Author: brucep

Marauding Turks

Today was the “day off” from ARDF/orienteering practice, and was more of a tour day of Pecs, the city near our bruce village of Orfu. After a pretty relaxed start to things we squeezed into our two cars and headed off to Pecs. As it happened this took us back through the maps we had already been on so things started to look uncannily familier. We also saw a full dual horse drawn cart on the road as we left Orfu…not acommon sight apparently, but not unusual. Susan, Gyrui’s wife used to be a tour guide in an earlier life, so she was the ideal person to show off her local town. We started off at a roundhouse from around the 15th century. This was built inside the moat as part of the city walls to defend the city against the Turks who regularly tried to take over the city (and often did). Unfortunately the hill beside the town made it easy for invaders to see everything about the towns defenses and their weaknesses. The town in fact has an original Roman name, Sopianae, dating back 2000 years. Some of the road routes around (we went on one on the way to a practice event) follow the original Roman road route. We just don’t get recorded history like that in Australia (something a century old is considered ancient).

The Roundhouse

Inside Roundhouse

No Petrol !

The Bishopric (church) was built over centuries so has many different styles (and looks it). There is a china crypt underneath which is in fact the original 11th century church that used to be at ground level but was built over later. They have problems stabilising the  whole thing since half is on rock and the other is built on ancient pines (permanently sodden) in a swamp. They have to keep careful note of the water level and keep it topped up if it drops too low (and endanger the pines). One thing it does have is the 3rd biggest organ in Europe. Over 6000 pipes.

Once some workers had found a grail (cup) in a tree that had been hidden there for centuries. Each time the city seemed in danger of being overrun the Bishop’s valuables were secreted wherever they could be hidden or buried. The cup is now displayed along with others in the church.

Under the city are many many cellars since it’s a wine making area. In places up to 20 levels deep. Often the inhabitants were able to escape, complete with horses and carts, out the cellar complex away from Turkish invaders. We visited a cellar to taste some bishop’s Wine” which was in fact a Riesling, but the region is famous for the Cirfandli variety.
 

The Bishopric

Crypt (original church)

Bishop’s Wine Cellar

One fascinating thing we saw in the town were a couple of gates with hundreds of padlocks clamped all over them. It’s a tradition amongst students leaving the town to put their old locker padlocks on one of these gates to give them hope that they may return someday. We were lucky enough to witness a couple of padlocking ceremonies where a poem was read out ond the padlock affixed to the growing cluster. Jack would have a field day !

We saw inside a Christian Mosque. What is that you ask ? Have I got that right ? Well, yes… half is a Moslim Mosque built by the invading Turkish, and the other half a Roman Catholic church. In the same building, with both a cross and a half moon on the apex !  Something perhaps to be learnt in tolerance here with some of the current world events.  Hungariana, Croatians, Serbs and Swabians all live in Pecs
 

Lock Ceremony

Pecs central square

Christian Mosque

We visited Susan’s favorite museum. It was purely for a painter called Csontvary who had been a phamacist until 40 years old when he suddenly had an inner voice that told him he must become an artist. The paintings at first glance are just impressive (and mostly huge), but then you notice some of the weirdness of scale or colour. Very unusual. His main aim (he was quite mad apparently) was the paint the colours of the sun. Lunch was at Gyrui’s parents place, and this was to be a pretty big affair. Rice meat balls in a sauce, with a vodka toast and home made wine (from grapes grown right in the garden)… both red and white, but the red was better. Bob has a bottle to take to Slovakia.

At Gyrui’s office I was able to send off some of my reports (at last). I have no idea if they all got through but I will check next time. I had also prepared a web page to upload with a bruce selection of pictures, but was unable to then due to time constraints (the computer I tried orginally didn’t work so I had to wait in line for Gyrui’s. We had some free time to wander about the old city centre after that, buy this & that, and then off the Gyuri’s place for dinner. More wonderful food… fruit soup, a pototoe/cheese/hungarian-salami delicious thing and a layered biscuit desert (this was the ‘american’ version… we’d tried the traditional hungarian version at lunch). This one was Daniel’s favorite, but judging by the number Thomas ate of both varieties he’s not far behind here. Anyway, I must get off this and get ready for bed. Tommorow is yet another 2m event in the morning, and fox-oring (with longer antennas this time) in the afternoon !

Pecs

Gyrui’s Shack

Dinner at Gyuri’s

Fox-orfu

Today was back to the practice with another double banger.

The 2m event in the morning was meant to be a shorter event, but it didn’t quite work out that way !  TX#5 had battery problems. It
would tranmit fine for 5 seconds or so, then give seemingly random blips and burps for the rest of the minute cycle. Unfortunately
it was probably the best TX to do first, so this was a trifle inconvenient.

We all ended up very scratched from prickles, blackberries, nettles and other associated nasties. The map was a bit out of date and the light green should now be very deep green, and some of the white pretty dark green too. Also TX#5 was in a white bit in the middle of green accessed from only a couple of ways…. obvious if you could have had more than 5 seconds DF every 5 minutes, but tricky in the circumstances.

Csaba, a local, wore shorts to the event since he recalled the map from about 10 years ago when he’d orienteered there. Well, the scratches and blood afterwards would rival that of a well known Bayside orienteer !
 

2m Start

2m Finish

Bob heads off

Personally once I had wasted an age fighting spikey things (memories of YDF foxhunts) the rest was tackled in quick order.

Afternoon was the 2nd fox-oring event (again on 80m). Everyone agrees this one was much better than the previous attempt, mostly because the weak 80m signals could now be heard from within the circle (and in fact outside in some cases). Problems with control 3 being extremely weak, but the rest worked well with slightly longer antennas. This sort of event is a lot of fun, with 10 control points and spanish-score event style. Bryan has already laid out a PCB prototype on his laptop in a few spare moments (the transmitters are little more than a NOR gate and a crystal) so it woul be good to try it out at an orineteering ‘meet’ (as the Yanks here call them).

