Great weather and an interesting area. Ten people competed in the “Radio Combo” event. Well done to Bruce and Kris who got all the orienteering controls and all the FoxOrs. Unfortunately Kris started a couple of minutes late, otherwise the finish might have been neck and neck. As it was, Bruce finished first by a comfortable margin.
Further down the field, there were some very close scores. Judging from the feedback, I think that everyone had a good time.
It wasn’t officially on our event calender till recently, but without the healthy number of 10 RadiO competitors, the Night-O champs would have looked a bit lean, with only 25 Bush-O-only competitors (including two visiting Czech competitors who turned up very late).
The weather presented mild temperatures, but with periodic rain showers, and a particularly heavy shower just before the 12 midnight deadline. This caught a couple of competitors out, and Dennis, who could no longer read his map, made a call back to base for directions home !
The RadiO event consisted of 4 2m ARDF transmitters on 145.3MHz, and 6 2m FoxOrs on 145.7Mhz. The FoxOr circles were not marked on the map, except the competitors were alerted that at 6 of the normal Bush-O controls, a FoxOr could be heard. I just didn’t say which 6 !
There were 33 Bush-O controls, but I wasn’t cruel, and all but one of the FoxOrs were near Bush-O controls near the start, many inside the ARDF 750m exclusion circle.
The Bush-O controls scored between 20 and 80 points each in the 3 hour score event, the FoxOrs 100 points each, and each ARDF Tx 150 points.
The time was 3 hours, and started on-time at 9pm.
Originally I had intended there to be 5 of each ARDF and FoxOrs, but unfortunately the battery in TX#4 was terminally dead. I deduced this was due to a key-switch which had become loose, and therefore the TX possibly wasn’t turned off after an event sometime. All fixed now, but a lot of stuffing about on the night to determine it was not gonna be a goer. I also had issues with the internally soldered connections in the TX#2 turnstile antenna, but was able to make a temporary repair for the night. Also fixed now. Due to the lack of one of the ARDF’s I added in another FoxOr.
Thanks to all those who went out again after midnight to pick up a couple of RadiO controls each !
Thanks also to Henk & Di for the lunch on Sunday of pancakes with strawberries and maple syrup. Yum !
The RadiO results are under Junior Male for some weirdo Eventor reason (might even be changed to RadiO by the time you view them).
Congrats to Kristian, the winner of the chocolate bar, even beating Simon’s Bush-O score (but then, the RadiO scoring was a bit biassed!). Also specials mentions to Grant and Mark taking out the minor placings with commendable scores. It was interesting to note the different score gathering strategies, with different balances of the 3 options (ARDF, FoxOr and the higher-scoring Bush-O’s).
People seemed to enjoy the event format, despite the plethora of things to do and keep in mind. Discussions afterwards indicated it was really good practice for keeping map contact, or relocating again if you lost it, as you had to know where you were to find the Bush-O controls. This is a good idea for ARDF, allowing your bearings to have an accurate start point. In normal ARDF you can normally muddle through if you don’t keep map contact, but this event didn’t allow you to do that (too much….).
Oh, and the two Czech competitors who went out to try some Night-O (with borrowed head-light and southern hemisphere compasses) ? They knew all about Radio orienteering of course. “There are a whole group of them in the next town over from where we live; they often participate in normal orienteering events with us too”.
Note for next night event … get some more reflective tape to replace the missing strips.
This is Bruce’s 4th blog, but the staggering 14th overall. Hope you’ve all managed to stay with us so far, despite the amount of stuff landing in your inbox/facebook ! Actually, it’d be nice to know who is still with us, so make an effort to “Like” the facebook post or leave a blog comment or email. Sometimes it feels a bit like we’re sending all this off into the void 🙂
I’ll let the pictures mostly tell the story. This takes us out of the Altyn-Emel national park and eventually back to Almaty via the south east corner of Kazakhstan.
Here is also some random bits of >>video<< of various treks, including the singing dune, and Sergey’s shortcut through the mountains.
Here’s the rocket >>video<< again as many seemed to have missed it.
This is likely my last blog from this trip. We have one more day in Almaty faffing around, then Greg heads back to Melbourne, and 3 of us head to Perth for the Australian Orienteering Championships (& Sprints, & MTBO). It’s been fun !
