happened about 1 minute after the on-foot 10-transmitter sniffer hunt started. Not the best timing perhaps!
Hounds quickly lapped up the 4 nearby FoxOrs, but found the more distant slow-pulsing transmitters more challenging. These ones had been placed the day before and programmed to turn on at 2pm. Darian didn’t like the slow pulses (“worst sniffer hunt I’ve ever &^%& done”) as it messed with the YNG autoranging, so I’ll have to remember that for future foxhunts (hehe). It’s not as if he couldn’t have used Dset-0 mode to work around this.

The slow pulsing TXs (some, or all) ended up being a bit wide-band (heard on other channels), so this will have to be looked into. I thought I’d used the specific number code for no (AM) modulation when programming, but I may have mucked that up. As far as I understand, no-one found TX 1 or TX3, which were the easternmost, and in more rugged terrain, depending on the approach direction. It’s also possible TX1 never even started at 2pm (its battery was the most suspect).
Darian won (for FAST), despite the whining, with 8/10 TX. Kristian (for FOX) also found 8/10, but lost a point due to overtime. All finding 6/10 TX were Jeremy, Mark, Monica & Emily.

The sniffer hunt was followed by afternoon tea, which was a bit chaotic due to the hasty re-location inside the shed. A big thankyou to Suzanne for catering (and the special chocolate cake). Forgot to take photos.

Afternoon HF hunt
Drama was aplenty this hunt, with a surprisingly mobile tree popping up uncharitably right in the way of the OW team. No injuries, except perhaps to pride. OW was now out of the foxhunting though. WWW and ACM teams assisted towing the car to the side of the road, mainly because they needed to get past to get to 80m 🙂 I have adjusted the scores for this leg, which means WWW manages to sneak in within the 10 minutes (see info below).
6m provided more dramas. No-one could hear it, possibly due to something wrong with the 6m fox? Also, no-one was able to figure out how to drive to the sneaky fox location, so they all had to crack out the 6m sniffers. Good practice!
The final leg on 10m was back on a hill, not that far from the Campbells Creek Five Flags pub for dinner. At dinner we were joined by the OW team, who’d been given a lift by the fox. The car had been towed.

Hopefully Stephen made it to the airport this morning.

Night hunt 23cm, 2m, 70cm, 10m

This one was designed to head the teams back to Melbourne. Perhaps we were a bit overly optimistic on distances between legs. Eventually, however, all 4 teams hunting made it to the final leg (thanks to Suzanne for hanging on so long).

There were dramas again:

  • What happened to FOX team on 23cm?
  • Apologies there was still a FoxOr running not far away from 23cm on the following 2m leg frequency. I simply ran out of time to retrieve all the FoxOrs beforehand, and we only decided to flip to 2m at the dinner, due to the poor 6m fox performance earlier.
  • Still very confused why that FoxOr had been moved, and left on a random hill. A special present for me that ended up costing me a lot of time much later in the night, as I was retrieving using GPS pins rather than by sniffer.
  • 70cm fox signal was problematic. Same gear had worked perfectly in the morning hunt, so we still don’t know what went wrong there. Lots of phone calls fielded as I was heading back to the farm allowed the teams to narrow in.
  • I was pleased to hear from Mark MD that the 10m signal had been heard not far south from the 70cm fox location, so though it was the longest leg of all the hunts, teams could (just) hear it. The 10m fox location was actually a bit further than intended, as, due to an IT hiccup, and earlier draft location was accidentally used. Caused some confusion for the fox team too!

Winner for the night hunt:

  • Using the NERG 1st past the post method, a surprising win by WWW team!
  • Using the leg time method: 1st WWW on 16, 2nd FAST on 17, 3rd FOX on 18
  • All teams got a 10, 3 teams got a 0.

Hopefully you all got to test some gear prior to Mt Gambier. The fox team will just have to ‘test’ our gear once we get there. Unfortunately it may require a new hound vehicle for one team, and perhaps a new clutch for another.

