Scores for last Friday nights fox hunt are as follows.
Team
Hunt 1
Hunt 2
Hunt 3
Hunt 4
Hunt 5
Hunt 6
Hunt 7
Total
Place
3BLN
1
2
2
1
2
2
1
11
1
3YQN
3
2
1
2
5
1
6
20
2
3FAST
6
1
3
3
4
4
2
23
3
3HRL
4
2
4
6
1
3
5
25
4
3TXO
2
6
5
4
3
6
3
29
5
3FOX
5
5
6
5
6
5
4
36
6
Some history about why I have foxes on so many odd frequencies. As far as I can remember the WIA fox, which we still use, was the first “dedicated” fox. This was originally on 144.480MHz. The frequency was most likely determined by the builder having a crystal on hand which could be multiplied to somewhere in the first 0.5 MHz of the 2M band. Most people used AM receivers then so it was AM modulated. Also, as mobile phones, hhelds and even mobile TRX’s were unheard of or scarce it was usual to call in the hounds using the fox. The availability of the IC202 in the 70’s caused the fox frequency of the WIA to be changed to 144.250Mhz. The 202 is a portable 2M SSB transceiver which tunes from 144.0MHz to 144.4MHz in standard form. It made a good fox hunt receiver. You could use it in the car and as a sniffer. If you replaced the PTT switch with a variable resistor you could also control the gain over a wide range. At sometime I decided I needed a smaller fox. To make this I rebuilt the TX driver stage from a Pye FM 734 two way radio, simply because I had the bits. In the process I removed the original FM modulator and added an AM modulator, ignoring most of the design rules for AM modulators. Hence it doesn’t work all that well. Never the less it’s caused hounds much frustration and given the fox much enjoyment over the years. It’s frequency was initially 144.480MHz and was changed to 144.250Mhz when the WIA fox changed. This is the small brown TX with the external AA battery pack. Power O/P is about 600mw. Many years ago, Jack VK3WWW donated a Dick Smith 1watt FM TX kit to the foxhunt group, which I built. This ended up in a larger brown box as I included a 1200ma gel cell and space for 1 or 2 other bits of circuitry which might happen one day. The frequency is 144.247MHz. Why. Simply because the crystal won’t work at 144.250 MHz even tho it was spec’d to do so. The highest it will go reliably is 144.247MHz. If someone has a good supplier of crystals let me know and I’ll move it to 145.3MHz. I’ve been going to do this for some time but usually remember the day before the fox hunt…….. This TX is available to anyone who would like to borrow it for foxhunting purposes. Sometimes a higher power fox is required so the larger black/brown fox came into being. The driver stage of this is home grown and the PA is from an FM 734. Power O/P is 6-7 watts. The box was originally made so a battery charger could be included but recently I abandoned that idea and cut the box down to a more suitable size. I also added a clip on battery box. Frequency is 145.3MHz A yr or so ago I needed a low pwr fox so the small black TX with the external 9 volt battery happened. The TX is basically the predriver stage from a Phillips FM747 UHF transceiver. Some unnecessary circuitry was removed with a hacksaw, a jumper or 2 added and I had a 40mw TX. It uses the crystal from the small brown Tx mentioned above hence O/P frequency is 144.250MHz. I later reinstalled the original crystal in the small brown TX and tuned it lower in frequency, i.e. 144.470MHz, as the TX produced a little more power there. regards Ewen
Results for the December 2009 Fox Hunt
TOTAL
YQN 0 5 1 1 3 10
MZ etc 3 2 3 0 2 10
OW/BLI 2 1 2 3 4 12
FAST 4 4 0 5 0 13
BLN 1 0 10 4 1 16
VT/FOX 10 10 10 2 10 42
Locations were as follows:
Start: Ruffey Lake Park, Victoria St. Doncaster
Hunt 1:
Eltham: Griffith Park, Yarra River bend, South end Griffith Park Road
Melway: 22 K11
http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-37.735825,145.148975&z=17&t=h
Hunt 2:
Heidelberg: roof-top CP, off Cape St, near cnr Burgundy St
Melway: 32 A4
http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-37.755974,145.069764&z=17&t=h
Hunt 3:
Templestowe: Kenman Close / Chivers Rd, un-marked park/estate
Melway: 33 J5
http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-37.75929,145.144431&z=18&t=h
Hunt 4:
Viewbank: Bike Path behind Riding for the Disabled
(entry to bike path at roundabout/intersection Banyule/Hendersons)
Melway: 20 H12
http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-37.742638,145.096564&z=16&t=h
Hunt 5:
Templestowe: Templestowe Reserve, Porter St/Hawtin St.
Flagpole at Scout Hall
Melway: 33 G4
http://www.nearmap.com/?ll=-37.753656,145.136111&z=19&t=h
Supper: Ruffey Lake Park, Victoria St. Doncaster
Memorable Moments for the Fox Team included:
Hunt 1:
* All hounds departing from the start - in the wrong direction.