A dual-humped camel herd (or whatever a camels collective is) just outside the national park.
A steppe mouse. Very hard to catch a photo as they flit from bush to bush to burrow (hence this unflattering angle). They make squeaky bird-like calls to warn others of danger.
Sergey, our driver, actually runs his own 4WD and motorbike trekking business. This didn’t stop him copping a speeding fine in a roadworks area, but he was able to ‘negotiate’ the fine down to 1000 tenge from the official 1800.
A particular rare variety of Ash (Aspen) tree found only in this part of Kazakhstan, and at similar latitudes in Canada.
We pulled over at a roadside vendors to buy some local grapes. Like in Kyrgyzstan, there seem to be many small vendors selling exactly the same things in a row, which appears a bit inefficient.
Desert Lizzard
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In most of the smaller villages and towns the animals tend to roam freely without supervision. They seem to know where they have to be and who they belong to so it pretty much seems to work out.
The Charyn Canyon. There are a few pictures of this, despite me only picking a few, as it was so dramatic. Sorry about that.
Charyn Canyon
Charyn Canyon
Charyn Canyon
Walking inside Charyn Canyon. We had lunch there too.
Charyn Canyon
Quite a few rock pieces looked very precarious.
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The old broken bitumen road into Saty was a bit slow going.
Our Guesthouse in the village of Saty, 1500m
The wood heated bathhouse was the go for washing at the Saty guesthouse.
Junction box in steam laden bath house in Saty.
Interesting house wiring in Saty bathhouse. 220VAC !
This village cow wasn’t that interested in moving out of the way
View from our Saty guesthouse
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What creature with bright eyes was this that approaches ?
Autumn colours, leaving Saty
Leaving Saty. A typical sight.
At hotels & guest houses in Kazakhstan something strange happens. They come and carefully ‘unmake’ your bed every day. Anything above the bottom sheet needs to be carefully folded so it does not fall over the side at all. This means you have to then make your bed each night so that you can sleep in it !
In the small, very rural village of Saty, where having electricity at all seems to be a miracle, one doesn’t expect to come across a ceiling light fitting with flashing LED sequences and a USB flash stick socket to play music !
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Heading down to Lake Kol’sai #1. There are 3 lakes in a chain, with #3 being very close to the Kyrgyzstan border in the Toen Sien mountains.
Kol-sai Lake
Kol-sai Lake rower was a park ranger collecting litter.
Where we had lunch above Kol’sai #1, viewed from the other side of the lake.
View of the Tien Sien mountains. The highest peak in Kazakhstan is near the corner of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and China and is 5699m. Nearby in Kyrgyzstan the peaks reach 7200m.
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Lake Kaindy (Birch tree) was a beautifully clear lake that was formed by an earthquake in 1911. The dead pine trees in the lake still stand as it’s so cold there is little bacterial decay.
Lake Kaindy refelctions
Lake Kaindy pines
Scrambling along the bank of Lake Kaindy.
View above Lake Kaindy
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Sergey, our driver, was keen to take a short-cut through a rugged mountain pass. A loud ding at one point was the spare wheel underneath taking a direct hit. Also one of the running boards took a bit of a hit scraping past another rock.
A road on the return journey to Almaty, near a very large aqueduct leading to Almaty (the Big Almaty Canal). It was nearly empty as the dam that feeds it is very low due to the hot & very dry summer. We therefore didn;t visit this dam as originally planned, but Issyk lake instead.
Issyk lake near Almaty. This natural lake was destroyed by mud slides in 1963. 100’s died as they were there to see the Russian President, who was running late ! This news was suppressed at the time. In the late 90’s dams were built to replace the original (now destroyed) earthquake plugs and the dam was resurrected (but smaller than the original).
Issyk Lake
Replica of the Golden man found in a burial mound near Almaty. His ‘tomb’ was preserved intact from prehistoric grave robbers, as he was a young royal prince (about 17) placed in a different spot away from the central King’s tomb (which was empty and destroyed)
I went for a walk around the lake yesterday afternoon as it was so nice that the sun had come out, as it seems to about 4pm.