The Scores

And now, like any QI program, we come to the question of the scores. And like QI, the scoring methods used may prove be opaque and suitably illogical (well not really). The Alan Davis award is of course taken out by the OW team.

Every transmitter is leg-time scored out of 10 minutes, like normal Friday foxhunts. The sniffer hunt (10 TX) is scored out of 16 (the best score on the day), which seems reasonable (about 1.5 legs worth). The 80m leg times were adjusted around the tree situation.

Scores

Hunt Leg Band Fox Location FAST FOX ACM WWW OW
Notes

Morning A 23cm Peter/Suzanne Gold mine 2 0 5 10 4
Everyone found it


B 2m Bruce Muckleford Diggings 0 7 10 10 6
WWW broke mast. OW took forever to turn around


C 70cm Graham Behind Castlemaine Golf 10 0 10 8 9
Everyone found it














Sniffer











(best team
member score –
See below)



0 1 6 4 8
Hunt scored out of 16














Afternoon A 80m Graham Muckleford Diggings 9 0 10 9 11
OW team altercation with a Triffid **


B 6m Bruce Welshmans Reef 0 10 11 8 11
Something wrong with 6m fox? Tricky Location.


C 10m Peter/Suzanne Ford Rd 10 5 6 0 11
Everyone found it Dinner! FAST flat tyre.














Night A 23cm Peter/Ewen Park Rd 0 10 8 1 11
What happened to FOX?


B 2m Bruce Malmsbury Reservoir 7 0 9 5 11
Good recovery by FOX


C 70cm Graham Muses Hill 0 2 10 10 11
Something wrong with 70cm fox?


D 10m Suzanne Gisbourne Flora Resv 10 6 6 0 11
Not the planned spot. IT stuff-up.














Totals



48 41 91 65 104


Sniffer Hunt Place Name Time Raw Points Points
(TX * 2)
Team Result




1 Darian Panter 51:01:00 16 16
FAST 0



2 Kristian Ruuska 01:00:48 16 15
FOX 1



3 Jeremy Dossin 53:37:00 12 12
FAST 4



4 Mark Diggins 57:15:00 12 12
WWW 4



5 Monica LoPresti 59:03:00 12 12
WWW 4



6 Emily Panter 01:01:03 12 10
ACM 6



7 Jack Bramham 49:13:00 8 8
WWW 8



8 Ewen Templeton 01:01:17 10 8
OW 8



9 Ryordan Panter 52:22:00 6 6
ACM 10


** time adjustments

Teams assured me that the time to move OW team off the road was “well over ½ hour”, but this would have changed the leg outcome too significantly.
Instead I have taken the time of the call from Ewen to report an issue (16:13), and taken off 3 minutes.
Then Mark has noted the time a photo was taken of the OW vehicle successfully moved aside as he was heading back to the car (16:25), and added 2 minutes.
That makes an adjustment time for teams WWW and ACM of 17minutes.
Teams that are overtime, but find a fox score 10. Teams that don’t quite find a fox score 11. Just a small bonus point for actually finding a fox.

Overall placings

1stFOX41
2ndFAST48
3rdWWW65
4thACM91
5thOW104 / DNF

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2m ARDF Darebin Parklands Report

In conjunction with the MelBush-O orienteering event at Darebin Parklands, a 2m classic ARDF event was held, in the rain on Sunday 16th March 2025

Despite the awful weather, 12 ended up taking part.

Peter M arrived too late to do an O course, but I allowed him to start the ARDF, but with the usual proviso we’d start picking up transmitters whether he was back or not.

Paul VK5FAB from SA also took part in his first pedestrian ARDF hunt. He had some difficulty recalibrating to the 1 minute ON cycles, more used to the 30s ON time of the Mt Gambier car-based ARDF style hunt. However, at least it’s easier to work out which TX is which with the proper MOE, MOI etc ID.

