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

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.

ARDF Sprint Results

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)

Note: Each TX, including Homing beacon, assigned 10 points. Penalty 10 pts/min

ARDF Short    (3 TX - 80 mins)

Note: Each TX, including Homing beacon, assigned 10 points. Penalty 3 pts/min

Splits

ARDF Full           

ARDF Short           

Mother’s Day dawned windy and overcast. The BOM forecast rain only in the evening… And of course we BELIEVE them without question, but perhaps we can be forgiven for being a little worried. But by the time we arrived at Koomba Park just before 8am to put out RadiO controls (all street O controls were out the night before), the wind had settled nicely and the sun was coming out.

We had everything out in short order and had adjourned back at the northern Koomba car park at around 9:10 AM for a quick listen of the ARDF transmitters. For those non-RadiO people, these are five quite high-powered transmitters which are on for one minute, then off for four minutes. If you turn them all on at the same time, they are supposed to nicely cycle through so one and only one is on at any given minute. Well, all was going swimmingly until #4 failed to transmit. Uh oh… We definitely turned them on in unison (give or take a second). We hustled down towards it, noting a double set of transmission during #5s cycle. When we got there, we turned it off, then waited an endless few minutes for the next five minute mark to roll around. Then on again, and another 3 minute wait to make sure it actually came on when it was supposed to. It did – all good, and the oddity filed away for our club tech geniuses to think about. Even better, we kept the sniffer on and the rest of them turned on when they were supposed to.

The two course setters then separated to their respective starting areas (the walk between these was probably closer to 700m than 500m, despite what I told you guys – but I didn’t want you to get discouraged before you’d even started J). And then the turnout happened! Very rare for any ARDF run events to attract such crowds, even if they have orienteering components. Last year’s Hageby certainly wasn’t that popular, and on Mother’s Day, besides! Anyway, we had sufficient maps and the two orienteering legs seemed to proceed with minimal complaints – good to see a lot of familiar faces but also a few newer families, as well!

The RadiO legs proved to be a little more exciting… Tim Hatley was one of the earliest runners to attempt the 80m ARDF leg, and he came home having found them all (and without further destroying his already injured arm). All good… But not afterwards. Reports came filtering in – Fox-Oring transmitter G couldn’t be found. ARDF TX #1 had also gone silent. Even more interestingly, those two transmitters were pretty close together, either side of the same major path. Hmmm… Well, batteries do go flat (but Bruce had charged the big ARDF ones, and the ‘faulty’ one had just received a new battery, beside; he had also tested and replaced any failing Fox-Or batteries). We had sniffers to check the Fox-Ors as we put them out and are pretty sure all had ended up ON, on the right frequency and on high power… But I guess it’s possible one got missed and left off/on low power/off frequency. Bit odd, though.

We persevered, and despite the blackberries and thorny bushes and recalcitrant transmitters, people seemed to enjoy themselves.

Then control collection time came around. Thanks to everyone who helped pick up street O plates – much appreciated! And to Lara for having to do her sprint leg with a course setter and the dog following behind and picking up each control that she found J. The course setters then headed out to get the RadiO controls. We left the two dodgy ones till last. First attempt was the 2m Fox-Or, with the rest of them safely in the car and turned off (or so we thought). We actually caught a sniff of signal and got a bit excited… But when we got to the track where the transmitter was put out (and I distinctly remember the track, reaching a dead end and thinking ‘no point bush-bashing there – the squashed wandering jew will give it away), turning around and wandering a short distance in the other direction and hanging it reasonably high in a tree), the signals made no sense. In fact, they seemed to be pointing back to the cars… Hmmm… We wandered around for a little bit, with increasingly shrill assertions that the control HAD to be in this clump of trees, and perhaps it had fallen, because surely the flag had been visible from the track (if you knew where to look)… But nothing, so we headed off to get the 80m ARDF transmitter instead. No sniffer, because if it was flat, it was flat. And the flags for those are big anyway, and though it was off in a reasonably deserted area of the park, the flag had, as per convention, not been hidden at all.

It took longer to find the flag than expected. We were getting a little worried, I do admit. But then there it was. Except it was on the ground. And there were no wires running out in all directions… We looked more closely. Squid pole (used to sling one of the antennas high in the air, as this transmitter needs) still where it was, but no wire attached. A bit further away, a few metres of grey wire. No sign of the transmitter or the blue and black wire, though. We looked more closely. Blue and black wire eventually found in a tangle some metres away. Transmitter box also found after some searching, slung into the bushes somewhere. Wires clearly ripped out of it. Still turned on (who knows what that did to the circuitry…).