* The on-air speculation about runners being on the wrong side of
the Yarra (not to mention "crossing over").
Hunt 2:
* roof-top vantage point as teams drove along Burgundy St
* Hound investigating "false" fire hydrant on Burgundy St... a
spurious diversion which had nothing whatever to do with the fox team!
Hunt 3:
* Finding a reserve/estate NOT in the Melways
* It seems to be in this tree... somewhere.
Hunt 4:
* a hound's attempt to negotiate the electric fence - when there was
a perfectly good bike path from which to approach the Tx!
(a later suggestion was that we should have awarded bonus points to
runners who actually did run/ walk in along the bike path)
Hunt 5:
* The "swarm" of hounds below the flagpole.
(is it a bird... is it a plane... no it's "Super Tx" flying high!)
A big thanks to all participants - we thoroughly enjoyed bringing
you the night.
Johanna [VK3 FJMB]
Neale [VK3 XJH]
Pierre &
Dianne [VK3 FVXN]
Mike Hubbert set a fast FoxOr course today to follow the Sprint Championships. Some did the Sprints, then the FoxOr, some did just the FoxOr, and the hardy did Sprints, Campus Challenge and FoxOr.
The weather was cool but sunny; perfect running conditions. The threatened showers did not appear.
It was an ideal opportunity for such an introductory style event, as the Sprints were very quick and many people were looking to do something more.
A number tried FoxOr-ing just to give-it-a-go without having time to do the whole course, so I’ve added these in the Come-And-Try-It (CATI) section.
The club used it’s new set of VHF FoxOrs for the first time this event, and they proved to function very well, with reasonably consistant signal strengths.
Peter managed to head out on a course with a map with no circles on it, so he did well to find 8 !
Before the event I had 14 intendeds. Wow, if they all actually showed up it might even be a record attendance for one of our radiO events, perhaps challenged only by Ian’s super organised Woodlands event a while back, and of course eclipsed by the 2003 Region 3 championships (but not in number of local competitors).
The day dawned freezing as I crawled out of my tent equiped with multiple layers, beanie and gloves. However it promised to be a fine day and at times it turned out quite sunny. I’d taken the opportunity to string up the 80m antennas the afternoon before (with help from Jun & Greg). We really must get those poles sorted out now we have them though ! I’ve had enough of attempting to fling small rocks through high branches only to have the rock fall off the wire, or, more typically with my aim, miss altogether. I had only to put out the 7 FoxOrs, attach the 5 80m ARDF boxes (what happened to those “day before” timers we used to have?) and quickly place the 2m 5-in-5 course near the Start. This all took about 2 hours (driving, riding, running, clambering(!), gradually divesting all those layers of clothing), but I did have the fall back option of placing the 5-in-5 after competitors were already out on their 1st leg.
For some reason bush-O competitors were still not in evidence at 10:25, a mere 5 minutes before their mass start, but a fair RadiO crowd was gathering. Turns out, though Peter predicatably wasn’t able to make it in time, we gained an extra 3 with Grant Jeffrey , Pierre Brockner and Douggie joining in the RadiO. 16 ! Grant had to choose between the RadiO and the Bush-O he’d come up to do, so despite the fairly lengthy Long course I hope he had a good time. People were still getting organised so I ducked off to fix an errant TX#4 in the 5-in-5 leg that didn’t seem to have come on.
The briefing outlined the 4 loops competitors had to do. There was some confusion about frequencies and which-leg-to-do-next for those who weren’t listening closely. The Long and Short had a different order in order to maximise the availablity of 80m sniffers. As it turned out this wasn’t a problem at all and I had a spare unit, plus my own left unused.
FoxOr
The FoxOr on 2m consisted of Long: 6 out of 7 or Short: 4 out of 7 FoxOr circles. Some thought had gone into the placement so that the best ones to do were not immediately obvious due to terrain, rather than just distance.
Unfortunately we had some problems with signal strength on some of the legs. All were set on low power, but it seems this differs somewhat between units. There also appears to be a noticeable difference in sniffer sensitivity, with Mk4 LCD > Mk4 LED > Ultra making it harder for some. David has now taken all the FoxOrs and will perform some comparative tests to figure out what is going on.
This made what was probably a bit too long a loop even longer. I had made this loop for Long roughly the same length as one of the Bush-O A course loops, worried that the 5-in-5 would make the total too short. Well in line distance it did seem on the short side, but the map is quite deceptive ! I should not have worried about course length being too short as it turned out. Next Hageby the FoxOr loop will be shorter. Promise !