It was a compact area with a 1:3500 scale A4 map, so all transmitters could be easily heard over the whole course, but the complexity of the creek and steep river banks make it quite a challenge, and increased the course length suitably. The two creek crossings went underwater during the event, making it extra challenging for the later starters.

At such a public park, transmitter placement is a compromise between not being particularly visible to random walkers (even on such a wet day there were still many out), yet visible enough to be punched whilst not transmitting.

Thanks to those who were able to pick up transmitters afterwards, Ewen, Darian, and especially Alistair who grabbed the two on the other side of Merri Creek (driving all the way around rather than risking the now underwater creek crossings. Everything was packed up by 1:30.

Here are the results:

 ARDF(13 / 13)
PlaceNameTimeRaw PointsPoints (TX * 10)
1.Darian Panter53:005050
2.Ewen Templeton1:00:185050
3.Monica LP1:37:405050
4.Dianne Shalders1:40:284040
5.Henk DeJong1:40:304040
6.Alastair Knowles1:42:194040
7.Suzanne O’Callaghan1:12:473030
8.Pierre Brokner1:17:323030
9.Paul Burns1:27:302020
10.Rod Stephens1:27:582020
11.Jenelle Templeton2:02:462014
12.Peter Maloney1:01:111010
 Bryan AckerlyDNS00

Here’s the transmitter locations:

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Christmas FoxOr

The club Christmas event was a FoxOr event with twist: The circle only tells you where you might hear the 1st FoxOr in a string or chain of FoxOrs. Once you find the first one, you should be able to hear the 2nd, and so on. Here’s the map the competitors saw:

You don’t know quite how long the chain you’re on currently is, other than it is between 1 and 5 long. In fact the chains were A=4, B=5, C=3 & D=1. I only had 13 transmitters!

You know there are 6 FoxOr frequencies to choose from, and a chain will never repeat a frequency (but between chains will, of course). You also know that as you follow out a chain, the next frequency will always be higher. In this case they were
A = 144.25, 144.75, 145.50, 145.70
B = 144.00, 144.75, 145.30, 145.50, 145.70 (144.00 was a mistake, was meant to be 144.25, but competitors knew beforehand)
C = 144.25, 145.30, 145.70
D = 144.25

Here’s the TX locations:

Things that went well:
– All the transmitters worked and could be heard.
– Nothing was stolen. Apparently some intrigued neighbours.
– The chain with the FoxOrs closest together (A), was perhaps the more difficult.
– There were transmitters people could visit when picking up TXs after that they hadn’t been to when competing.
– Noone had to be rescued.

Things that went not-so-well:
– Some considered it a bit hard to understand, or DF, or read the map.
– Grumbles about blackberries and fences on the A chain, but frankly these things were both self-inflicted. Read the map:)
– It was too long. No-one found all TXs, best was 9/13. I didn’t want too much interference between chains that could be confusing, so they had to be well separated, but that made it a bit long.
– FoxOr C-2 on 145.30 was (deliberately) 50% duty cycle, but could be heard over nearly the whole map. It was in the highest location (Essex Heights), and being a Sprint-TX in ‘FoxOr mode’ appears to have a bit more oompf. It’s only 1 range higher on the YNG sniffers, but that seems to make a big difference. In retrospect, lucky it was on a On/Off duty cycle. FoxOr C-3 was also a Sprint-TX, in Homing Beacon mode, but wasn’t as high up, so wasn’t as much of an issue.

Here are the full results:

NameTXsTX Penalty (mins late)Time (mins)
Monica987
Bryan886
Alistair890
Darian781
Geoff490
Jack355
Di & Henk4-292
Suzanne228
Pierre261
Mark273
Emily275
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Karkarook Report

It was a blustery but warm day for the Karkarook Park Orienteerng and Sprint ARDF event on Saturday afternoon on 29th August.