We turned it off, put it back in the car, turned off the stray 2m Fox-Or still on in there (d’oh!) and headed back for another go at the Fox-Or. But it didn’t turn up. We checked a few frequencies, wandered further away than it should have been, and no trace of it. We gave up and returned to the car and had a look at the start list. At about the time that Tim Hatley got into ARDF #1 (and he was the only one that found it, so presumably there were people loitering around who followed him in and broke it), a pair of newcomers might have been attempting to find Fox-Or G on the other side of the track. It wasn’t the easiest location for a newbie, so they might have had some trouble and wandered back out. But someone watching could have easily followed the track in and if they were observant, spotted the flag hanging in the scrub. It wasn’t THAT overgrown.

So there you have it. A disappointing end to what had looked like a good turn out and enjoyable day. We hope people enjoyed the courses nonetheless, and a special welcome to all the newcomers who graced us with their presence!

The results follow (bearing in mind on the RadiO legs that many people lost a lot of time looking for transmitters that weren’t there! Sorry!). Please post a comment here if we’ve got the number of controls you found or whether you were walking or running wrong.

Thanks for coming! Marta and Pierre

2m Fox-or loop

80m ARDF loop

Sprint loop

Scatter loop

Radi-O:    2m ARDF        “Templestowe Valley”           April 27, 2013

Thanks to Geoff for setting an interesting 2m ARDF in Westerfolds Park. Here are the results:

Today 4 members of the Vic ARDF Group ran a simple navigation training exercise for the Australian Navy Cadet unit in Hampton Park.

The cadets are based at Hampton Park Secondary college. Adam put a lot of effort into making a map suitable for detailed navigation. The idea was to hold the exercise in just part of the school grounds, so emphasis was on fine detail and navigating by features, rather than distance and compass work.

We arrived in time to efficiently put out all of the controls ahead of a 4:30pm start. First was a quick briefing on map reading and identifying some of the features on the map, then cadets were paired up, and 3 groups were sent off every 2 minutes, with a different compulsory 1st control to spread them out a bit.

Here’s today’s map, run as a simple 30 minute score event. All controls had equal score, unlike the more complicated street-O ‘row’scoring.

As you can see from the very large scale of 1:1000, things appeared remarkably quickly, even at walking pace. The quite complex area amongst the school buildings still presented a challenge though, with some teams, including the winning team, the Giant Killers, stumbling upon some of the controls more by accident than good navigation. A line course would have made the navigation more critical, but it also would have got more crowded in such a small area.

The range of finish times showed that the event time was set about right, with the winning team blitzing it in 12 minutes and a couple of the teams not finding all of the 20 controls before the 30 minutes was up. Besides, they had to get back for some last minute marching practice for the Anzac service early tomorrow morning !

22 cadets took part in 8 teams or 2 or more. The 2 leaders, Lieutenant Silesteam and Petty Officer Hine, plus club members Dianne and Pierre, roamed the grounds making sure all was well, and just as well, because the school caretakers started to shut the gates to the Southern Oval area, which would have stranded cadets both sides of the boundary.

The rain held off for the event, despite the earlier heavy rain showers that threatened us on the way there, and most of the cadets seemed to really enjoy the exercise.

Petty Officer Hine had first contacted the club last year through this website about the possibility of some basic navigational training, followed by some Radio orienteering training, which could be useful in general for Navy cadet exercises. We therefore plan to run a RadiO event with them sometime in the near future. This will probably be a FoxOr style event, so the navigational exercise today will be a helpful skill for that.  For descriptions of the different styles of RadiO events (FoxOr, Sprint, ARDF and 5-in-5), have a poke around this website.

However, cadets who really enjoyed themselves today don’t have to wait for the cadet event next month, but can take themselves (even drag parents along too) to any of this club’s events shown on the calender of this website, throughout the year. If you contact us before the event to let us you might be coming we can make sure someone is on hand for instruction/training.

A huge thanks to club members Adam (for the great map on short notice), Pierre and Dianne for managing to get there during normal working hours to help stage the event. We’d have been hard pressed to do in in the time with fewer than the four.

Here are the results: (apologies in advance for name mis-spellings or incomplete data). Feedback welcome.

Results for 80M ARDF @ Wellington Chase

Hope everyone had fun and thanks to all that helped out.

7 JULY 2012

The rain held off, the lemon pie from Marta was yummy, the FoxOrs all ran without a hitch, what more could one ask for the day after the Winter Solstice ?

This was the 2nd event in the current festival of RadiO events we have headed into. A total of 16 competitors competed in the full CombO (FoxOr + Street-O) or had a go at some of the FoxOrs. It was good to have a few newcomers give it a go. You still have to poke some street-O regulars into it a bit (eg. MJ), but they end up enjoying it and doing surprisingly well. Others managed to hide at the start and slunk off to do just a boring street-O (eg. TH / JG).