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Last night was the 2nd lot of presentations, including the team results for both ARDF competitions, and the Sprint presentations. Now if you’ve ever been to a World Championship of some sort you’ll know what to expect here. We stood for the Russian, Ukranian and Czech Republic national anthems rather too many times. It’s a relief to occasionally get a look in from Germany, Hungary, Slovakia or Sweden. And yes, there was a pretty big team from Ukraine after all. Often they shared the podium with a Russian.
The only Region 3 team to make the podium was a Korean Bronze team result in one of the older men’s categories.
This morning it was up at the normal time for the trip to the Fox-or. This didn’t go quite as planned. We drove and drove through the national park. I even spotted some potential tape in the forest at one point, but no, driving and driving on. We ended up in open plains. This just doesn’t look right, I thought, as the line of buses eventually pulls to a halt. My guess turned out to be right as the first bus then completed a U-turn and the rest followed suit. Driving, driving, back the way we’d come, turn off, driving, finally another stop. Our bus driver gets out for a smoke !? People drift off the bus to have a pee break; after all we’ve been traveling for an hour or so. The Czech team leader wonders if perhaps the real organiser of these Kazakh championships is Sacha Baron Cohen…. We jerk into action again for yet another U-turn, and retrace our steps to yet another new junction. Bit like a 6m foxhunt really.
Eventually we stop at a group of tents, only to find that’s the finish location, and off we go again to the start. Luckily, all this scenic detouring only delayed the FoxOr start by 15 minutes.
Start compound FoxOr
Overall we had a pretty good competition day today. FoxOring is a more simplified version of Radio Orienteering. The circle, just like an orienteering control circle, denotes a spot where you can (hopefully) hear a nearby very weak transmitter, which you then run towards and punch the SI control (no flag).
Start compound FoxOr
FoxOr map for M50
Greg starting (across the road)
Greg wisely dropped off a couple of his more remote controls, and managed to stay in contact with the map. Greg declares he’ll need a bit (a lot?) of training if he is going to go to Japan Region 3 championships next year. Ewen found all of his allocated controls in time (very estatic Ewen), as did I. It didn’t start well for me, with a long run to the very remote L3 (see map), not yielding any discernable FoxOr signal. After some time faffing around I decided I must be in the wrong spot somehow and had to just get on with it. I then ran to all my other FoxOrs in turn. Some of them I heard, others I had to see what other competitors nearby were doing to get a hint. My 80m sniffer simply isn’t adequate for this event it seems, despite some improvements made since the last time. When I got to my final F4 control (which was faulty and only emitting a continuous carrier tone), I saw I had about 50mins before my time limit was up. I estimated the distance back to the other end of the map and L3 about 5km, and decided to give it another bash. After a long run down the main road (again), I carefully navigated into the control circle. Yep, I recognised some features from last time. Still no signal, and noone in sight, as before. Using Dennis Mews ever increasing circles technique I eventually spotted the transmitter bag on the ground. Then I heard it ….. Now the long haul back to the finish beacon, the tone of which was wandering all over the place. I estimate my long detour took 22 minutes all up, but at least I had the satisfaction of finding them all. The team (and that horn) welcomed me back.
Jack had a bit of a wander around the course today, finding a few transmitters here and there. Jack admits navigation is not his strength, but Jenelle was determined to do better than in Serbia, and did very creditably in her very competitive class. She says her first control choice was L5 (see map; I didn’t have to get that one hence the cross through it) involved an obscene quantity of contours to attain. Frustrated she didn’t get F4 due to it’s defective state, but happy otherwise.
The power went off in our hotel shortly after our return, a trip that took considerably less time than the morning’s journey. No power also meant no water for showers. Eeek ! Luckily some of us managed to get one in before the crunch.
Yay, Hungarian bronze
Jiri (Czech) wins M60
And a bronze for wifey too (oh yeah, Russia 1st)
Banquet
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The presentations for the FoxOr (in the building conveniently next door) were running late again, so competitors started to avail themselves of the nearby banquet, and of course the free grog. This continued through the presentations. Women’s classses subjected us to way too many Russian national anthems, but a Norwegian win in W60 broke the monotony. The men’s were a little bit more diverse, but you find yourself cheering a bit more when someone new gains a place.