Not only was the AR club running the Saturday afternoon Cake-O event, set and organised by Suzanne O’Callaghan, but the numbers were also boosted by AR members having a go at a 2m 5 transmitter Sprint-format ARDF event.

The new Map

Some orienteers were attracted by the new colour park map by AR member Geoff Hudson. This map had as the centrepiece the original 2005 Karkarook Park map by Adam Scammell, but now significantly updated from field checks by Bruce and Geoff. This was then extended by a colour street map of the area north of the bypass road, and extended south into industrial/retail estate. This region had previously been mapped by Steven Dunbar as a B&W street-O map for BK, but the detail was insufficient for park orienteering, so the decision was made instead to make a new colour map of the whole area.

Park O

There is a push to move Saturday Cake-O’s from just another street-O to a bit more park based orienteering, and the new map and the cunning course from Suzanne did not disappoint. She had to avoid much of the newly mapped intricate minor tracks around the lake itself, as this was mid-winter and things had a chance of getting sticky, but expect to see a summer event taking advantage of these in the future.

There was strange indirect hearsay of some discontent from some about actually having to navigate, but this was rumored to be from persons who really should know better anyway (bush-O people), and were really just caught out being lazy.

Notable placings are Lauris Stirling and Ros King in Power Walking, and yours truly & Phil Torode in Run45 (noting that Phil was riding a bike).

Control 9 was one of those controls where concentration was required, unlike depicted here

Sprint ARDF

Five 2m transmitters running 12s each, so the whole cycle takes 1 minute to repeat. The time limit was set to 90minutes, but a soft landing of 5 points/min late was applied instead of the normal ARDF sudden death overtime rule. Each TX was assigned 20 points, but due to a strange MapRun bug, the start and finish both counted as 20 points too.

Transmitter locations

This map segment shows the 5 transmitter locations, but this is hidden from ARDF competitors both on the map and on MapRun when competing.

Some complained that the distance required for this Sprint event were more akin to a full classic ARDF, and though it is true the obstacles did make it longer than a typical Sprint, there were only half the number of transmitters than in a full double-stage Sprint ARDF. Also, here’s what the normal classic ARDF exclusion circles of 500m and 750m look like on this map:

Totally fails classic ARDF exclusion zones

11 ARDF competitors gave it a go on the day of the Cake-O, and Darian completed the event (total 12) only yesterday (Monday 7th). His time has been adjusted to exactly remove the time he spent actually retrieving each of the transmitters (thanks Darian!) as he went. Peter C enjoyed it so much the first time, he revisited Karkarook during the week to try to track down the transmitters he didn’t find the first time around. In that he was 50% successful.

Apologies to Dougie who replied just a tad late.

Here are the results. You can also see the routes taken.

Congrats to the placers: Bryan, Darian and Monica/Rod, just edging out Ewen from the placings, but who also located all 5 TX in time. Bryan also had the extra self-inflicted handicap of not using MapRun, and the transmitters were pretty well hidden from public view.

Here are the 4 routes of those who found all the TXs:

Next Event

Peter Cole is setting the next AR street-O this Wednesday on Academy Hill.

Darian has plans for a Large Sprint format ARDF (or small classic ARDF) possibly using 30s TX timing as a compromise (2.5 minutes per cycle). Those traveling overseas soon should let Darian know when you’ll be back.

We wish Jack (as an official), Peter, Ewen & Jenelle the best of luck in Czech Republic at the World ARDF championships, 2023.

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Damper Creek Sprint ARDF Report

Report & Results are below the Event Details

Map has been updated with TX locations.

Damper Creek


As per usual now, it’s a MapRun event. No need to eyeball the transmitter – it is deliberately well hidden from public view.

Event Name: /Victoria/OV-Clubs/AmateurRadioDirectionFinding-ARDF/Damper Creek ARDF July 2022.
In fact, if you are quick off the mark you could even squeeze it in today, Friday!

