Sunday June 1st 2014  Top Band Multi-Tx  DF 

Organiser  Steve S
Times  1:30 - 4:00 pm
Location Wormley Wood, North of Potters Bar, NGR:  TL 326 065.
Pub - The Plough at Cuffley

I started planning the event by basically deciding that I wanted to be somewhere in the M1, M11, M25 triangle, so that easy access could be achieved by all. Quickly found the woods which seemed large enough, also with Broxbourne woods slightly further north. Visited the area and decided that it would be suitable and probably reasonably quiet. With all the stream valleys it had potential, and with very little grot to contend with. Tried to find an orienteering map of the area, without success, wish I'd known about the website Robert used.

On my first visit the paths were very muddy, and I was hoping 2 weeks of good weather would dry them out, however mother nature put paid to that with more rain. Hope it wasn't to bad.

Even though Gary's last event in a small area caused problems I wanted to use most of the area and add some distance between the minis. This dictated a central location for the maxi. On an earlier visit I pinned down where I wanted A,B, I,J and Y,Z to be, but only decided on R,S and F,G quite late on.

With A, B and F, G being easy greens I left these in the open woods, so shouldn't have been to difficult, basically using thickets as cover.

I wanted to put mini R high up so chose the top of the hill with the micro S back down towards the stream. I tried to make sure that the stream was crossable without to much effort. Mini I was probably a bit easier than it should have been, I chickened out of putting it very close to the ponds, didn't want anybody taking a dip.

The area for Y,Z was obvious with a lot of ferns etc for the micro, and the slightly thicker clump of trees for the mini. Seemed about right, with one experienced competitor, who shall be nameless, spending a long time on Y before giving up.

Apologies to Rosie for not making it clear which path was which from the start, so her early bearing plots were based on the wrong path direction, which caused later confusion.

Congratulations to all those who found all 10, did wonder whether I'd made it a bit to hard, obviously not. Thanks to all for supporting me, especially Peter, Robert and Geoff.

Steve
 A beauty contest was held before the start.  The winner - Colin .


The central location attracted a good crowd.
'Before'...... fortunately there is no 'after' for comparison.


Geoff heading for F & G
Rosie and Philip getting confused leaving I.


Above - Tim waiting for Z to come on  .......  come on ............  will it ever ......
Right - Peter going at speed through the woods, bad foot or not!


Experienced DF'er smiling at how well he's done

Colin - the 'little beauty' led him to all 10.


Stewart 'enjoying' his second Multi
Just one more hill to climb


Finding Txs - easy peasey - car park  - another story!
Where's the pub?

Philip shows that with careful planning you can run  8 Km inside a 1.5 Km square.  Since he only appears to have been moving for 51 minutes though he obviously spent a long time sunbathing.  You can check out his run by following this link


Meanwhile my GPS was stuck in Brentwood all afternoon. Had it have been working it would have shown that I went one better, managing to run around 10 Km  all within a radius of 100m of Y occupying me fully until 1 minute before the machine gun.  Fortunately as a result of these exertions I have forgotten my name so no one will ever know.

Position Competitor Handicap Joker A B F G I J R S Y Z Total Percent
1 Gary P 25 Z 32 32 9 11 20 20 26 26 40 80 271 100
2 Philip C 40 Y 40 40 15 17 26 23 32 32 46 20 251 92
3 Colin M 6 I 13 13 11 13 64 40 11 11 26 32 228 84
4 Tim P 40 Y 11 11 40 40 13 13 23 20 64 23 218 80
5 Robert V 0 S 15 20 0 0 11 11 40 80 0 17 194 71
6 Richard S 0 G 23 26 23 52 15 15 15 13 0 0 182 67
7 Peter L 0 F 17 15 64 32 7 9 20 17 0 0 181 66
8 Rosie M 0 J 26 8 13 15 23 52 13 23 0 0 173 63
9 Graham D 0 A 40 23 26 0 17 17 17 15 0 0 155 57
10 Roy E 43 J 9 9 8 9 40 64 0 0 0 26 122 45
11 Geoff F 0 B 7 34 17 20 8 8 0 0 0 0 94 34
12 Stewart B 0 F 8 0 40 23 9 0 0 0 0 0 80 29


Over to our winner Gary:

I usually have luck on my side when it comes to picking a joker but it was my turn to draw an evil one this time, being Z, so I had to decide whether I would potentially go straight for a likely maximum on Y and Z, at the expense of losing out on high scores on the other 8, or whether to delay Y and Z, knowing I should still get some decent points if I was to visit them after grabbing a few easier ones before hand.

My decision was made to go straight for Z, however my route took me along the main path next to where A was hidden, which became apparent when it came on just at the right time, in addition to spotting Phil hunting around close to where I thought A might be. I managed to grab a decent 32 points behind Phil, A being one which I was expecting to get my lowest score on.

It was clear that B wouldn't be too far away and I arrived, with Phil at the likely destination where I was unfortunately facing the opposite way to the triffid and so Phil beat me to it again. I now travelled over to Z knowing I had made a decent start. In hindsight, if I hadn't bagged these 64 points, I may have started to panic over at Y and Z, watching the clock tick by with nothing on the scoreboard.


Gary heading back for A before moving on to F & G.
 It didn't take too long to get in the rough area of where I thought Z might be. My tactic was to keep walking in a straight line  until I would find what would be a likely place to put the triffid. Despite over shooting a couple of times, I managed to find Z with out wasting too much time - luckily I came into it from the easier side. Y was next and I adopted the same approach, with little success on the shorter transmissions. Again, the triffid seemed to jump out at me without having to look around too much.

It was now about 14.30, which meant that there would be enough time to hopefully find all 10. It was a fairly lonely afternoon up until this point and I was surprised not to see anyone at I or J.  I found these relatively easily but now starting to feel worn out.

I assumed F and G would have the lowest remaining points so I started the long trek over to R and S, choosing a direct route as there was no obvious pathway in the direction I was heading.

It was clear that Phil had just found R and S and Rosie was also now in the area. I spent quite a lot of time here but luckily came out with 2 x 26.

I banked all of my points, meeting Steve at A and still had plenty of time to pick up F and G, which would surely be low points. On my way to find G  I accidentally stumbled across F which was a nice surprise and G didn't take too long with it's longer transmission and larger triffid size. I returned to A to bank the remaining tickets, knowing that I had benefited from having Z as my joker - it was definitely a confidence booster to get them out of the way early.

Thanks to Steve for putting on a great event, in a perfect location and for allocating his time to choose the site and get up early to set everything up.

Gary

Gary now has a Multi-Star -2014 to add to his collection.

The Plough had a good selection of food and 'chat lubricant'.  As usual excuses for why the majority had not matched Gary's performance abounded!  My faded  2nd issue bus pass had to waved about once again, what would I do without it!  Earlier we had all admired Colin's 'Little Beauty' now it was Stewart's turn to impress with his part built 'Modular DDS  DF  RX', complete with built in electronic compass with storage/processing facilities for bearings  - wow!
Thanks to all for coming and to Steve for putting on an excellent event 'enjoyed' by all.
Despite the very short transmissions on the 'Reds'  4 people managed to find all ten Txs.   A spectacular effort, especially from Gary - very well done!
Next event July 6th,  'Timbo The Terrible'  is the man, brace yourselves!

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