Many were asking us about 2018. Will Australia be running the World ARDF champs then ? The situation is this. It has been decided that a country in Region 3 can run the 2018 championship (the next in 2016 is in Bulgaria). Japan is running Region 3 championships next year, but may have also put in a bid for the world champs. Korea has put in a tentative bid, but they ran a world champs fairly recently. China has also expressed interest, but they need to gain permission from their organisation & government as yet. China ran a world champs in 2000, the first ever held in Region 3. Both China and Korea have shown they are able to run a good championships. So that leaves Australia, who have now also expressed interest, albeit only even hearing about all this when we had already left the country. Australia has run 3 Region 3 championships, but never a world champs !
Much more to be heard & discussed on this topic.
The Aussie team
All in all a solid performance from the small Australian team at these championships. No disasters, no overtimes and a very credible performance from our two championships newbies, Greg & Jenelle (though Jenelle did have a prior try at the Serbian FoxOr). To do better we’d need much more training in classic ARDF, significantly more in ARDF sprints, and simply more competitors to make up teams. For FoxOr events ? Probably just better 80m sniffers would go a long way.
This blog this time is mostly a video blog <- click here !
Some background:
The bus was a extremely basic, but capable, 90’s Russian vehicle. It picked us up from Karakol to take us up the Alyn Arashan gorge.
The ‘onsen’ was heated by a natural hot thermal spring, great after the hike.
The very stony and bumpy road up the gorge
View to the snow capped peak above the gorge
Relaxing in the thermal spring onsen atop the gorge
Strikng hills on the way to the gorge
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The Jet Oguz gorge, south of Issy-Kul, was an easier hike, popular for family picnics.
It rained a little last night, for the first time since we’ve been here. It has been a very hot and extraordinary dry summer in Kyrgyzstan, but despite that, the rivers still pour down with snowmelt. Suspect the water may become an increasingly important resource.
The guest house accommodation in Tamga, on the southern side of Issy-Kul ,was a delightful guesthouse with an extensive garden of fruit trees and roses.
Garden at guesthouse
Tamga Guesthouse
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Today we walked around the Skazka canyon, under threatening grey skies with lightening over the lake. Fantastic bands of colours in the sandy hills; would be great at sunset.
The group
Dry riverbed
Weird sandy rock
Greg & Ewen
Ewen
Playdough !
Multi-coloured sandy rocks
Ewen on peak
Jenelle with Issy-Kul behind
Ravine
Humans can see faces in anything
Slot in cliff
Multi-coloured strata again
Ripples
Sky hole
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A bit of a long drive back to Bishkek, and the end of our Kyrgyzstani adventure. Tomorrow Kazakhstan !
We’ve decided to take turns writing the blog this time. This time it’s Bruce’s turn !
I came from Melbourne, with a short afternoon trip in Istanbul before arriving in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; so I got quite tired of airports and airplanes. We arrived in Bishkek at around 5am local time (I got back 3 hours timezone I lost on the way to Istanbul!), and grabbed a few hours relieved sleep.
Our local guide Reville met us in a Delica (PeterMaloney) vehicle which we’ll bounce around in for the next few days. It’s right hand drive, being Japanese, but they also drive on the right. Apparently 40% of vehicles are right hand drive; it doesn’t seem to matter a lot. Most of the roads don’t have lines anyway, or if they do, they are very faint, or obscure to their purpose. For instance, on one 3 lane road, the middle lane seemed to operate as a sort of anarchy lane. A bit like Queens Parade, but without any overhead arrows.
The other roadside feature I noticed was that many of the power poles were like half-hearted Stobey poles (SA). The wooden post is lashed to a short concrete post that is in the ground.
Kyrgyzstan has a pretty mixed population with arab, asian, mogul and russian influences. Their original nationalities are still included on their Kyrgyzstani passports, which is a bit confusing. The city, Bishkek, has a population around 1 million, with only around 4 million population in the country. Most of the country is very, relatively poor, rural, a bit like northern Serbia. Around 90% identify with Muslim faith, but there also seems to be plenty of grog around too ! (vodka).