When: Commencing Saturday 16 July, 1:30pm. Transmitters will run daily from 1:30pm to 5:30pm till at least Sunday 24th July (or later on request).

Start is where the dirt path leaves on the south side of the tennis club carpark, in Federal Reserve, Mt Waverley. Melway 61D9.
WARNING: Don’t forget that once you Start, avoid going anywhere near there again till you actually want to Finish.

Frequency 145.300Mhz. 12s Sprint timing, 5TX. Time Limit 90 Minutes. If you want to give yourself the full time-limit, don’t forget to start before 4pm.
It is possible you may not hear all transmitters from the start location, so keep an careful ear out as you head around. I could hear 4 of the 5 at the Start.

oom_62dd47ef1a79eDownload

Report

Well done to everyone who gave it a go over the week, a total of 13 competitors.

Special thanks to Geoff, who not only managed to win overall, but did it while picking up all the transmitters for me as well. He had no choice but to do it quickly, as he rang me around 4:30pm today saying he was heading to try the event. I pointed out to him that it was less than an hour before the transmitters were due to turn off at 5:30pm. Geoff figured he therefore might have to run. He managed to locate the last one to collect, #4, just before they all turned off! I hope he had a backpack with him, or lots of roomy pockets. Geoff gets the Golden Retriever award (hey it’s gold for 1st place, right?).

Most people chose the nice weather today to attempt the event, but Henk & Di also struck a good afternoon mid-week. Oddly, noone chose yesterday (Saturday). I wonder why? Jack was first off the mark (last weekend in the drizzle), managing to hold on to the winning time till today. Jack is therefore awarded the Beaver award.

Second place goes to Darian, followed by Mark. However, I should mention Mark’s time may be artificially long, as he accidentally ‘started’ before he even got out of his car. I have instructed him as to how to cancel out and restart in Maprun. He might have even nudged Darian out of second place. Along with Jenelle, Mark also decided on an unconventional route choice off the map. I’m pretty sure you aren’t really meant to do that in ARDF, but Jenelle left the maps at home, so I’ll decide to ignore it this time. It does make sense if you are going between #3 and #4, but probably isn’t much shorter. I have decided to award both Mark and Jenelle with OBE awards (that’s OutofBodyExperience, not OrderofBritishEmpire – I’m not Tony Abbott!). Maybe Mark should also get the Tardigrade award, for his late start?

Many reported not hearing #5 from the Start, but you were forewarned. I note also that most took a more complicated route over two creeks to #2, rather than directly in via the path below. A better map may have helped out here. The dithering by Di and Henk just before #2 makes amusing viewing in replay mode. Di & Henk are hereby awarded the Phaff award.

Peter’s result may not be indicative. He decided to willfully ignore my careful warning, imploring competitors to avoid going too close to the Finish before they actually want to finish, so we will never know what became of him after #3. Did he find any other transmitters? We’ll never know, but I have decided to posthumously award Peter the Icarus award, as all that I found left was a smoldering pile of feathers.

Ewen’s result, however, is even more curtailed than Peter’s, in that it is completely absent. I’m told there is some terrible embarrassment there, which he hoped to avoid by not even uploading his result. Unfortunately that has backfired, as now, due to this very report we now all ponder what he might be trying to hide. Ewen is awarded the Bloody Mary ghost award.

Another thing to note is that the most popular order was 3-1-4-2-5, which probably isn’t the most optimal route. I consider that a bonus for the course setting (or likely more just due to the land topology hiding #5 till later).

Next ARDF event is Sat 13th August at Bellbird Dell, by Icarus. He is also setting the next AR run street-O on Wed Aug 10.

Results

Click here to see results, and view each competitors route.

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Report on Radio Combo Event 7 May 2022

A Radio “Combo” event was run in conjunction with the Saturday afternoon Orienteering event at Endeavour Greens on 7 May 2022. Unforunately the weather was rather poor but despite that we had eight people competing.