I took 44 minutes for the 10 controls, Adam zipped around in 35 and Csaba, who I was competing against directly as he headed off just after me, managed to overtake me with a bit more luck at control 3 (see above) and took 38 minutes. All pretty close !

I went for a swim today again in the lake afterwards, but I only heard later on that Bryan decided he wouldn’t as he had seen a snake swimming by in the water… hmmm oh well.

Seems Bob and Dick are the SportIdent “gurus” for their orienteering club, so we had a number of discussions about SportID software and control failures. Yes, they get failures too, and as often during an event as when at sleep. They are less than convinced about the supposed EMC cause. All sounds pretty familier stuff. Sport Ident will be used at these upcoming world ARDF  championships in Slovakia, so it’ll be interesting to see what software they will be using.

At the moment Harley and Bob are working on Bob’s 2m sniffer. He tweaked it up a bit before the event this morning and broke something, so now it’s being tackled in a logical fashion.

Update: Don’t know if they’ve managed to fix it… seems to be something wrong with the front end in the “Ron Graham” sniffer type.
I nearly broke Ian’s 80m sniffer today trying to tweak it a little down in frequency so I can also pick up the upcoming 3.550 Slovakian homing beacon. It seems the tiny parallel capacitor can’t be removed…so I had to put it back. Relief when it worked again as before !
Oh well, I doubt I’ll need the homing beacon anyway if all goes well 🙂

Update on the update: Seems I can pick up the homing beacon with the knob turned to the extreme position.

Tommorow is our last practice event; a long 80m hunt, so until then….

Welcome everyone !

This is my report of our trip to Hungary and Slovakia. Firstly, a bit of introduction for those who haven’t read these reports before. They are my very informal ramblings of the Australian Team’s experiences. Usually accurate but I don’t always check my facts, so apologies in advance for any mis-spelled place-names, dodgy geography or just plain lies. The reports will vary widely in quality and spelling accuracy depending on how much time I have. Basically, just read the interesting bits…. it’s just the interesting bits will vary depending on who you are. This trip will (hopefully) begin with the Hungarian national ARDF (Amateur Radio Direction Finding, or radio orienteering as it’s also known as). The championships are 2 days with an event on each day. After that we have a mixed week of training and sightseeing around the Pecs area of Hungary (pronounced “Pege”). These have been organised by Nagy Gyuri of the US team (but also who happens to be a Hungarian resident). After that we head off to the World ARDF Championships (the big one) in Slovakia. More about all that later ! I am currently sitting at a an outside table in a school camp near Parad. Parad area isa tourist/holiday area about 2 hours (crazy) drive from Budapest. We arrived in Budapest with little incident, but completely stuffed from the long airline journey (Melbourne-KL-Vienna-Budapest). Annoyingly we flew right over Budapest on the way into Vienna, but had to overshoot and take another little prop plane back. Unfortunately had to spend quite a few hours at Budapest airport (which has very hard seats totally uninviting for sleeping) waiting for Bob Cooley to arrive on a later flight from the US. Jumped into a couple of cars (Gyugy’s..pronounced ‘Guri’) and zoomed off to Parad.  

Our Cabin

Hungarian Camp

Dinner at the camp

Today was a 7am start for the 2 metre ARDF competition. The food here is basic but quite acceptable, but we got a bonus bit of chocolate birthday cake this evening (it explained why the little boy sitting nearby was so excited). On the way to the competition the bus was running a bit late so we were asked to walk down the dirt road into the camp so the bus didn’t have to negotiate that.After aboiut 10 minutes waiting, the bus thundered down the road to where we were waiting and hurled around the corner nearly crashing into two cars coming out from the camp. Bit of excitment to start off with. The competition ? Well Adam did pretty well taking 119 minutes (150 minute time limit) coming 7th overall in F21 (Male 21 in Hungarian). Bryan was happy bagging 4 almost right on his time limit. The astute of you will have noticed I haven’t mentioned one of the Aussie’s yet…. (yes it’s me). I’ll give you a bit of a description of my course later. Fastest overall was 60 minutes which is kinda inhuman 🙂 Of the Yanks the Leach’s were happy getting medals for 2nd & 3rd (due in part to the fewer competitiors in their sections), and Csaba (pronunced ‘Cshubba’, another Hungarian/US competitor) took 10 minutes longer than Adam. The rest well, weren’t all that happy with their day. OK, here’s a bit of a description of my event.
I was due to start 30 minutes after the competitior. Competitors are let out at 5 minute intervals with one competitor from 4 categories (age/sex). I was the first Aussie out. Bryan was 10 minutes later. The map was largly free running, but with some areas of deep green (and in retrospect the deep green here means truly impassable) and a few open areas grass areas. And Hilly. Lots and LOTS of hills. 5m contours in some places squeezed together so close they nearly join.
At the start I took the opportunity to draw a circle around the start location of 750m since we know no transmitters can be within this distance. I also draw a 500m circle around the finish since there’s a transmitter there (Homing Beacon) and another course setting rule is trasnmitters cannot be closer than 500m from each other. I decided based on the map to head off somewhere to the right from the start since the finish was to the left, and I wanted to leave that side of the map till later. When I was let out I did get a bearing to transmitter #2 off to the right so it seemed my strategy was correct. Transmitter #1 was stronger and straight up, but I still decided to leave that till after 2. The rest were to the left.
I should mention, for those who don’t know, that the transmitters are all on the same channel, but take turns transmitting 1 minute each so only 1 is ever on at a time. There are 5 transmitters each with a nearby orienteering control flag and punch. Well, it took me a while, but I finally had to admit I’d stuffed up, and the bearing I’d had initially had to 2 was just plain wrong. Oh well, back to #1, then wap up the hill to #5, which went ok, but took me a while close to the transmitter due to some spurious bearings then too. Also, the Hungarians seem to be keen on hiding their transmitter flags behind things and close to the ground (Go David B!!).
I was a bit knackered after the hill(s), and my stuff-ups, but my next leg right across to the top of the map (through a pine forest deep green zone on tracks) was probably my best. It was hidden right up an overgrown creek gully just within he far side of the pines. My attempt from #3 to #2 is where things went a bit astray.
Not sure exactly what I did but I ended up on a different track than I thought and wasn’t really concentrating enough. I think I actualy went off the map. I then went through a fenced field full of blackberries (oh what fun) wasting lots of time. It was in a pine forest I finally figured out where I was (luckily back on the map)…. quite a long way from where I thought I was. Ooops. changed my plan to go go #4 now (near the finish) and back to #2 later if I still had time before the 150 minute time limit. There was no water at any of the transmitters, it was fairly hot and muggy, and at nearly 2 hours out there I was feeling a bit dehydrated and doing silly things.
I had to endure the embarrasment of going back through the finish chute to get to #4. Finding #4 went well initially heading up a hill. I was probably only 50m from in when Bryan came down the hill past me also looking for #4, convinced he hadn’t gone past it. We stuffed around in some nearby gullies (re-entrants) getting lots of reflections till I finally got a bearing back up the hill I was originally heading up. I never did find #4 since after wasting nearly 15 minutes mucking about I was near my time limit anhad to abondon the search. Bryan tells me that I was within a few metres of the flag, but since they were so well “hidden” it was no surprise I didn’t see it (when it was not transmitting). Bryan had another 10 minutes and so had the luxury of waiting for #4 to come on again. To make things worse I got a really bad stitch on my dash back to the finish, slowing me down considerably. I was a mere 1.5 minutes overtime (a DNF). Damm !! … and I had missed 2 transmitters. Hopefully a better day tommorow. After a late lunch back at the camp Csaba and Gyuri took us for a drive to a nearby TV tower on a hill for the view. It also happened this hill was a local ski resort (apparently using rope tows). We were able to see the area we had run/staggered on in the morning in the distance from the tower. On the return journey we also popped into a GoKart track just beside the road and had a bit of high speed fun (no helmuts). I lapped Adam and Csaba at least 2 times, and afterwards one of the Hungarian track organisers congratulated me (in English – which hadn’t been evident beforehand) on being a very “good driver”. Tommorow will be the 80m competition. My home made loop is definitely too deaf, so lucky I popped past Ian’s place the other night to pick up his (thanks Ian!). Hopefully we will all do better then.