After a bit of mucking about later this morning getting US$ out of recalcitrant bank ATM, we had lunch, Lagman is a yummy local noodle dish, and headed 30km or so South to a national park to go for a bit of a walk. The 3.5km along to a waterfall sounded a nice walk to stretch out the plane legs. The thing is, the track started to head up and up, sometimes quite steep. Panting and heart beating hard I checked the altitude on my phone maps. 2300m ! No wonder it seemed tough. Oh well, good altitude training. Most of us did make it all the way to the waterfall at 2600m, but being the end of summer it wasn’t that speccy really. The surrounding ragged mountain tops made up for it. The river is sourced from snow melt which you can see in some of the photos, probably starting at about 3000m. These are pretty big mountains !
Bruce
Jenelle: It was particularly hard going keeping upright on the gravelly steep path in parts. Thanks you Margie and Raf – those arduous sessions at the pool and pilates have paid off.
5 teams commenced the night at Clayton Railway Station for a night of semi-chaos with many teams, including the fox, having equipment issues. BLN was the worst effected and they retired after hunt 1 (we needed Fitzel when one of the sausages hit the ground at supper). We understand their equipment is just clinging to life in ICU and we hope it recovers in time for the August hunt.
VK3FOX had 10m issues and actually headed North for hunt 3A and so didn’t find it in time. They have been given a start time for 3B of 2 minutes after 3A finished. That just allowed them to get into 3B before the 10 mins were up but didn’t change the overall placings.
No really low total score tonight – every team except MZ got at least one 10 and every team got at least one 0 (except BLN who still managed a 1 for the only hunt they were able to compete in).
FAST won overall (21), followed closely by MZ (25), then a gap to XJM (39) & FOX (41). BLN unfortunately get the worst score ever for them (71).
Scores have been posted on the ARDF site and it looks like FAST are running August and MZ running September.
Thanks to Ewen for helping out the fox team, to Kostas & Sophie for hosting supper and an honourable mention to Hamish who almost found us twice on hunt 3B (within 2m each side of us) without a sniffer before most other teams even got close.
(this was a much nicer table with a style sheet but the list server rejected the message for being too long so now it’s a boring table)
Fox for the evening was the VK3FOX team. The first hunt was Kristian quietly paddling on the Yarra in his kayak, this took teams a little to time to figure out but three teams did find him before time was up.
Second hunt was a two legged affair on 70CM and the lack of signal at the start was enough to spread the teams over a wide area. Eventually the hiding spot at an athletics track in Ringwood was found by all teams and they were off to the second leg. This was not far away on the bike/walking track beside Eastlink (there was some consternation when this was used as a vehicular track but as the fox was not without fault in this area in the past no drastic decisions were made. I hate to suggest it but perhaps we should draft some rules some time.) This second leg was calculated on leg times and the scores below vary slightly from those announced on the night as the fox was confused!
Hunt three was in Warrendyte park in a old mine, I am told this was up a steep hill.
As time was running a bit short we decided the next hunt would be a simple affair and so a spot in Eltham near the historic trestle rail bridge was chosen. The plan for a two legged hunt involving water obstacles was abandoned.
Final hunt was on a walking track in Greensborough overlooking Partington’s flat sports grounds, one team came the easy way down the walkway from a nearby street but others were seen clambering up a rather steep and overgrown cliff to reach the hiding spot.
Teams retired to the home of Greg VK3VT for a supper of sandwiches, sausage rolls, zucchini slice, chicken wings and cake with hot and cold drinks.
A fairly unofficial ARDF sprint event on 2m was held this morning, after the night orienteering events at the You Yangs. It was set around the delightful camping area.
I had problems with TX#3 behaving oddly and crapping over other cycles, so I left it out of this event. I think I may have mis-programmed it (some time ago) somehow !
5 hardy souls had a go, with Dennis H coming in from nearby (apologies about the locked gate!) just for the event. Congrats to Suzanne, who I imagine will be surprised she won overall.