ARDF
Most enjoyed the 80m ARDF. Short course had to get any 3 of the 5, and Long all 5. They were spaced closer than International rules to make the loop short. With the terrain involved many would consider this quite long enough, thankyou. Again the quickest loop was possibly not the shortest. A couple of Txs were right near the Finish/Assembly to keep in tune with the Hageby concept (so near yet so far…). Well done to Grant tackling a full 5 ARDF for the first time.
5 in 5
We’ve only had a couple of these in the past, but I thought it’d make an ideal short Hageby loop. I placed the course fairly simply by walking in a line for about 50s and plonking done a 2m ARDF transmitter, then on to the next (I couldn’t carry them all so a couple of trips back to the Start to pick up more). I was careful to not make a circle, but instead have the course cross over itself.
Each TX was equipped also with a SportIdent control for quick punching, and the homing beacon at the Start has the Finish punch. The Start punch on the changeover table was later used to calculate the amount of time to deduct from each competitors total as the 5in5 has to be started on TX1 time, not when a competitor arrives from a prior loop. Good idea Adam.
I think next time we won’t bother with the homing beacon, instead competitors can just navigate back. It interferes a bit with comptitors heading off from the Start.
Adam proved the 5-in-5 was do-able, completing the loop in just over 6 minutes. He said he had to run fairly hard though, so perhaps a 50s fast walk is a bit far considering the overhead of punching and Dfing. No-one else managed it in 5. Ewen claims sniffer beam issues mid course, and others had a truly dreadful time, in some cases taking longer than their entire 80m ARDF leg ! Not sure why there were so many reflections because each TX would have been line-of-sight to the next, except perhaps the final leg TX#5.
I also later discovered the reason for the recalcitrant Finish punch. For some reason I had managed to reprogram it as a Start control (which is weird because it was definitely a “wired” finish at the recent MTBO event). Hence the Cleared punches I had on the table all beeped when tested… a Start was what they were expecting, but anyone who’d done the course didn’t beep (already ‘Start’ed). All makes sense now, so we don’t have to blame new fangled SI sticks or the Homing Beacon causing EMC.
Bush-O
Most headed off with (tired) relief on the final Bush-O leg to the finish. Not everyone had a great time on this one though. Greg was sighted waving from the wrong side of a chasm on a couple of occasions and admits he really should have read the map a bit better. We all know that feeling ! I’ve also heard rumours that Loiuse was so annoyed she managed to miss the Finish altogether and was overheard blowtorching the surrounding bushland with deep felt profanity when the Registration tent simply refused to metamorphise into a Finish tent.
In map image: 151->155 is the 80m ARDF leg 1->7 is the 2m FoxOr leg 5-in-5 is not shown Bush-O legs for Short and Long Orange and Green
Results
I hope everyone had a good time, despite the Long course being a bit long (but that line distance is indeed correct). The DNF’s below unfortunately do not show the successful good legs these competitors did. Might be worth keeping a rough record of the stage times in the future. Hope Marta is feeling better.
Special mention to Greg Williams for (mostly) completing his course entirely walking in one of his rare bush appearances (hopefully we’ll see more of him, and Douggie). Very well done to Grant for completing a Long course in his first major radiO event.
PS: Where did Douggie go ? He never made it back to the Start on one of thelegs.
Henk DeJong This event was intended to be an easy course, around 6km long, with each control a short stroll from a drivable track, not hidden (orienteering-style) in the deepest, most inaccesible gullies, and all accessible from most directions within a reasonable distance. It proved to be a bit more challenging with some interesting propagation effects (editor’s note: probably due to the multiple mountain ranges separating some of the controls!!!). Thanks to Tuckonie for their use of the map, and also for the use of their tent as a support for our own shelter, which was in considerable danger of being blown away in the gale-force wind. Thanks also to Ewen for help in checking out control locations and putting out controls. Results are below:
Scoring was based on your placing in a hunt. ie first got 1 point etc. Therefore the table below shows place and score.
There were no time limits on the hunts. The hunt ended when either the last team was in or at some arbitrary time after the 4th hound was in. Once or twice the fox went hunting for the last hound to speed things up a little.
Team Hunt 1 Hunt 2 Hunt 3 Hunt 4 Hunt 5 Hunt 6 Total
FVXN 1 1 4 3 5 4 18
FOX 5 5 5 1 2 5 23
YQN 4 2 2 4 1 1 14
BLN 3 3 1 5 4 2 18
FAST 2 4 3 2 3 3 17
The first hunt was in some bush on the western side of the Plenty River near where the river goes under the Greensborough bypass. The hounds all appeared on the eastern side of the river, decided it was not crossable and found other much more difficult ways in. The river was crossable only a few metres from where most of the hounds decided it wasn’t crossable. Well done to the Vixon team for being first in.
The second hunt was near a disused aqueduct in Eltham with a second leg an easy runnable couple of hundred meters away. Most teams worked out where the second leg was before driving too far away. Well done to the Vixon team on this one also.