Five 2m Fox-Or transmitters were placed in bush or park areas on the map and competitors had to locate these once they had reached the large red circles on the map. A copy of the map is below with small blue dots indicating approximate transmitter locations. A 75-minute time limit was set with 3 points per minute late penalty. The event was run using MapRun and no flags were set with the Fox-Ors.

Congratulations to Bruce Paterson who got all 20 orienteering controls and 5 Fox-Ors in the time, achieving a perfect score of 120 points. Newcomer Christopher Hall also did very well, getting all five Fox-Ors and all but three of the orienteering controls. Chris also managed his time very well, returning 30 seconds before the 75-minute deadline. Monica Lo Presti came in third with a respectable 91 points. Jack Bramham was feeling a bit unwell following a flu vaccination the previous day but still went out to get one of the radio controls after spending some time getting MapRun set up on a new phone. Scores are copied below (also available on MapRun “Leader Board”):

Results

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Hays Paddock Sprint ARDF Training

Hays Paddock training event is on from 9 Oct – 24 Oct (or later if requested). For now only if it’s in your 15km circle, but fingers crossed that may change, before the batteries die.

Sorry if outside your circle – I tried to suit as many as I could !

The 2m transmitters are on daily from3-7pm daily. Time limit 90 minutes. Frequency 145.300 MHz, 5TX Sprint Mode

The event will be on MapRun6. Use the QR code on the map, “Events Near Me”, or in Victoria/OV-Clubs/AmateurRadioDirectionFinding-ARDF/

The start, as shown on the map, is the northern track junction east of the carpark.

Here’s the map:

hays_paddock1Download

So that’s a wrap.
Tracks and results are now visible here

Congratulations to Jack on the winning time, and I think a pretty impressive track. Apologies to those who missed out on hunting down #3, when it had a temporary outage. I can see some spent a while on long excursions looking for a signal. Click on any of the tracks to see where it actually was located. Jenelle just beat out hubby, leading a large cohort who were all close after the 50min mark. And well done to Peter M who, as usual, did the event in PMT as the controls were being picked up. He brought the total up to 16 competitors, which is a great effort.

By the way, #5 was located on the peninsular south of the creek (which is even more ‘loopy’ than mapped), but seems MapRun just allowed check-ins on the north bank, as I can see a few made use of! Oh well. We awarded Greg #4, as he was unable to get there due to the lake flooding.

Many thanks to Bill, who was able to monitor the TXs for me when required, and who we can all thank for restoring #3 to health – three times! (all for differing reasons). The firmware will upgraded so the website auto-update can be stopped for easier/safer delayed-turn-on programming (reason 1). #3 will receive a new battery (reason 2 & 3).

PS: The next version of MapRun6 will have configurable control punch tones, which will be much more satisfactory for handsfree (phone in pocket) ARDFing.

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2021 ARDF membership form

If you are a returning Vic ARDF member who has joined via Eventor, and none of your details below have changed, you do not need to fill in a form. Everyone else needs to fill in a 2021 membership form (links below) and send to Kristian and Suzanne, at the address included. Payment details are also in the form.

Attention OV members:

  • If you are a member of another Victorian club, please join that club first, then join ARDF in Eventor.
  • In Eventor, you can still enter any OV event with whichever club you wish to. We encourage entering under ARDF, as this helps our stats.
  • If you wish to join OV, and ARDF is the only orienteering club you want to be a member of, please do not use Eventor to join; fill out this form and Bank Transfer the $45.