Here are the results:
Name
Time
Txs found
Ranking
Suzanne OC
25 mins
5
1
Dennis H
30 mins
5
2
Rex N
37 mins
5
3
Peter M
42 mins
5
4
Dennis M
14 mins
2
5
A few things to improve on:
We could try 20 sec on time (1:40 cycle time) to phase people into the shorter cycles
More work needs to be done on TX clock sync adjustment. I had problems with TXs drifting their timeslot and encroaching on others.
Better packaging. I think one reset itself by being bumped.
Hi, my name is Samuel and I am participating in the Boys’ Brigade orienteering program.
We have learned lots and enjoyed the practice it gave us using the maps, compasses and the Sniffers. Our activities have included hiding orienteering stickers around the church and then tracking them using maps and our own ingenuity.
On Friday 21st of June 2013 we had people from the ARDF club come to our Boys Brigade night. Dianne, Bruce, Henk, and Pierre set up transmitters and taught us how to use the sniffers. Then they let us out to find them. We had lots of fun searching for and finding the transmitters. At the end of our evening even our visitors had fun tracking a security guard from Mitcham railway station who had taken one of the transmitters.
So far this year my friends and I have been to two events, one was orienteering, the other was a Radio Sport event. We have thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. So I suggest you try it.
Despite the prediction of rain this afternoon, and a quite threatening radar image, somehow the rain held off till 5pm, so 20 teams (about 26 people in all) enjoyed the combination Street-O (thanks to Greg Andrews of BK orienteering club for us piggybacking on their event) and 7 2m FoxOrs.
The map looked at first glance a small area, but the tricky placement of the FoxOr circles made it difficult to chose a route to cover all options. I’d also made the time limit only 1 hour rather than the more established 75 minutes, because I wanted some time and energy left over for first time trial of our 2m ARDF Sprint event, so as it turned out no-one cleared the course. In fact no-one got all 7 FoxOrs ! Well done to Ewen who managed to get 6 of the 7, plus quite a few orienteering controls too.
Paul’s Boy’s Brigade joined us for this event too. Have a read earlier in this blog about their first trial event a month or so ago. The boys were accompanied by adult leaders or parents, some going in a team. Considering this was their first try at a real event, I’m surprised how well they did. The team of 3 came equal first, so perhaps having more people searching for FoxOrs at once helps a little. Well done to Wesley, Samuel and Cape. Achieving the same final score by deliberately coming in a little late to get that last FoxOr (a still worthwhile 8-6=2pts extra) was the other Samuel. Apologies if I have the Sam’s the wrong way around in the results below; both score cards only had “Samuel” written on them ! Hope to see you all at the August events.
Coming in a very credible mid field were Max and Scott Pendlebury, very first timers at both RadiO, and even at orienteering. Hope you enjoyed yourselves !
Next event is an 80m full ARDF at Westerfolds Park along with the MelBushO there on 21st July. The next FoxOr events are 10th and 17th August with the Saturday CakeO’s.
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See below for ARDF Sprint event report. Here is today’s CombO map, followed by results for the CombO event.
Valley Reserve CombO Event 13 July 2013
Name
Junior
2 pt controls
3 pt controls
4 pt controls
5 pt controls
FoxOrs
Late penalty
Total
Order In
Place
Ewen Templeton
2
2
2
4
6
86
7
1
Ian Dodd
1
4
4
4
4
82
4
2
Pierre Brockner
2
2
2
3
5
73
1
3
Mark Besley
1
2
2
4
4
68
16
4
Lara Bell
1
3
2
3
5
-6
68
18
5
Mark Jarvis
2
2
3
3
3
61
9
6
Jenelle Templeton
1
2
2
3
4
-6
57
17
7
Hamish McDonald
3
1
2
1
3
46
5
8
Wesley Zagore
Yes
1
2
0
2
3
42
13
9
Samuel Stuckbery
Yes
1
2
0
2
3
42
14
10
Cape Goodridge
Yes
1
2
0
2
3
42
15
11
Samuel Ng
Yes
0
2
0
2
4
-6
42
19
12
Max Pendlebury
Yes
2
1
1
1
3
40
6
13
Ryan Vernay
Yes
1
2
0
3
2
39
12
14
Dennis Mews
2
0
0
2
3
38
8
15
Dianne Shalders
1
0
1
1
3
35
2
16
Henk DeJong
1
0
1
1
3
35
3
17
Christian Chan
Yes
0
1
1
3
5
-39
23
21
18
Paul Stuckbery
0
1
1
3
5
-39
23
22
19
Spencer Goodridge
Yes
1
2
0
1
0
-12
1
20
20