Map of Parad Area

Group on Tower

TV tower on hill

80m Event Hungarian Championships

It’s afternoon here in Parad after lunch following the 80m metre event. Last night had a bit of a chat with some local ARDF’ers who are also radio amateurs. Seems like the licencing scheme is very similar to Aussie here. Jack WWW would like the comment one of the younger amateur competitors made (Chrstian): When I started ARDF the map was just a thing for putting in my pocket. Now I use it a little more, but still spend a lot of time pushing through the plants (bush-bashing). ‘ This can happen a lot if you don’t know where you are on the map (like me at one point yesterday) and you simply try to head on a bee-line between transmitters. In Budapest they even used to have an annual car-based radio direction finding hunt (foxhunt) like our Mt Gambier annual competition, but the polic didn’t like it and banned it. Too many people with their heads out the windows or something like that ! (not a mention of spikey bits, however).

Well the event today started a little cooler, possibly because it was about an hour earlier. [Damm the mosquitoes are attacking me here grrr]. We used the same map as yesterday, but a different start location. On the way there the bus took us straight through the middle of the map, so we were able to track it’s progress and know exactly where the start was when we arrived. In fact, the organisers asked us if we could re-use our maps fromn yesterday if they weren’t too damaged. My map now has two start locations marked on it. Again the course setter liked hiding the control flags on the ground, and I’m told he doesn’t like using flags at all and would prefer there to just be a punch, preferablly painted brown or black 🙂 I have no problem with searching out a difficult hidden transmitter if it transmits all the time, but when you have to wait 4 minutes till the TX you are trying to find comes on again i it’s cycle, this approach is a bit unreasonable.
 

Bryan at 80m Start

…and off we go !!

On the tower

In a few minutes we will have the prise ceremony for 80m. The best result is Harley who bumped up a place to 2nd today. Karla should also do well after finding 2 transmitters out of 3 in her veterans category. I came about 6th (to be confirmed) with 96 minutes, Adam about 7th (101 minutes) and Bryan 9th-ish with 122 minutes, all with 5 trasnmitters. We all did them in different orders, so the course could be tackled a number of ways.

One thing I noticed about these championships is they seemed pretty informal. People were asking me all the time where various transmitters were, some even managing the request in English ! The orienteers amongst you will how “not on” this sort of thing normally is, but few seemed to care a great deal. After the ceremony we have to leave to get to Pecs tonight.

[Update]: Just been to the ceremony which was held outside. Karla, Harley and Gyuri were all awarded placings. There were 72 competitors in this National Hungarian championships with a good junior contingent (U15,U17 and U19 categories for both boys and girls), so the sport is quite healthy here.
[Update 2]: In the car (a Renault) following the other Renault and the Citreon (Gyuri likes French cars), now on the flat after winding down through the spectacular hills where we have spent the weekend. The cars here a a curious mix of old style looking (possibly Russian lineage) box cars abd modern western european cars we would all know. Not sure when I’ll be able to send these reports out, but hopefully sometime this week.

PS: Jodi, distinct lack of O’Henry bars in evidence here.
 

Finish Chute

Gyuri wins Silver

Ski run from tower

Orfu for you

It’s the night after our first practice event in the Pecs areas of Hungary. Another two hopefuls have just arrived (Bod – (loud bob) and Dick) both from US. They came on the train from Budapest (after flying from the US). Well, actually a huge mixture of trains, buses, planes and subways I can’t keep track of, plus Bob has become seperated from his luggage.