Your Details that may have changed:

  • New SI stick number (did you buy an SI-Air stick recently?)
  • New address
  • Joined/lapsed OV or WIA memberships
  • New callsign
  • New email
  • New contact phone number
  • Sex/Name changed

PDF document: https://ardf.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Victorian-ARDF-Group-Membership-2021.pdf

Word document: https://ardf.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Victorian-ARDF-Group-Membership-2021.docx

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Vermont South ARDF 2m Sprint Event


After some teething problems with logging the GPS locations for the start and each of the transmitters only to find the program I used to save the
locations only went down to 3 decimal places. I then went back to the course and tried again using another 2 apps this time it was better. 6 decimal
places.
The MaprunF file was created and sent to Geoff Hudson to create the file for the MaprunF app.
My map was made using Open Street Map but Geoff put the Coordinates onto the Camelot Rise Streeto map. This map had better detail of the area but
the exact start location was slightly out. I know the advertised start location of the bridge was accurate as when I did a test of the event MaprunF
started me as I stepped onto the bridge.
All of the transmitters were located in the park and I noticed from the various course routes that having the Motorcross Track, Whitehorse Waste
Transfer Station and Bunnings did make for some interesting route choices.
Transmitters were activated on December 14th and originally the plan was to collect them on December 24th. As the course dates did not suit everyone it
was decided to leave the transmitters out until after New Years Day. I could hear Transmitter 2 from home so each day between 15:00 and 19:00 I
could monitor it. Occasionally if conditions were good I could hear TX3 as well. From the Bunnings carpark I could hear all of the transmitters with
TX1 being the weakest.
In the time the transmitters were out only 7 people attempted the course and owing to the time of the year it’s understandable. For those of you who did
not do the course and wondering what the terrain is like here is a video I made of my test run: https://youtu.be/qxTOoP5uCfw
Not the best but it will give you a good idea of the area. Hopefully if I make another video like this I will get the map and the synch of the receiver
better.
Peter VK3ADY was the first to attempt the course but did not allow enough time and after he found his 3rd transmitter the timer cut in and all of the
transmitters turned off. Peter returned the following day to find the last 2 transmitters.
Mark VK3BES could only hear 3 of the 5 transmitters. I did hear TX5 come on the day he attempted the course but it may have shut down shortly
after. I was planning to collect the transmitters on Monday Jan. 4th but as TX5 and TX4 were reported not transmitting I collected them on Sunday 3rd.
1,3 and 5 were still going strong but by the time I had collected 3 and 5 TX1 it had gone silent as well.

Name Callsign TX Order Time Distance Date Comment
Peter Cole VK3ADY 5,4,2 01:04:06 3.98 16/12/20
Peter Cole VK3ADY 1,3 34:04:00 1.94 17/12/20 Picking up missed TX’s
J. Bramham VK3WWW 1,5,4,2,3 31:39:00 2.4 19/12/20 Course Checking + Video
Peter Cole VK3ADY 1,5,4,2,3 29:58:00 2.4 19/12/20 DF1FO 2m RX Test
Bruce Paterson VK3TJN 3,2,5,4,1 28:51:00 3.26 23/12/20
Monica LoPresti VK3FFAB 3,5,1,4,2 57:45:00 3.3 23/12/20 Joined by Uncle Rod
Ewen Templeton VK3OW 5,1,4,2,3 32:40:00 2.37 28/12/20
Jenelle Templeton VK3FJTE 1,4,2,3,5 01:00:06 3.29 28/12/20
Mark Besley VK3BES 3,5,1 41:37:00 2.26 01/01/21 TX2 and TX4 not operational

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Ashwood South Sprint ARDF Report

This Covid-safe event ran for over 3 weeks for 4 hours a day, stretching from Jack first out the gates on Thursday 22nd October, through to Henk & Di on Saturday 7th October. I suspect this may be the longest foxhunt we’ve ever run?! Perhaps longer even than the US election. Of course this renders it a bit pointless to include the traditional reference to the state of the weather at the event.

Kristian has just pipped Geoff for the fastest time just under the 3/4 hour mark, but note the impressive minimal distance Geoff managed it in. However, we should note that Kristian had some issues using MapRunG, and was forced to return to his car part way though his run, as well as locating 3 of his transmitters by sight. As the transmitters had been very carefully hidden, as they were going to be out in the wilds for quite some time, this would have been particularly difficult. He also didn’t take out a paper map, complicating things for himself.