The third hunt was beside a creek behind some houses a KM or so from the second hunt. Only the vixon team came down the correct side of the creek. All others were faced with a steep bank to climb down with water at the bottom. A few wet feet resulted from this. Most satisfying to the fox. Well done to the fritzl team for being first in on this one. The swearing must have helped David.
The fourth hunt was south of the Yarra near the Fitzsimons Lane bridge. The FOX team were first in on this one. Their new handle had apparently taken a while to warm up. I suspected the BLN team weren’t going to go so well on this hunt when I saw them heading down a dirt road to nowhere way too early in the hunt. Dog must have barked at the wrong time??
Fifth hunt was in some bushes in Alistar Knox park near the railway bridge in Eltham. Bruce was first on the scene and spent some time jumping back and forth over fox while trying to find it. How he didn’t stand on it about a dozen times I don’t know. Fortunately he didn’t and was eventually first in. Gregs handle was still working well but must have cooled a little since the previous hunt.
Supper hunt was also beside a creek behind some houses in Eltham.
Well done the YQN team. Thank you all for comming. regards Ewen
Here are the scores and brief report for the January Hunt.
====
Warm summer weather greeted six teams for the first hunt of
2009, hosted by the VK3 MZ/VR/TVB/HRL team. After assembling at the
traditional city start location (north end of Cardigan St Carlton),
hounds headed north-west to find the first 70cm fox near Highpoint
shopping centre, with the second leg about a km further west (new houses
100m south of the Maribyrnong). The second hunt took teams to a tram
stop off Raleigh Rd then to a reserve in Sunshine not far from railway
tracks. The third hunt was a single leg 2m hunt to Laverton North
(ground clearance an advantage but apparently not essential). The
fourth hunt, also single legged, took teams to the parched wetlands in
Point Cook just east of the new shopping centre. The final hunt was a
three-legged event, re-arranged due to the shortness of time. The first
leg was the gaffer tape special concealed in the HRL fire hydrant in a
quiet Altona street (punctuated only by distracted police and enamoured
hoons), second leg was somewhere completely different to the plan, third
leg was near the Altona boat ramp. Supper was in Roger's shed in
Newport.
Note: Hunts were scored using leg time. Hunts 1 and 2 were
two-legged, and 5 was three-legged. Score for each leg was measured
against the time of the fastest hound on that leg - so don't be confused
if you found the fox but still got a 10 (because you found it 10 minutes
slower than the fastest team on that leg). If any further explanation
is needed please let me know.
Scores:
Team Hunt Total
Place
1 2 3 4 5
VK3FAST 17 9 1 2 24 53
5
VK3OW 10 9 5 1 11 36
2
VK3YQN 3 3 1 2 22 31
1
VK3BLN 20 0 3 9 6 38
3
VK3TXO 20 11 2 0 17 50
4
VK3FOX 20 13 0 5 25 63
6
YQN won the night, followed by OW, BLN, TXO, FAST and FOX.
Regards,
Roger Lewis
Warm summer weather greeted six teams for the first hunt of 2009, hosted by the VK3 MZ/VR/TVB/HRL team. After assembling at the traditional city start location (north end of Cardigan St Carlton), hounds headed north-west to find the first 70cm fox near Highpoint shopping centre, with the second leg about a km further west (new houses 100m south of the Maribyrnong). The second hunt took teams to a tram stop off Raleigh Rd then to a reserve in Sunshine not far from railway tracks. The third hunt was a single leg 2m hunt to Laverton North (ground clearance an advantage but apparently not essential). The fourth hunt, also single legged, took teams to the parched wetlands in Point Cook just east of the new shopping centre. The final hunt was a three-legged event, re-arranged due to the shortness of time. The first leg was the gaffer tape special concealed in the HRL fire hydrant in a quiet Altona street (punctuated only by distracted police and enamoured hoons), second leg was somewhere completely different to the plan, third leg was near the Altona boat ramp. Supper was in Roger’s shed in Newport. Note: Hunts were scored using leg time. Hunts 1 and 2 were two-legged, and 5 was three-legged. Score for each leg was measured against the time of the fastest hound on that leg – so don’t be confused if you found the fox but still got a 10 (because you found it 10 minutes slower than the fastest team on that leg). If any further explanation is needed please let me know. Scores
Team
Hunt
Total
Place
1
2
3
4
5
VK3 FAST
17
9
1
2
24
53
5
VK3 OW
10
9
5
1
11
36
2
VK3 YQN
3
3
1
2
22
31
1
VK3 BLN
20
0
3
9
6
38
3
VK3 TXO
20
11
2
0
17
50
4
VK3 FOX
20
13
0
5
25
63
6
YQN won the night, followed by OW, BLN, TXO, FAST and FOX.