The rest of us arrived last night somewhat after the expected time partly due to one of the Renaults developing a fault with the the throttle getting stuck full on, but it was easily fixed. The house we’re all staying at is great, if fairly compact. There are balconies back, front and upstairs so plenty of relaxation areas. Breakfast we get ourselves in the house, but lunch and dinner are catered at a local resturant which so far has proved to be delicious (especially the soups).
 

Our Orfu House

Daniel and Thomas

Marvin Naps

This morning was declared a rest morning (recovery after the championships) but this afternoon was the first practice ARDF event on 2m. The area here near the bruce village of Orfu has about 7 orienteering maps all in the same area. They are spread around two china lakes right near town. The event today was on one of these maps, consisting of lots of china sink holes (shown as depressions with surrounding coutours)…. great to navigate by as long as you don’t lose track, because once you do they all look the same (speaking from experience). A fascinating terrain.

Today’s event was on 2m and was set by Gyrui and his son Daniel (a keen local orienteer). His younger son Thomas helped with the Start. Unfortunately one of the transmitters (#5) failed to work, so this one became an orienteering control instead. Gyrui had put out water at a couple of controls, and since it was again pretty hot this made a lot of difference.

Here’s what I got up to (skip this bit if you don’t want to read the ARDFy sorta bits):
I started off with a smart move to backtrack to get to a main road to make it easy to get the TX5 (which was the “orienteering” marked location). The alternative route meant a big deep gully crossing which seemed wise to avoid, and also I was higher so hopefully could get better bearings. As it turned out I never did get #5, not finding it despite careful re-location since I had mistaken a depression on the map for a knoll. I gave up on it after 20 minutes since we had restricted time of only 80 minutes and I wanted to get more of the real controls. It was also a practice event. Next was #2 which I did ok. My next choice was #1. This was based on what turned out to be pretty dodgy bearings and was a LOT furthur away than I expected. I got a bit lost amongst the many depressions (and even considered going back for #4 which would have been a better 3rd choice in retrospect). I persevered, however, but after finally bagging the distant #1 had no clear idea where I was. I had to simply head back on my last bearing for #4 which I found pretty quickly luckily. I had a vague idea where I was now sinly because my bearings for #4 earlier on had seemed pretty good, so where they crossed should be where I was (hopefully). They were, and I was, and I also hit a clearing soon on the way to #3 that certified where I was (phew!). I got #3 pretty quickly, which was lucky because I was on my last few minutes before the time limit, and I could not have afforded another cycle (5 minutes). A mad sprint back to the start and I got there at 79 minutes ! My problems mainly stemmed from losing proper map contact #2-#1 (in part due to a mis-estimation of exactlywhere #2 was), and therefore not picking up #4 when I should have (since I didn’t know I had gone within 200m of my guesstimates since I didn’t know really where I was). Misreading the depression for #5 was annoying, but it was poorly marked, and I now know the mapping style a bit better. Adam also only got 4 TX’s (he missed #4 partly due to it being off frequency a bit), but he got back 4 or so minutes less time than I did. Practice event so we don;’t really care, but at least I wasn’t alone in having some difficulties.

Tommorow morning we have an 80m practice event, so I’m off to bed now !
 

First Practice Start

Bryan’s Foxoring Map Remains

Dinner in Orfu

That Sinking Feeling

Last night things ended up a bit later than Gyuri was expecting and they had to pick up some of the 2m transmitters in the dark. Still, Daniel had a pretty good feel for the map having orienteered there many times before. This morning was an 80m practice event. A different map from yesterday, but still lots and lots of sink-holes in parts. The map was bisected by a main road which ran down a big central gully. I’m back at the guest house now and it’s just a perfect sunny morning. Not nearly as hot as yesterday afternoon so much better for running about.

This afternoon Gyuri is setting up a fox-oring event which should be interesting. Fox-oring is a mix between ARDF and orienteering. You are given a map with a number of china circles on it. You have to orienteer to each of the circles, and once withing the circle you should be able to hear a low powered transmitter that is somewhere in the circle (not right in the middle of course). I will truly get to see how I orienteer amongst the sink-holes since we’re using the same map as this morning. Continued below…..

For this morning here’s my ARDFy bit again !
Many of the bearings from the start were in a similar direction, so not much could be determined there, except that #2 seemed stronger. I had temporarily removed the speaker from Ian’s sniffer so that I could attach a compass onto the sniffer itself (using an old toothbrush as a strut). This made getting bearings less confusing and quicker than during the championships on the weekend. Headed straight down the hill to #2, but when I reached a major road and #3 came on it became obvious I was already behind me to my right. It seemed a good idea to head back to #3 since getting it later would be inconvenient. I did that but took a couple of 5 minute cycles to actully get back up the hill to it. It was right on the 750m exclusion zone circle ! Next was #2 where I had narrowed it down to a particular gully. Sure enough it was there, but a little furthur down it than I expected. I now had a choice of staying up on this side of the main road and heading to the more distant #5, or crossing the road and going an unknown distance up the hill on the other side for #1. I plumbed for #5. Weaved through some sink holes on the way there but eventually got there. Had to wait another cycle to find the thing hidden in a sink-hole itself. Now since I’m now past the finish down the other end of the map I head across the main road now to the equally distant #4. Didn’t take too long on this one even though it was in another sink-hole. My later bearings on #4 were good, but the original ones from the start weren’t good at all (it was weak so I had to use the sniffer in modulation rather than whoopee mode which gives a vaguer bearing). Back past the uphill side of the finish (near the main road) to #1. Unfortunately it turned off just as I was approaching it, and in the meantime I wasn’t lucky enough to look in the right sink-hole depression. Snapped it as soon as it did come on and sprint to the nearby finish. In retrospect leaving #1 till later was the right decision. My time was 66 minutes, much better than yesterday. Adam was 82 minutes (he did #2 first then went back to #3). ……

