
To give those going overseas soon some more practice, I set one of those Any afternoon Covid style events on 2m.
The 2m TXs turned on every afternoon at 1pm and ran till 5pm (4 hours) on 145.300MHz. It was a half-sprint, in that there were only the 5 transmitters. There was no Homing beacon – you had to navigate yourself back to the Start (sorry Jack!). 1 minute full cycle (12s per TX).
The time limit was 60mins.
Maprun
Using Maprun, you just needed to get close enough to hear the Maprun beep, you did not need to sight the actual transmitters, which were concealed. Did anyone hunting ever see one of the transmitters?
Controls appeared on Maprun screen once you found them, so you can keep track of which ones you’d found. 20pts/TX, 10pts off per min over 60mins.
The Maprun event name is: nettleton ardf. Located in Victoria/OV-Clubs/ARDF if Events-Near-Me doesn’t work for you for some reason, but it did for me.
The Map now with TX locations
It was set in a much smaller area than the recent 80m half-sprint event.
Summary
Commencing: Saturday August 1st
Finishing: Thursday August 15th
Start Location: NW end of fence on oval, Nettleton Park (red triangle on map). The tall black fence can be seen in photo above, next to the playground.
Frequency: 145.300MHz. 5 TXs. 1 min full cycle
Time Limit: 60 mins
Transmitters on: 1pm to 5pm daily
Maprun event name: nettleton ardf
The Results
https://results.maprun.net/#/event_results?eventName=nettleton%20ardf
Well done to Kris who zoomed through the course in only 24 minutes, with only one curious diversion to the north west.
1st female was Monica (2nd outright), with a credible 45 minutes, particularly as I’d added extra challenge by stealing away #2 on her (to replace the failed battery). Luckily, she happened to be just passing the location of #3 when she contacted me, so she was able to register all 5 – if you look at her track, you can see she clearly deserves to get 3. Not so clear was what went on with #4, which if you follow her track carefully, you see some heartrending noodles.
Of the four who found all 5 TX, noone did them in the same order (even backwards). Some of your other tracks are equally noodle-y to Monica’s. It’s a tough call, with some truly worthy contenders, but I think I’ll have to award the best Noodling Award to Douggie. Henk did the best close encounter – a few had trouble with #4, with this TX probably causing the most noodling and near misses, but Henk went right past it and never came back.
Sorry there were no TXs actually in Nettleton Park at all. That was perhaps a little misleading. There were two surveyed locations in the Park itself that didn’t end up getting used in the final iteration. Perhaps if it was a full sprint?
The technical timing issues with #3 have now been explained – it was a substitute TX that had never been used for ARDF before (and its battery died too, just to make things messier)! I will test the field resync mods though, so if we do experience too much of a drift over a week or so, there’s something easy to do to fix it whilst keeping the event going.