Results for last fridays foxhunt (in order of placings):
1) OW: 0+2+1+1=4
2) MZ: 3+1+0+1=5
3) TXO: 2+0+6+1=9
4) BLN: 1+5+4+0=10
5) FOX: 5+4+2+2=13
6) YQN: 5+3+3+4=15
Hunts were order based with teams who didn't get in awarded only two
points more than the highest order score. On the supper hunt three teams
arrived together for second and were impossible to split.
The YQN team are insisting that the supper hunt should not be counted.
Interestingly the only difference this makes is to put them equal last and
makes no difference to any of the other teams results. Both YQN and BLN
were actually overtime on the third hunt but were awarded a place for
their effort crashing through the bush. This also wouldn't have changed
the placings except to put FOX back ahead of YQN if supper wasn't counted.
There were no scores recorded for the 70cm hunt.
In conjunction with the night orienteering event held by Nillumbik Emus, we decided to try a night RadiO course of their own. After much discussion with club members, we decided that the main format for the night would be a 2m ARDF course, following international rules (750m exclusion circle, transmitters at least 500m apart), and with total course distance being approximately 7km. For an added challenge, Rex Niven, the course setter for the orienteering course, kindly allowed us to show six of the orienteering controls on each competitor’s map, so that, as an added challenge, people could choose to find some or all of these as well as the ARDF transmitters. It was a perfect map for such an event – there were hills, but not so many as to make the reflections overwhelming or the terrain unrunnable, and the bush was very open, making beeline navigation between transmitters almost a viable option! Now, as we’ve never run an ARDF course at night before, and had no idea how difficult such an event would prove, we made a few changes to how we set up the course.
Joyce kindly provided us with some reflective tapes, which we attached to the ARDF flags so that, as is the intention during the day, if you got reasonably close, you had a good chance of finding the transmitter. These things were incredible! You could see them from a mile away and they reflected so brightly, that it was easy to mistake them for other people’s torches!
We also placed 5 2m Fox-Ors, transmitting on 144.250 MHz, out on the course. Their purpose was twofold. First, those that did not feel confident about completing an ARDF course at night could instead just complete the Fox-Or. Secondly, we placed the ARDF transmitters into the same 200m circle as the five Fox-Or-ing controls. The theory was that if people got close to the ARDF transmitter but couldn’t quite find it, then they could use the continuously transmitting Fox-Ors to zero in on them a bit. In future events, we probably won’t do this. Some people chose not to use the Fox-Ors and complete the ARDF course in the traditional way, while those that did felt they could have coped without them.
On each transmitter, we placed a segment of the map showing the 200m circle that the transmitter was located in. If people had lost contact with the map, which is a common occurrence even during the day, let alone at night, then they could use this segment to help them relocate themselves.
We placed the transmitters so that getting them in order was the most efficient route. Not everyone realised this, but for those that did, it meant less zig-zagging around than on some of the ARDF courses.
We asked everyone to return at midnight, with everyone starting no later than 9:05pm. Without the usual 90 or 120 minute time restrictions, we figured people would be able to take their time and find the transmitters without feeling the need to rush back to the start.
We had great turnout for this event – ten competitors. Starting most people off at 9pm, except for a couple of stragglers that started a couple of minutes later, we settled down to wait for the verdict. David had just managed to lodge the homing beacon up a nearby tree when Rex, our fellow orienteering course setter, expressed an interest in night ARDF, saying he had tried the format in the past but without a great deal of success. Figuring most people wouldn’t be back for a while, we headed off with him to give him some moral support as he found a couple of the transmitters. He enjoyed himself, and managed to find 3 transmitters in the 2 and a half hours or so that he was out on the course. And he drew some extremely accurate bearings in the meantime, too – two of which crossed perfectly on Tx2’s location. After an hour or so out on the course with Rex, however, I had that uncomfortable feeling that we’d forgotten something… Racking my brains, it finally hit me – although the homing beacon was in the tree, it wasn’t actually ON! I rushed back to the start with my rapidly flattening torch batteries to turn it on – and lucky I did, because not only did Adam beat me back to the finish (having done all the ARDF transmitters and a couple of O controls in just over an hour – brilliant effort, before returning to drop off his sniffer and heading out again to get the rest of the controls), but also Bryan was not far from home when I arrived! It’s worth mentioning that not only did Bryan find all the ARDF controls without a compass and without tuning in to the colocated Fox-Ors, but he also managed to find his way back to the finish the old fashioned way – navigating by the stars – since I only turned the homing beacon on about 10 minutes before he got back. Well done, Bryan, and sorry about the delay! Other competitors returned later, with most enjoying their run and finding what they’d set out to get. Bruce, Mark, Geoff and Gary all found the five ARDF controls, with Bruce finding three of the orienteering controls as well, despite taking out a northern hemisphere compass! Ryordan and Darian went out together and found all five of their Fox-Ors while Suzanne headed out to get a couple of the Fox-Ors and some orienteering controls as well. Peter M had a bit of difficulty, but still found two of the ARDFs and two orienteering controls, so well done to him! No-one noticed the echidna which had been making itself comfortable at transmitter four when we put the controls out, so perhaps it had moved on by the time everyone arrived. All in all, night ARDF seems a promising concept. No-one got too badly lost and, provided the terrain is good, it looks like people can still complete fairly accurate and rapid runs. The colocation of Fox-Oring controls is probably unnecessary, so I don’t think we should repeat that next time around, but other than that, I recommend the format to people looking for a course to set in the future!