It’s now evening (we just made a sudden time shift). Well fox-oring was fun. Gyuri and Daniel had set a short course of 10 controls. Start and finish were at the same place as this mornings finish and the course was set in a complex sink-hole area. You can do the controls in any order (spanish score). As it turned out Gyuri hadn’t tried this antenna with the mini 80m transmitters (little more than a CMOS oscillator) and the ones he had set down sink holes didn’t get out quite as much as expected, so for a good part of the course it was more a pure orienteering event with really vague control circles (the circles were about 150m in diameter) rather than a direction finding hunt. The transmitters Danny had set were somewhat higher and 3 of these I actually was able to DF before I actually saw the flag. I must have spent nearly half the time at a single control that had a well hidden flag right on the circle boundary. I was not alone as nearly everyone was there at one stage ! Other than a bit of vague wandering about once within the a circle looking for a signal or a more often the flag itself, I enjoyed the event and the concept, and I’m keen to try something like that back home. Just asI was finding my last control (#8 as it happens), and incidentally this was one I was able to hear and DF, the storm that I had been hearing in my headphones for most part of the event (ouch that one was LOUD!!) finally broke. I made it back to the car just as it started to pour (not that it would have mattered). Bryan wasn’t so lucky and we later saw his miserable excuse for what was left of his map….

For the 2nd time we had somehow managed to muck up giving the house key to the wrong person, so I had to repeat my trick of clambering up to the 2nd storey and getting in the (luckily left open again) balcony window. Susan, Gyuri’s wife, is the director for a new school in Pecs, so in this pre-term period is going mad orgainising impossible schedules and so forth, but she was able to help this evening for ferrying people around and replenishing the brekky supplies.

Tommorow we are promised a harder/longer 2m event in the morning, and various strategies to use in the afternoon. So till then, Bye All ! The next day we attempted to find the minibus that passes through Huanghua. We did eventually find roughly the correct bus stop, but an English speaking chinese gentleman was able to inform us that the bus wasn’t running today due to the rain. We caught a bread-box taxi (a very bruce bread shaped mini-van) driven by a Chinese woman. It was a bit of a slow day for the bread-boxes, so we were able to negatiate the trip down to Y40 from Y60 we’d been offered earlier. For a 70 minute or so drive, A$10 between 3 of us sounded a pretty good deal.
 

One Bastard is all it takes

  This morning dawned very hazy after the rain last night. It’s always a little bit hazy here, not nearly as bad a China, but certainly not the crisp view we’re spoilt with in Australia (well most of the time anyway). My O pants were stll dampish from the washing the previous evening (washing has become almost a daily activity here since we have limited running clothing) but wearing them for a few minutes dried them out. The house comes with what I had at first thought was a tiny washing, but after the water I poured in splashed out onto my feet I deduced it was merely a mini spin dryer. Note to Kevin Maloney: I’ll be needing some new O pants and shoes when I get back ! The Bayside Club tops are holding up well however. One of the Bob’s now has a Bayside T-shirt, so if there should ever be any Bayside members in USA and they see one say hi ! Mostly ARDF bits to follow (coz that’s wot we’re bin doin’ of course). Gyrui had set this mornings course on the same map as yesterday, mainly I suspect because he and Danny like it. With a different Start and Finish everything changes of course. I was really doing very well today…until I tried to get my 4th TX (#4 as it happens). I wasted about 30 minutes mucking about in it’s vicinity. Crossing the road, running up the hill, running down, crossing the road again, running up the other side…. Where IS this bastard tranmitter ??? I was 5 minutes away from abandoning it (I wanted to leave 30 minutes to get the final transmitter #2 which was somewhere the other side of the finish and get back before the 2 hour time limit), feeling pretty despondent, when I just happened to glimpse it the other side of a heavily overgrown pretty deep sink hole. Oh well… at least I knew where it was as I clambered through the shubbery. I ended up taking just over 100 minutes altogether, and I estimate about 40 of those minutes were on #4. Afterwards I was reminded that #4was the one that was off frequency… well that explains why I kept overshooting back and forth so much, so I didn’t feel so bad. Lunch and dinner are both provided each day at a local guesthouse/resturant. The highlight after all this activity is definitely the yumptious Hungarian soups (last night we were even served a cold fruit soup). Since Gyrui hasn’t yet turned up for the planned afternoon round-table hints & tricks of ardf session, I went for a walk to the nearby bruceer of the lakes and swam across to the island. Just fantastic for rejuvenating those tired muscles.
  Tried to ask Gyrui intelligent questions about techniques, and heres some things I picked up (in nor particular order):

1. Get to the boundary of the start exclusion zone as quick as possible
2. If the bearing is weak in this early stage draw just a rough bearing, but if it is strong take the trouble to get an accurate one.
3. The numbers of the distant controls could well be determined by the various TX numbers various classes have to leave out. In our case probably #4 or #5, maybe.
4. You should be able to get the 1st one in the 2nd or 3rd cycle if you got out of the exclusion circle quickly.
5. Yes, he does run hard when a TX comes on and he is reasonably close, and yes, sometimes he does lose contact with the map in these situations (which is kinda reasuring to hear…he did lose contact during the 2m Hungarian championships for this reason)
6. Always run away from the finish initially (I had already been doing this anyway), but this will be determined a bit by the positions of start and finish relative to the edge of the map.
7. I have a short list of course setting hints (Mark remind me to send them to you; I typed them in as he was telling us).
8. He showed us some odd techniques for trying in high reflection areas. I tried some afterwards with a test transmitter and I’m not sure I’ll be adopting these on a regular basis anytime soon 🙂 They are basically just desperation ideas.

Another good Hungarian meal in the family run guesthouse. Tommorow is a tour day around Pecs (that’s ‘Pege’ remember) and surrounds organised by Susan (Gyrui’s wife).