After the regular RadiO competitors had a short rest and a chance to weigh themselves down with the obligatory cake and yummy thingies provided by all at a Saturday afternoon “Cake-O”, we had a another treat for them ! Our first ARDF Sprint event. This is basically exactly the same as a normal ARDF event, except the whole transmitter cycle takes only 1 minute rather than 5. Instead of being On for 1 minute each, they whip around at only 12 seconds each, making it much more suitable for a small area, such as Valley Reserve. Unfortunately I couldn’t get our new transmitters working the way I wanted, with the Morse ID of each TX keying the TX on and off, rather than just turning on and off the FM modulation. Byon, the US manufacturer of the neat little TXs, despite being away on leave, managed to send me a new version of code that should allow the TX keying to much better suit our Whoopie sniffers . Unfortunately I couldn’t get the bootloader programming to work for me in the hour I had left to try, so we had to run today with the old version. Next time will be better ! Still, it allowed us to get a taste of what the event is like (Ewen and I had a go at this on 80m at the last World Championships in Croatia…and let’s just say we need more practice !) and to iron out the bugs.
Well done to Ian D for the magnificent effort of 4 of the 5 Sprint transmitters, whilst ignoring the ire of wife Debbie who needed him to be at a DROC committee meeting “now!”. I’m sure that spurred him on. Apologies to both Dennis and Mark for throwing them in the deep end on this one; I knew it was going to be harder to DF than I wanted, due to the keying issues, but I didn’t know just how hard ! Also we either need to boost the power a little bit, or keep the area just slightly smaller than I used, if we want them all to be audible over most of the course area.
Also thanks to all those who helped picking up all the FoxOrs and ARDF Txs afterwards. Special thanks to Pierre and Suzanne, who between them found more ARDFs than any of the competitors, picking up all 5 for me. Their trick was to use 2 sniffers, one on whoopee to get the direction, and the other on FM to hear which one it is. This trick can also be done with stereo headphones on the one sniffer, but we didn’t have those available at the time.
So on late Saturday afternoon it wasn’t looking too good. The weather forecast for Sunday was OK but dubious and it was pelting down rain at the time. One had pulled out due to ill health (something about a door, but I couldn’t get a handle on it) and the numbers were looking a bit miserly already.
Still, the day dawned clear and sunny (yes, I did actually have to see the dawn this morning) but cold with frost dampened grass and dripping fronds to increase my early morning enjoyment. I picked up the fixed-up antenna squid poles (thanks Gary) already running behind schedule, as per usual. Still, transmitter deployment went fairly smoothly, except at the end I had to retrace steps to TX#3 as it seemed to have somehow got itself out of sequence. Luckily it wasn’t far from the start and I detected the clash before I got back. I was surprised to come across grazing horses in the open paddock marked as ‘white’ (forest) on the map where I had planned to place TX#2, but with ARDF it’s easy to tweak things at the last moment and I found a suitably forested paddock (incidentally part coloured ‘orange’ (open ground) on the map) nearby. All TX’s can be heard from the start. Phew !
Ewen and Jack turned up early, so with only a moderate amount of faffing I was able to send them on their way, shortly followed by Henk. Now who else was going to show ? I certainly wasn’t expecting Peter yet, but figured he’d turn up sometime about midday (he actually beat that by 10 minutes). As it turns out I had 9 competitors, and 1 extra (Dennis M) who volunteered to pickup one of the transmitters afterwards.
The course, shown below, cunning arranged TX#3 and TX#2 to be in line from the start, and the same trick with TX#5 and TX#4, so the initial optimum order wasn’t obvious, and it was a bit more difficult for the full course competitors to get good cross bearings for the 2 distant transmitters. Short course competitors were told in advance the 2 distant transmitters (there was ‘even’ a way to memorise which ones), but were limited to 80 minutes, whereas the full course competitors had a 100 minute time limit. Late penalties applied rather then instant disqualification (so easier to use the simple OR program setup as a score event) with the penalties for the short course being much less severe.