Darian, Pierre & Cameron, I’m told, also somehow forgot to use MapRun (?), so also had to eyeball locate some of their transmitters. I’m not sure I completely understand that, but anyway, Darian-et-al’s track was loaded up retrospectively. Unfortunately they were over the 90min time limit, so I had to mark down as overtime, but all their results are still shown. A welcome to first-timer, Cameron.

Jack was so keen he decided to have multiple goes at the event, finding a different set of 4 transmitters each attempt. On his first attempt, he was never able to hear TX#3, so after that I decided to swap TX#3 and TX#5 positions, as the latter was a much stronger TX. Jack returned a second time to check the new TX configuration, and then yet again on a later weekend to post his 2nd result, which I’ve shown at the bottom as unofficial.

Rod notes the event was an excellent start to his weekend, and he & Monica liked the course layout. Their course length is also excellent, only 400m longer than Geoff’s. Di mentioned that she & Henk might well have found all 5 transmitters under the time limit, if Henk hadn’t wanted to actually see all the transmitters (see above!), but as they were running a bit short on time decided to cut out the one over the other side of the creek. Good to know all the transmitters are still working fine after 3 weeks, as they went for a stroll on Saturday 7th.

The first event upload to MapRun didn’t successfully set it up as a Score event as wanted, but unfortunately the second attempt didn’t seem to either. I’ve therefore extracted the results here, taking into account those who eyeball located some TXs, and the TX location swap. Beware that the Track files linked will have TX5 & TX3 swapped still. Many thanks to Geoff for promptly doing the MapRun submission – if you can prepare a (correct), MapRun compatible, kml file for him detailing the TX locations, this is a lot of the work required done.

Ashwood South Sprint ARDF Results
NamePlaceTxsTrackTimekmAgeWhen
Kris15: 5, 4, 1, 2, 3Track00:43:375.75M30-3431/10/20
Geoff25: 2, 3, 1, 4, 5Track00:45:483.78M65-6926/10/20
Ewen35: 2, 1, 4, 3, 5Track48:18:005.35M70-7426/10/20
Monica & Uncle Rod45: 3, 2, 1, 4, 5Track00:58:204.2W25-2931/10/20
Mark55: 4, 1, 3, 2, 5Track01:03:235.52M60-6401/11/20
Jack64: 2, 1, 3, 4Track00:59:185.18M65-6922/10/20
Doug74: 5, 2, 1, 4Track01:14:575.79M50-5405/11/20
Jenelle84: 5, 2, 1, 4Track01:16:526.11W65-6926/10/20
Henk & Di94: 5, 2, 3, 1Track01:27:185.62M70-7407/11/20
Jack (unofficial)N/A4: 5, 4, 1, 3Track38:47:003.12M65-6901/11/20
Darian, Pierre & CameronO/T5: 3, 1, 4, 2, 5Track01:39:295.49M25-2931/10/20

Here’s the actual transmitter locations:

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Sprint Ardf Training begins again!

Sprint training Covid style is available now in Ashwood South. 5TX 2m (on 145.300MHz). Each TX runs for 12s, so 5 TXs form a 1 minute cycle. There is a 90 minute event time limit.

Start location in in Harlequin Dve, at the main park sign. Off Power Ave., Ashwood South.

Transmitters run for 4 hours daily, 3-7pm. I’ll finish the event once everyone has had a chance to try who wants to.

Use MapRunF to register at the controls. Event name is under Victoria/RunFree/ARDF/Ashwood_south_ARDF_Use_this_one_ScoreV90, or “Events Near Me” should have it top of the list if you use that near the Start. Please avoid cheating by looking at the map on the phone, even though it’ll be mostly purple.

PDF version: https://www.ardf.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Ashwood_south_ARDF_Score90-2.pdf

You can currently train on this event in Melbourne if you live within this 25km circle:

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