Bruce and Adam

Bruce’s Report #20

We’re on the Miat airlines flight from Ulaan Baatar to Beijing. The plane seems fine (so far). Outside we can see the Mongolian landscape which is grass covered hills and plains mostly. Occasionally some trees on one side of a hill only. None of the roads are straight, possibly because the road keep changing path as some hole or obstacle becomes too big.
 

Mr Han and Us (UlaanBaatar)

The overhead wires!!

Bus stuck on track

The Chinese at the temple

Firstly, I realise I’ve somehow missed the tour day. In short, we were taken into UB to look at the Temple we’d already looked and the state department store we weren’t all that interested in. Therefore during the store bit we escaped to our internet cafe and you got one of the sets of reports and some pictures. I had to abort sending the last set of pictures as the connection was running really slow at the time (it always does when you’re in an particular hurry) and I didn’t want to miss the bus.

Panarama of Ulaan Baatar

We then proceeded in our 3 buses (one which needed an occasional crank start) to a hill overlooking UB to get an overall view from a lookout, and then a bit of a drive back to the area we’d had the 2m competition in for lunch. We proceeded along steadily worse roads till suddenly there were sparks and zaps (and gasps) from the lead bus I was in as we ran into some low slung overhead powerlines (oops). Luckily we were on rubber tyres is all I can say. There is a somewhat cavalier attitude in Mongolia (and China too) to electricity distribution. The Baht hotel appears to be wired using wires slung between the balconies and running over the doorsteps jammed in the doors.
 

Mongolian Horseman

Us and the Mongolians

After they emptied out the 3 buses they managed to get them all under the wires and after a delay we piled back in and onto a grotty track somewhere near where TX#5 was in the competition. Lunch was a picnic consisting of meat cooked using hot black rocks, rice and some vegetables, and of course potatoes. Australia was to join the Mongolians. This was fun. You are meant to handle the hot black (and slightly greasy) black rocks for good luck. The meat sauce left in the pot was also very yummy. This was the first occasion we were introduced to the fierce Mongolian Vodka too 🙂

Secondly, a story from the 80m competition. Apparently one of the Korean competitors fell into an animal trap and knocked himself out cold. The next thing he knew he was in a hospital. He was apparently found by some locals, so as far as the orgainisers of the event knew he was still out there somewhere and a search was organised. This delayed proceedings somewhat and explains the late Banquet start. After the prizes were awarded, I presented the clock to Mr Khosbayer of MRSF in appreciation for the event and hospitality.

Clock Presentation to MRSF

After the Banquet we drifted outside. The Mongolians had formed into a circle and were celebrating the event taking turns with the single vodka glass. After the Mongolian team leader asked if I could send him all the pictures we took, but instead I offered to copy them then. Unbeknownst to me this involved yet another three Vodka shots in the Mongolian control centre and I was starting to feel a bit unsteady by this stage ! Congratulations to the MRSF for running a really interesting, challenging and actually reasonably hassle free event. I hope we manage as well in 2003!

The next day we got a lift to Ulaan Baatar along with some of the Russians who were about to catch the Trans-Siberian train to Moscow (a two day journey), and then another 2 day journey by train to Vladivostok ! The other Russians were from Lake Baikal in Russia, not far from the Mongolian Northern border. They were keen for me to try the local Lake Baikal Vodka. We were able to book into the Nassan guest house again, and as I said in the last report I did manage to find accomodation in another guest house a short walk away for the Kazakhstan team, but they must have decided to sleep at the airport afterall. I was able to send out pictures up till the end of the 2m competition here in Mongolia. The later pictures I haven’t sorted out yet ! [Ed: No hurry after all]

In the guest house we met a girl who had just arrived in Ulaan Baatar. She was about to head out on a two year stint teaching English in a small town to the North of UB as part of an “Outreach” program. She is only paid a nominal amount to live, so the work is voluntary. Another Outreach man was heading South to teach business practices. The “English” Mongolian newspaper seems to be full of lots of reports of foreign aid or Government schemes.

After lunch at another nearby cafe (even had ice cream…yum!), we phoned NyamKa and she subsequently found us. We had an interesting ride in a car to DavKa’s house in one of the suburbs. In Ulaan Baatar there seems to be little concept of maintenance or repair (a bit like Bryan’s car really). The buildings are either older Russian apartment blocks falling apart somewhat, ramshackle single storey buildings, brand new buildings or of course gers (Mongolian herders tents). When the road bitumen is damaged it, well, stays that way. There is a big dirt section on “Peace Avenue”, one of the major highways through UB. With snow or ice for much of the year maybe it doesn’t matter all that much. UB is a strange mix of the old and new. There is the Russian past still very strong, western influences much more pronouced than China but always there are reminders this is basically a herder society with cattle crossing the roads, the gers and horses riding about on the outskirts of town.

DavKa and NyamKa

Looking at (these) Pictures

Inside the Ger

Outside the Ger

NyamKa is in her third year at University studying English and Japanese. She wasn’t an ARDF competitor, but had come along with DavKa to look at the events. DavKa is studying medicine. He showed us some of his textbooks and they are mostly Russian. DavKa is part of a large family (I think 7 children). His younger brother Mec-Ka was also an ARDF competitor even though he is only 10 or so. (These are their short names … the full names are many syllables and I have no hope of remembering them all!). DavKa had twisted his ankle on the 80m event (with the terrain I’m not all that surprised) catching his foot under a root. I was amazed to see him injecting himself with an anti-inflamatory, but when I later learned he was a medical student it all made sense. (see picture Report 19).