There was also a fair bit of discussion about RadiO with quite a few orienteers doing the MelBushO, including an Amateur. Lets hope we see some giving it a try, at least, at a future event.
Results below !
Well done to Ian, a relative newcomer to ARDF, taking out the full ARDF course. Noone had enough time to fit in TX#4. Darian ran well to the physically challenging TX#5 (the map doesn’t do the ‘jungle’ terrain justice in this area, and the course setter had no idea how bad it was!) to take out the short course.
Results
ARDF Full (5 TX – 100 mins)
Name
Class
Club
Time
Score
Gross Score
Penalty
Bonus
1
Ian Dodd
DR
93:03
50
50
0
0
1
Gary Panter
AR
95:23
50
50
0
0
3
Ewen Templeton
AR
109:20
0
50
100
0
4
Jack Bramham
AR
109:35
0
20
100
0
Note: Each TX, including Homing beacon, assigned 10 points. Penalty 10 pts/min
ARDF Short (3 TX - 80 mins)
Name
Class
Club
Time
Score
Gross Score
Penalty
Bonus
1
Darian Panter
AR
67:23
40
40
0
0
1
Dennis Haustorfer
AR
76:01
40
40
0
0
3
Henk DeJong
AR
75:05
30
30
0
0
3
Tim Hatley
BK
17:56
30
30
0
0
5
Peter Maloney
AR
86:39
9
30
21
0
Note: Each TX, including Homing beacon, assigned 10 points. Penalty 3 pts/min
The night dawned a bit damp, and the Fox team had some issues with missing hunt documentation at the last moment, but it didn’t damped the spirits of the 4 teams who rocked up to Clayton Railway Station for the May foxhunt.
The Fox VK3CI team would like to apologise for the slightly late start as we got ourselves organised.
All legs were single leg.
Hunt 1 [145.7] was meant to be where Bruce had once ended up trying to sniff in on a recent foxhunt (near Westall Road), which had turned out not to near there at all, but ‘what a good spot ! We’ll have to use that in our foxhunt’. Turns out that it was now a construction site, so the fox was placed nearby.
1st in was BLN, followed by FAST then FOX.
Hunt 2 [145.3]was near Kostas’ work unit near Keys Rd. The high up wall placement of the antenna caused some confusion in the alleyway with Adam from BLN who was first in the alleyway nearly forgo 1st place. Luckily he slipped in just ahead of FAST and OW who had both already arrived at the scene. A short while later the FOX team nearly drove up the alley.
Hunt 3 [439] was in a very muddy location behind the baffles of the new part of the Westall extension as it crosses Cheltenham Rd. FAST slopped into first place ahead of BLN then FOX. This placing will start to sound familiar.
Hunt 4 [145.3]was back in Braeside Park South. We were hoping some teams woukd drop runners in the North major entrance of the park, especially approaching from the east, but they weren’t to be fooled, with all teams choosing the more appropriate West entrance. FAST a big margin this time ahead of BLN with FOX right on their heels. OW just scraped in.
Hunt 5 [439] was back to Westall station, this time in the brand new overpass, with 1000’s of security cameras and guards. None took much interest in the suspicious package left behind from fleeing hoodie attired Fox team members and again FAST first with BLN and FOX in right behind and OW a little later. Apologies for announcing the wrong 70cm frequency (that was what we’d meant to have on the previous leg but didn’t due to loss of a fox antenna).
Hunt 6 [145.3] took teams to a wet grassy area between the Monash freeway and some new units. FAST were again well first in the area, but overshot the fox, letting Marta from BLN sneak in and spot the fox sitting in the tree. OW not too long after. This location had to be used as the surveying of this area earlier in the week (when it was also raining, incidentally) caused the demise of some carbon fibre bike forks and a very long trip home.
The final Hunt 7 [145.7] was back south of the Monash freeway near the ex Monash Seecondary college grounds. FAST again got the honours followed by BLN, then OW, with FOX getting in on the somewhat elongated 9th minute.
Supper was magnificently catered by Olga, and the hot soup and mulled wine just perfect for the conditions.
Thanks to all teams who came along.
