Victorian Foxhunting Championships 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hopefully Stephen made it to the airport this morning.

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

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

There were dramas again:

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

Winner for the night hunt:

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

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

The Scores

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

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

Scores

Hunt	Leg	Band	Fox	Location	FAST	FOX	ACM	WWW	OW	Notes
Morning	A	23cm	Peter/Suzanne	Gold mine	2	0	5	10	4	Everyone found it
	B	2m	Bruce	Muckleford Diggings	0	7	10	10	6	WWW broke mast. OW took forever to turn around
	C	70cm	Graham	Behind Castlemaine Golf	10	0	10	8	9	Everyone found it

Sniffer
(best team member score – See below)					0	1	6	4	8	Hunt scored out of 16

Afternoon	A	80m	Graham	Muckleford Diggings	9	0	10	9	11	OW team altercation with a Triffid **
	B	6m	Bruce	Welshmans Reef	0	10	11	8	11	Something wrong with 6m fox? Tricky Location.
	C	10m	Peter/Suzanne	Ford Rd	10	5	6	0	11	Everyone found it Dinner! FAST flat tyre.

Night	A	23cm	Peter/Ewen	Park Rd	0	10	8	1	11	What happened to FOX?
	B	2m	Bruce	Malmsbury Reservoir	7	0	9	5	11	Good recovery by FOX
	C	70cm	Graham	Muses Hill	0	2	10	10	11	Something wrong with 70cm fox?
	D	10m	Suzanne	Gisbourne Flora Resv	10	6	6	0	11	Not the planned spot. IT stuff-up.

Totals					48	41	91	65	104
Sniffer Hunt Place	Name		Time	Raw Points	Points (TX * 2)		Team Result
1	Darian Panter		51:01:00	16	16		FAST	0
2	Kristian Ruuska		01:00:48	16	15		FOX	1
3	Jeremy Dossin		53:37:00	12	12		FAST	4
4	Mark Diggins		57:15:00	12	12		WWW	4
5	Monica LoPresti		59:03:00	12	12		WWW	4
6	Emily Panter		01:01:03	12	10		ACM	6
7	Jack Bramham		49:13:00	8	8		WWW	8
8	Ewen Templeton		01:01:17	10	8		OW	8
9	Ryordan Panter		52:22:00	6	6		ACM	10

** time adjustments

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

Overall placings

1st	FOX	41
2nd	FAST	48
3rd	WWW	65
4th	ACM	91
5th	OW	104 / DNF

December 22, 2024December 22, 2024

Christmas FoxOr

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

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

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

Here’s the TX locations:

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

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

Here are the full results:

Name	TXs	TX Penalty (mins late)	Time (mins)
Monica	9		87
Bryan	8		86
Alistair	8		90
Darian	7		81
Geoff	4		90
Jack	3		55
Di & Henk	4	-2	92
Suzanne	2		28
Pierre	2		61
Mark	2		73
Emily	2		75

August 8, 2023August 8, 2023

Karkarook Report

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

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

The new Map

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

Park O

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

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

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

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

Sprint ARDF

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

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

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

Totally fails classic ARDF exclusion zones

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

Apologies to Dougie who replied just a tad late.

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

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

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

Next Event

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

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

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

August 22, 2022August 22, 2022

Hawkestowe Classic 2m ARDF Event Results and Report

Hawkestowe-2m-ARDF-Report-1 Download

July 15, 2022July 25, 2022

Damper Creek Sprint ARDF Report

Report & Results are below the Event Details

Map has been updated with TX locations.

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

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

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

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

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

oom_62dd47ef1a79e Download

Report

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Results

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

May 9, 2022May 9, 2022

Report on Radio Combo Event 7 May 2022

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

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

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

Results

September 6, 2015

Bruce, Jack and Kristian climb Mt Fuji

I’ve been a long time reader… I figured it was about time I posted something.

My story starts after leaving Jenelle and Ewen after a fantastic day of kayaking at Shimada. (Jenelle will fill you in soon!)

5 trains after departing Shimada Bruce and Myself arrived at Kawaguchiko at the base of Mt Fuji where we meet up with Jack at our accommodation.

After some much needed rest it was an early rise to catch the first bus to Mt Fuji Subaru line 5th station (the stations are huts along the track – 5th station is much more than a hut though, but it’s where you start walking from. 10 is the top)

The weather gods must have been happy with us, as we had a wonderful view of Mt Fuji in the morning and great weather all day.

Mt Fuji fro Kawaguchiko — Mt Fuji from Kawaguchiko

Once we arrived at the 5th station we set straight off. Bruce and me climbed 1570m up to the summit (elevation 3776m) in just over 3 hours, then we had a rapid 1.5 hour decent after a journey around the top. Jack made it up to the 8th station (elevation 3100m) and made a couple of radio contacts before heading back down.

Bruce and Kristian at the summit of Mt Fuji

Today we said farewell to Jack who was off on a bus trip with Jenelle, Ewen and Mark and we grabbed a couple of bikes to do a quick tour of the lakes before we returned to Tokyo before we head off to Gunma province where we finally join / rejoin the rest of the team.

And now just a couple more days until the serious stuff starts. 🙂

Kristian