DavKa’s House

The house was a long low building originally made of wood that had had a row of bricks added on the outside (with insufficient foundations by the look). Probably there were 4 homes in each building. The (squat) toilet is seperate and shared between many houses. Inside the house it was quite comfortable with the impressive Mongolian carpets hanging on the walls. We were treated to dinner, puzzled over some wooden puzzles, had the obligitary 3 vodka toasts and showed the family some of our pictures of the event (this laptop is really becoming very well travelled). They also took us to see inside a ger nearby belonging to some friends (in fact the driver who had given us all a lift there). DavKa had lived in a ger himself till he was 10 years old. Well this suburban ger inside had a few modifications from the original herders ger layout; the saddles were replaced by a HiFi, the fireplace in the middle replaced by an electric oven, and the women’s cabinet included a TV, but still very cosy and practical. The walls were decorated with more of the Mongolian carpets.  Afterwards we went out to get some ice creams at the local store and were chased by many little kids fascinated by the foreigners. There is a notable difference from China here with the number of kids roaming about. In China with the one child policy the parents are much more protective, and you see them holding onto their child when they go out.

Farewell UlaanBaatar

We had a great time visiting our guests and it was sad to say goodbye back at the guesthouse.  Another thing I should note for those orienteering/rogaining people amongst you is a short ad in the paper here: “HASH HOUSE HARRIERS The Hash House Harriers run-and-walk club meet at 6:15pm every Tuesday . Meet at the front of Bayangol Hotel.” Also Alex from Kazakhstan has given us a new updated APOC 2004 brouchure if anyone is interested. Nikoli and Karina were not at this event since they probably are going to the French Region 1 championships in September instead.  Well, we’ve now landed, picked up Adam’s huge bag of Hockey gear and are awaiting the flight to Singapore. We were nearly stung by a huge excess baggage fee, but I suggested we put a few kgs extra each in our hand luggage. That brought it down a bit (and the fact we laid the luggage back on the scales as much off the scales as we thought we could get away with). Normally they wouldn’t worry about 10kg extra over 3 people, but sometimes the Chinese like to be somewhat officicious.  I have to say a special thankyou to all those who went out of their way to make us feel welcome in their countries: Jerry, Grant, Perry & Anne, Stephan, Georg & Barbel, Markus, Stefan, Mr. Han and DavKa & NyamKa. It makes all the difference on a long trip like this !

Thanks also to those of you who have been replying to the reports. I know they vary in quality a bit depending on where I am, how much time I manage to sequester and how tired I am. Apologies for the typos; I know they make it harder to read as they are distracting. I’m amazed sometimes how many letters end up swapped and missing when I have time to read quickly over the report before sending. This keyboard gets intermittant sometimes too (seems to be behaving at the moment however).  I’m a bit sad the trip is coming to an end, and leaving all the old and new friends. So who’s going to Slovakia in 2002 ?? Cheers from Beijing (and later Singapore…free broadband using Wavelan card!), Bruce.

Bruce’s Report #19

Well I’m back in UB (at the same internet cafe again..since I know they allow me to connect my laptop). I’m sending pictures (slowly) at the moment, so I hope you get a chance to see them soon (still lagging behind my reports though).

[Ed: For some details of the tour day see the final report #20]

Well yesterday was a big day ! There was a team leaders meeting the night before to make certain everyone was clear about no turning on receivers after getting off the bus, and other various questions. The maps are True North, and we were able to establish magnetic North is 8 Degrees West here in Mongolia. Doesn’t make huge difference, but since 80m bearings can be more accurate well worth sorting out. Most other teams had just assumed the maps were Magnetic North !

Hills around 80m Event

We were kinda expecting that the 80m competition might be near the Hotel Baht, but instead we had another longish drive to Bumbat National park.  The terrain of this one turned out to be quite different. The trees were pine still, but the understorey often sprung out in boulder fields (which weren’t on the map). Open areas were often jumbled rocks, so very slow moving (call it a clamber !). It was a bit of luck whether one of these fields ended up in the way since there was no obvious way to navigate around them as they weren’t on the map.  I was lucky for TX#1 which was very close to the start, but had a really slow time to #2 with many of these fields appearing in my path. Eventually got there !  The next one was tricky since by direction the next one I should go for was #4, but #3 was much stronger. I elected to go for #3 prior to #4. It turned out to be the wrong choice, but I know many others did the same.

Waiting at the 80m Start	Alex does his massages on Mr Kim (A Korean)	Huge GrassHopper
Photo Pose in Start Chute	Alex Starting on the run	Showing off equipment
DavKa’s Ankle	Mongolian ger at Finish

It seems there was something wrong with #4 or maybe it wasn’t radiating properly. Still, it wasn’t too much of a backtrack and I did my last #5 well. Total time 70:07. I mention the seconds here because they turned out to be important. On the display they had set up at the finish this time I dropped gradually from 2nd to 5th, and it looked good that I might stay there. Alas when we got the results later the evening I had dropped to 6th (and from 3rd to 4th in region 3) due to a Japanese competitor sneaking in ahead of me on 70:06. Yep that’s ONE second faster !! {Ed: Grrrr] Adam managed 84 minutes (he ended up a bit lost, and also the homing beacon was a bit intermittant). Adam came 10th outright, and Bryan got 4 TX’s and came about 20th or so. The winning time was 56 minutes by Mongolia. The small Kazakhstan junior who went to China (Vladamir, 10 or 11 or so I guess) came 1st in the Junior category with 54 minutes.Quite remarkable ! My Russian roommate came 2nd with 59 minutes, despite the fact he made the same order stuff-up as I did (for the same reasons).

The Presentations at the Banquet

The Banquet and award ceremony went very well (held at the Baht Hotel). Much vodka sculling went on, and also we were awarded Bronze for the WIA Team for both 2m and 80m competitions. We were pretty pleased with that of course ! (The team results are only in Region 3, and take the best two out of three team members results added together. Smallest number is best. I setup a bit of a slideshow of the Mongolian pictures Adam and I took, as well as some of China (Nanjing last year), and some of the rest of the trip thrown in. Left it running at the Banquet and it always seemed to have crowds around it. Also later last night (more vodka) copied a whole stack of images over to their computer to avoid having to email them later (got samba going).