The hunt was held on Friday the 17th October with the fox for the evening being the VK3FOX team. Hunting commenced in Greensborough and drifted towards Eltham, back to Diamond Creek then off to South Morang and back to Bundoora with an excellent supper at the home of Chris who was VK3CHR (lapsed!)
October 2008 – VK3 two metre fox hunt results
Team
Hunt 1
Hunt 2
Hunt 3
Hunt 4
Hunt 5
Placing
VK3YQN
8
2/10
2/12
0/12
0/12
1
VK3OW
0
1/1
7/8
1/9
10/19
2
VK3VR/TVB/HRL
1
2/3
1/4
10/14
9/23
3
VK3TXO
10
1/11
0/11
9/20
10/30
4
VK3YDF
10
0/10
4/14
10/24
7/31
5
VK3BLN
7
2/9
5/14
8/22
10/32
6
In light of what occurred at the end of the evening it may be time to compose a set of fox hunt protocols. I have begun drafting these and will post them for comment. If anyone has any ideas please send them to me directly.
Today was of course the first day of real competition, but perhaps I’ve got ahead of myself. Maybe instead I’ll add a bit of suspense by leading up to it via what’s been happening yesterday as well, as at the time of writing I can’t see the results on the website yet.
Yesterday we all trooped onto the buses for the practice event.
It is a mix of mainly dark green (jungle) and what appealingly looks like open land (orange) till you check the legend which tells you it’s “cultivated land”: read mainly rice paddies. This one was largely a matter of sticking to the tracks and making a short excursion off the side right near a transmitter. I found 3 of the 2m ones without too much difficulty, but then my sniffer crashed. I hadn’t experienced this particular problem btraining.jpgefore, but later investigation by Bryan showed it was a combination of flattish batteries and a falling apart battery holder inside the sniffer. Well I guess it’s had a fair bit of use !
Easily fixed with new batteries and carefully placed bits of cardboard packing. At the time on the practice event I couldn’t un-crash it, so luckily I also had my 80m receiver with me, so I swapped over to that. Turns out 3 of the 5 were co-located anyway, so I ended up going to most locations anyway.
Bryan, on the other hand, was having terrible difficulties on 2m. Later on, after he’d given up in disgust and found at least some 80m transmitters, he discovered he’d assembled a “Geoff Special” beam (ie. backwards).
The good thing was all these teething troubles ocurred at the practice event, so we could confidently go into the world champs event today with everything fixed (I carried a spare receiver today in my camel back anyway, just in case).
The opening ceremony was another bus ride to nearby Suwon University. They issued us with translation receivers (good idea…that should cut down the length of the speeches!) and another Aussie flag (on a pretty pole with a gold ball on the top). Then announced that each country should appoint two people to march/carry the flag. After extensive debate within the team we came to the conclusion that Bryan and I would volunteer for this role. With all the other Ark animals (2 by 2) we were ushered out of the main hall to spend what seemed hours but was probably only 30mins or so for some introductory drumming thing to finish (I’m not quite sure; we weren’t there!) and on we marched onto the stage.
Australia being of course 1st as this was to the English rather than Chinese alphabet. Noone had told us what we were meant to do, or whether we were meant to be staying on stage till everyone else came on, but it turns out they wanted us to march off again.
After all the countries (31?) had their go , it got down to the real entertainment, and I have to admit, unlike many other cermonies, it was actually pretty good. Sort of a mix of traditional Korean musicical instruments, but updated music, singling girls and the B-Boy breakdancers.
Speeches…well, all I can say is luckily we didn’t have to listen to then twice (Korean & English).
On out return we were ushered straight off the buses to the gardens where dinner was served in a garden party setting. Very pleasant in the cooler evening. We were invited over the the Croatian team table and had many discussions about ARDF participation, juniors development and garmin GPS’s. Seems they have managed to get some funding through their education department (it wasn’t easy) to run schools ARDF programs.
Sounds a bit like what Peta does, but more developed within each school itself (so it’s self sustaining to a degree; some schools even trying to get competitors into Region 1 junior champs). They don’t seem to have as much traditional foot orienteering development; perhaps they got in first. The next world champs are to be in Croatia in 2010.