As well as the 20 street-O controls and 6 2m FoxOrs, I also had one 80m FoxOr you could get before or after the rest, so well done to those who left enough time to fit that in. Ewen, who was the only one who chose to do 80m first, was a bit disgruntled a couple followed him to the 80m FoxOr without carrying 80m sniffers themselves, hence gaining a slight advantage, but there’s not a lot I can do about that. I guess congrats to those who took that opportunity ! Having a street-O control very near probably didn’t help. It didn’t impact Ewen’s relative result anyway.

Those doing just the RadiO controls will score a bit lower of course, but I figured it wasn’t worth generating a seperate category. Congrats to Ian Dodd being the only one to get everything just within the 75minute time limit, scoring the maximum points of 128. Well done to Nathan Diggins who ventured out on his own for the first time, and considering he spent 45 of the 75 minutes quite lost he actually was doing well on the FoxOrs. Special mention should also go to Jenelle Templeton, who performs much better when Ewen isn’t anywhere nearby, and would have done a lot better if she’d got back on time.

Note Sarah Davies, Cath Sheahan and Mike Keen were all just going out to find 1 or 2 only to give it a try.

ARDF Results – Eaglemont Flats 3 June 2012

Report by Mark Besley

A Fox-Or radio orienteering event was held in conjunction with the Eaglemont Flats MelBushO on Sunday 3rd June. Sixteen people took part and enjoyed hunting for transmitters on both sides of the Yarra.

Some people competed in pairs and you can see this from the times in the results. However I should mention that Ian Dodd and Ewen Templeton did NOT do the course together. They competed independently yet both took exactly the same elapsed time. We may have to move to SportIdent for the next Fox-Or to achieve split-second timing? Chalky and Jacinta were enjoying the 3-transmitter course so much that they decided to get a fourth transmitter which explains the extra time that they took.

Mention should also be made of Bruce Paterson who attempted to walk on water across the Burke Road Billabong, I believe he got rather wet but obviously got a time benefit. Tim Hatley first competed in the long orienteering course, then went out on the six-transmitter course, found after two controls that his sniffer wasn’t working properly, returned to the start, got another sniffer and a new start time, then went out and completed the six-transmitter course in a very respectable time of 36:33. Greg Williams brought his two “sniffer” dogs along to help him find the transmitters. They seemed to be a bit more subdued after 6 km or so.

Thanks to those who helped with control collection, packing up and other assistance during the event such as demonstrating equipment usage to newcomers and making mugs of tea for the course setter. Thanks also to MFR for providing a copy of their new map to me in advance of the event.

Despite forecast showers, the weather was perfect for the first Sunday Special of the series – slightly overcast with the sun breaking out later in the afternoon. We set a hageby course on a brand new map (thanks to Adam Scammell from the ARDF group for producing this one!), providing two standard orienteering legs, one 2m Fox-Oring legs and one 80m ARDF. The orienteering legs, in particular, were designed for beginning orienteers, and this allowed the Thomas family kids to successfully navigate around the first orienteering leg without their dad’s help – well done, guys! Both kids and dad then successfully completed their Fox-Oring leg, their first foray into RadiO sport despite a long interest. It was great to see them enjoy themselves.

We had an exceptional turnout today – 37 people went out with control cards, and some of those were families. This was great to see, because the ARDF events often do not attract a large following. While some of the non-ARDF members enjoyed a normal orienteering run on our new map, several other brave souls forayed into the brand new world of RadiO orienteering, with great success! We’d like to mention in particular Steve Peacock and Jeff Hughes, who completed both Fox-Oring and ARDF legs! An excellent first attempt, and we look forward to seeing you again at future events. Bernie Shuttleworth also gave RadiO orienteering a go, completing an entire Fox-Oring leg as well as finding a couple of ARDF transmitters. Excellent effort, Bernie. And welcome back to Jun and Miki Okabe, as well, who ran both orienteering legs as well as completing a Fox-Oring course. Good to see you back out there. Also well done to the Diggins family, who successfully dealt with the ARDF leg despite an intensive workout earlier in the day at footy. Finally, a special mention to Chris from the Newbury Navigators, who joined us for a pleasant stroll around the lake. We hope you enjoyed yourself, Chris!

Congratulations to Bruce for completing the entire four-loop course in 1:10:13. This was closely followed by Gary and Darian, with 1:13:26 and 1:15:35. A special mention also to Denise and Peter, who despite completing their two orienteering legs in different order, both finished within 3 seconds of each other. (Well done, Denise; you pipped him at the post!) We always like a sprint finish.

Thanks to everyone for joining us out there today. Hope you had a good time, and hope to see you at more RadiO events later in the year. Results are below (and Simon Rouse, if you read this, you snuck in without us recording a finish time – if you recall what time you got in, please contact us.)

Click here for a spreadsheet with individual leg times.