Bronze for Australia

Today we hope to catch up with DavKa and NyamKa, a pair of Mongolians who have invited us to visit them today. We are back at the Nassan Guest house. We were also expecting the Kazakhstan team (all 15) to turn up there as well, but of them we have seen no sign (maybe catching a taxi to Kazakhstan :)).

There is stack of other things to mention, but I’ll put them in the last report I think.

Cheers from UlaanBaatar,
Bruce

Bruce’s Report #18

This is a quick one !

It’s the morning just prior to the bus departure for the tour day. The internet here has been declared a disaster. Since we have already seen the Lama Temple, and we’re not hugely interested in the Big Department Store for shopping (the market is much more fun), we’ll try to get to an Internet Cafe today instead, with laptop.

OK, firstly some results from the 2m competition: I came 5th in senior, Adam 7th, Bryan with 3TX 19th. The best time was 65 minutes by my Russian roommate ! The best Region 3 time was 2nd overall at 69 minutes by China. Ahead of me are also a Mongolian (3rd) and another Chinese (4th). In the Region 3 team results we think we’ll come 3rd. Mongolia just beats us because there is a Mongolian 6th place (6+3 < 5+7).

On the jury matter of competitors DFing before the event as you can imagine there was much discussion in many languages. All crowded around the laptop screen to ok at the images. Luckily we’d kept the file dates too which were stamped with the camera (in US time as it happens). We presented the evidence and left it up to the jury to decide. Later it transpired that the jury had only 2 members, so they instead decided that the team leaders were to become the jury. Late into the night it was finally decided to invalidate the team results of the countrys who transgressed, but leave the individual placings as it would get messy proving it. Mr Han and Madame Cheng of China were with us all the way since they had seen this before but been unable to do much about it without evidence.

Russian Power Station

Now a titbit from Mr Parke, the IARU Region 3 chairman. The USSR built the coal burning pow station very close to the middle of UlaanBaatar in 1969 under a friendship scheme. When USSR fell apart, Russia asked the Mongolians for payment. They replied “We have no money”. After a time the Russian’s decided to take over the power station themselves, and retail the power direct to the Mongolian consumers. A side effect of this is that the Russians have little interest in keeping the power station clean burning….

Hopefully some pictures should appear shortly when Glenn gets a chance. [Ed: He didn’t] I’m now in an internet cafe in UB with my laptop connected to the lan there in order to send pictures ! [Ed: Hmmm…]

Cheers,
Bruce

Bruce’s Report #17

Well I still haven’t sent out report 16 yet, but well here goes anyway. Just incase you missed it down the bottom of 16, Australia are to run the 2003 ARDF Region 3 championships, as decided by the ARDF committee last night. This is subject to approval by the next Region 3 ARDF committee meeting.

Well after an early breakfast (6:30am), which was actually quite good, but Bryan and Adam missed preferring to sleep in, we went out to wait for the bus. Well as we have come to expect to a degree, the bus ws 35 minutes late, and then we had to wait anyway for the 2nd and 3rd bus to arrive, which took another 15 or so minutes.

On the bus to 2m event	The 2m Start Area	Just off the Bus: Where to ?

We went for quite a drive back through Ulaan Baatar and out the other side. One odd thing I noticed is that the ramshackle old bus didn’t appear to have a clutch. The gears were changed by crash and bang method, but the driver seemed pretty good at it and there was minimal teeth cleaning.

The hills we approached were partially wooded with pine, and the rest grassland. The running even in the forest was reasonably quick. The slowest terrain was in fact some of the wide gullies which tended to be filled with largely unmarked swamp with little creeks running all through it.

As we got out of the bus and headed to the start, we were very annoyed to see some competitors (Korea, Japan and Russia) using their DF gear to get bearings before the equipment was impounded. This is of course cheating, and was specifically banned at the team leaders meeting last night. This was made very clear, so we are going to complain to the jury tonight. Of course it is lent much more weight since Adam was able to take digital photos of most of the offenders in action. They are already on this laptop and ready for display to the jury members !

Bryan was first in start group 5 (25 minutes after the first group with 5 minute intervals). Unfortunately the start time had lapsed somewhat from the planned 10:00am to 11:20am, both due to the late bus departure and a lack of handhelds for control/start communication. We were all asked if we had any on us, but of course we had all left them at the Hotel as it is not allowed for us to have them at the Start ! (for obvious reasons).

Adam was later in start group 18, and I was last for us in start group 31 (out of a total 39 start groups. Overall there were 98 official competitors with another 5 unofficial (not all start groups had 5 people).

Well I ended up doing them in the optimum order, I managed to stay roughly in touch with the map most of the time, and thigs went pretty well. My main stuffup was #5 which I had no good bearing on from the start (no-one else did either), but based on guesswork I headed up a track to the North-East near the top of the map (it was my 3rd transmitter). Even after all this time I still had no decent bearing on #5. They pointed all over the place. As luck would have it I was nearly right, but I had got on the wrong side of one of those blasted swamps, so that wasted at least 5 minutes, probably more. The only other difficult one was #2 (my 4th transmitter), which I always had good bearings on, but was so far up the map to the North-West on a gradual incline that I just ran out of energy (due to the very high altitude mostly). My time was 83 minutes for all 5.

Adam and Vladamir in Start Chute	Waiting at the Finish	A Mongolian (Elvis) Finishing

Adam didn’t fare quite so well, missing a transmitter on the way around which he had to go back for, so his time was 98 minutes. Bryan had a fall, bruised himself a bit and totally demolished his sniffer beam. Still managed to find another trasnmitter (that terrible #5) mostly by guesswork and signal strength, but after that he called it a day to make sure he got back before the 2 hour limit.

Overall I’m pretty happy with my result, considering the altitude, ankle and dregs of cold #2 (mostly gone now). We’ll have to see what the best times are, but I know my Russian roommate did all 5 in 68 minutes. It’s to be seen if I an do similar on 80m with less familiar equipment.

About to go the the jury meeting….. (ooohhh what a nasty spot to stop !)

Cheers,
Bruce