Straight after dinner it was off to a Region 3 meeting to consider the bid from Thailand to run the 2009 Region 3 championships. it’s not official yet, but it looks like they could well be happening there in November next year, so keep that free ! We need a bigger them than just 2 of us.
Fall into bed after getting everything ready for the early start this morning. Lucky for the 1 hour time difference so for me the 5am start was more like 6am ! Even so sleep was slow coming last night, but spare a thought for the teams (eg Croatia) who have ended up with thin 1cm futons on the floor rather than beds. Luck of the draw it seems. I’m glad we arrived earlyish on arrival day.
Well, finally I’m up to the 2m VHF event today. As a mini spoiler I will point out we both finished in time with our required 4 controls (transmitters found). Doing M40 we had to miss transmitter number 5.
The early start in the morning is because all competitors have to be bussed to the start. At a championships the location is meant to be a secret, unlike traditional orienteering events. Also, all the receivers have to be impounded at the start before the transmitters can be turned on. Due to some slight mixups in all this (I think we did it better back
in 2003) the actual first start was delayed 30mins to 9:30am. My start was 10:20 and Bryan’s 12:05pm.
It was pretty hot and very humid.
The M40 start corridor aimed directly at TX#5; the one we didn’t have to get at all. This caused most some confusion. In fact, the quickest way out was to run back through the Start, but we weren’t too sure if this was even allowed ! Very messy anyway.
My route was to go to a slightly more distant #4 prior to the closer-to-the-start #3 so that I could use a main road at the edge to bypass a lot of nasty looking deep green across the middle of the very elongated map (a little bit longer than A4 long, but narrower). As it turns out, my gamble did work out, and though it may not have been the quickest route, it was easy navigation and running (for some of it). I’m not sure if I’d gone 3->4 if I’d have a better time or not; even drawing out my route later on the map it looked pretty good.
After bypassing a range of deep green in the middle, I cut in from the road to #2, which turned out to be on my side of the green range (phew!!).
The road was fast running, and the deep green was passable in places, especially on the ridges, but the rice paddies (orange) were often slow as the little pathways amongst them didn’t always take you where you wanted.CIMG2219.JPG
My time was 94mins and 52s, putting me in 14th place out of 46.
Bryan zipped out of the start faster than I did and took a different approach, aiming for the road on the far side of the map. He ended up doing the same control order as I did, but suspect considerably more km.(16 or more). Still, he’s happy he got the required 4, was back in time (just) and knew where he was on the map nearly all the time. His place was 24th, with time of 115 mins 47s, unofficial results at the finish.
Pity the poor competitor I was speaking to just after I finished who was overtime by a mere 5 seconds !
The time limit was 140 minutes.
Our 2m team result was 8th in the world.
Looking out the window looks like it’s going to be another garden party for dinner and presentations.
After 80m event:
OK, enough with the subtle suspense. The big news is Bryan not only came in the top 10 in the world, but at last sighting of the results he was 6th !
Well done Bryan (cheers, whistles etc.).
Bruce didn’t do quite as well today, doing a transmitter out of order. I still made it in time though, so we will have a team result. My day showed how one little silly trivial problem can blow out to muck up your whole event in ARDF. It also maintained our normal tendency to each only do well in one of the two events, showing just how important it is to have 3 members in each team (to take the best 2 results of the 3). [In Japan we were lucky in that both Bryan and I did well in the same event. Unfortunately not so this time.]
Now to backtrack a bit to fill you in on what’s been happening.
Thailand for the next region 3 is becoming more firm. The dates are likely to be Oct 29th -> Nov 3rd 2009. We need more people to go on this one !
Garden party dinners seem to be the norm now rather than the exception. Very pleasant outdoors in the evening. I think at least one of both of dinner and farewell party will be in the garden this evening.
Today was the hottest yet. It is currently 29Deg and that’s on the top floor of this hotel.
The event today was suitable billy goat territory, so it suited Bryan perfectly 🙂
I will try to put a photo of the map up soon, but it might be hard to decipher with all the various routes drawn on it, and part of the top section has gone missing.
Been catching up with lots of friends. Others may remember Kurt Smet and Maurice from Belgium, Jon from Norway, DavKa from Mongolia, Guilliame from France (without the rest of the family this time), Gyrui and Vadim from USA (or Hungary) and the rest of the US team (Gyrui placed 3rd on 2m), Mr Park from Korea, Mr Arisaka and Horishi from Japan, Alex and Nicolay from Kazaksthan and many others I’ll probably get in trouble for not mentioning.
Tour day yesterday was pretty normal fare. We visited the Hwaseong Fortress (did we go there last time at Nonsan 1999 ?) and some tombs. One interesting thing we found was the strange perfect mounds we’ve been seeing on our courses (picture will be up) are in fact the graves. Often no tombstones. This helps as they are marked on the map as grave sites. Another visit on the tour day was to Samsung. This was interesting, but less thrilling than you might think because, being semiconductor fabs (ultra clean rooms, secret technology etc), they can’t actually *show* us anything, so it’s really just a touristy static display and a video. The more interesting bit was the technology update from one of their PR guys (an ex-pat American), but essentially, all of this could be done anywhere. The pure scale of the plants is very impressive though. It’s a mini city in it’s own right.
Here’s some more details of today’s 80m HF event for those that are interested:
The terrain was similar in many ways to 2m. The orange areas were again cultivated areas mainly rice paddies, but they had less impact than on the last map. The forested areas were largely dark green, but though un-runnable, it was nearly always navigable. Sticking mainly to tracks where possible was still important, but event that was tricky occasionally as sometimes they weren’t exactly as documented on the map, or simply didn’t go through to where you wanted. The hills were definitely steeper. This was certainly a tough event physically, and this seems to be traditional for 80m.
My small mistake at the start seems so trivial, but had ramifications. I cut the 52cm long map down to nearly fit in my map board, but a few cm still had to be folded around the back. In so doing, I barely noticed I cut off the only North arrow on the map. Whilst walking to the start line, I had a sudden panic I’d inserted the map upside down relative to my compass rose which overlays the map. I convinced myself that I’d done it upside down and pulled it out to right it. After ‘fixing’ that I tried to work out where the start corridor went on the map. After some confusion I worked out I really had had the map right originally, and I’d just stuffed it up. Now in a bit of a blind panic I whip out all the mappy parahenalia again, on the start line on the ground, and right the map again. I leave the extra bit hanging out the end instead of folding it over the top as I’m just about the start. Off we go….and dammit the start corridor and where it’s heading is right underneath my pencil holder velcro. Well I run the start corridor anyway, trying to get a bearing for #1 at the same time as trying to pull out my map. I’m all a bit flustered and things simply aren’t going well. Instead of trying to fix things carefully I followed competitors whilst trying to navigate on bits of map flapping out the end. Forget about drawing any bearings ! Well, I did get to 3 eventually, having to do a very steep uphill climb in the forest only to have to go down to the transmitter in a valley. Now I’m effectively running blind as I’ve now lost map contact completely, but I get a good time to the next ‘strongest’, #2. The problem is, I only have the vaguest idea where #1 and #4 are (M40 skip #5), so I decide to head in the general direction and figure it out on the way. Luckily a large open area lets me relocate myself on the map. Unfortunately, if I’d been a bit more accurate earlier on, I’d not have tackled a super tough hill up to #1 now, but after #4 instead. Alas, I ended up doing #1 not far from the finish, followed by #4 pretty close to the Start. As you can imagine, this is somewhat of a detour ! Still, I made it back in 120mins, which is OK considering running up mountains may not be my strong point and having to do it twice due to the #4 detour. Incidentally, I had to go back within 10m of #1 on my way back to the finish.
That gave me 23rd place or so, which indicates it was a pretty tough event for others too.
Bryan did a much better order, ducking in to get that tricky #4 after he’d been up to #3 from the start. He still had to do the mountain climb, but only once 🙂 His time of 83mins gave him 6th place, a fantastic result, just after Vadim from USA (Hungary).
Our 80m, team result was 6th in the world.
A few extra notes:
In the 80m finish pic of me I had just passed the Czech Girl (whohad passed me earlier). No doubt her time was much better overall, but in true BK/Sledge fashion was determined to get a good finish split (57s, Bryan 52s)
Uli (brother of Wolfgang) from Germany may well attend our Lilydale Lake event next weekend.
Robert from UK knows Mike Dunbar. Mike may move back to Melbourne, perhaps.
We’ve been invited to a lake-based paddla-radiO in Holland, and the Czech 4 days Radio Orienteering, both July 2009
We sort of missed our transport this morning (due to a misread notice (5am not 6am), but all was well as we were able to catch an airport bus after a short taxi ride. The Mongolians seemed to have the time even more incorrect, but one was sighted at the airport so it seems they made it !
We liked the bottle of Aussie 2001 Red so ended up buying another, and testing it on the French (!), and they agreed it was actually pretty good.
Dinner and Farewell party were both in the garden, but it was good they were separated by the awards ceremony (so you could at least eat some dinner prior to all the gift swapping frenzy).
Talking to many competitors, it seems though we had some difficulties with the 80m course, others had an even tougher time. Almost all of the Americans were overtime, and many of those we know didn’t get their full set of transmitters. Our Croatian M40 friend twisted his ankle.
Bryan would like to inform you that one of his thumbs is now nearly double sized due to reaction to a suspected spider bite on the 80m event.
