Multi-DF Sunday July 1st 2018

Organiser   Roy G4JAC
Location Pods Wood Tiptree
Pub  The Cricketers, Fordham.
Times   13:30-16:00
You may have noticed that this is my favourite site for running a Multi-Event!  It is surprising that it is relatively unused by the general public and, although there are paths, there are plenty of 'wild' areas where equipment can be left without it being noticed by the few dog walkers that do use the area.

Having tweaked by back a couple of weeks before I knew that placing 10 Txs and Triffids was going to be a slow process so I decided to set it all up on the Saturday.

Vaughn and Debbie were returning for their 2nd attempt at RDF, their principle target would be the the green Txs and I wanted them to enjoy all that the wood had to offer, hence these were placed on the outside of the Tx map.  In order to give our 'Heroes'  a bit of a challenge the Ghost (1) was placed well away from the bulk of the Txs and in one of the densest areas of undergrowth if you decided to approach it directly, though just off the path if you studied the map and approached from the South.  At the briefing the competitors were reminded that the 'Ghost' would shut down at 15:00 allowing time on 1910 KHz for the other reds to get much easier in the last hour.


At the start Colin F fine tunes his connection with the 'Sun God'.

Debbie and Vaughn on their way to A, Philip (right) is getting close too.




Nine more you say?

Vaughn closing in on Tx B
Right - Rosie is troubled and Gary looks concerned, is she struggling with Colin's set?    Below - No, today somethings are more important!



Tim is practising his 'cool image'.


Nearly 3pm and I needed to collect the Ghost, the route from the South.
Looks like some have attempted the Northern approach!


Once you spotted the Tx
the Triffid was within 3m (3D).


4:15 pm, all Txs gathered in thanks to the 'retrieve your Joker' format and the Organiser is very grateful!


Results

Pos Competitor Hcap Joker A B C F G H K L M 1 Score Raw % Final Total
1 Colin M 63 K 17 17 26 26 26 13 80 32 15 0 252 88 189
2 Rosie M 15 L 11 13 17 17 15 17 26 52 32 0 200 70 185
3 Richard S 43 F 15 15 23 80 32 32 13 13 0 0 223 78 180
4 Steve S 100 G 9 9 15 32 80 40 17 20 23 32 277 97 177
5 Tim P 110 L 13 11 13 20 20 26 32 80 40 23 278 97 168
6 Colin F 148 A 80 26 32 13 13 15 15 15 17 26 252 88 104
7 Philip C 171 B 26 80 20 23 23 23 23 23 26 0 267 93 96
8 Vaughn L 0 * 46 23 0 11 11 0 0 0 0 0 91 31 91
9 Gary P 195 B 32 64 40 15 17 20 20 17 20 40 285 100 90
10 Debbie L 0 * 40 20 0 9 9 0 0 0 0 0 78 27 78

Times  (for info only, it's points that mean prizes!).

Competitor Joker A B C F G H K L M 1 Validation
Colin M K 14:16:37 14:28:57 14:51:36 13:56:40 14:05:56 15:08:56 13:40:06 13:45:16 15:19:39 15:23:32
Rosie M L 15:22:23 14:58:59 15:07:27 14:22:34 14:36:31 14:42:33 13:50:34 13:45:19 14:05:31 15:37:15
Richard S F 14:34:32 14:46:01 15:00:53 13:43:34 13:52:26 14:07:35 15:17:15 15:27:59 15:43:26
Steve S G 15:29:04 15:14:37 15:20:51 13:43:42 13:39:30 13:58:26 14:59:30 14:55:39 14:50:39 14:23:57 15:45:10
Tim P L 15:01:15 15:08:33 15:21:04 14:12:29 14:21:05 14:29:01 13:40:13 13:44:19 14:05:09 14:43:32 15:37:06
Colin F A 13:49:31 13:58:24 14:10:47 14:38:52 14:48:51 14:58:50 15:13:58 15:10:19 15:05:32 14:31:29 15:38:25
Philip C B 13:57:46 13:50:23 15:06:22 14:12:22 14:20:53 14:29:15 14:37:53 14:44:39 14:50:08 15:14:32
Vaughn L * 13:58:02 14:25:48 14:49:42 15:29:32 16:00:00
Gary P B 13:56:08 13:50:38 14:09:52 14:32:20 14:36:23 14:42:19 14:54:13 15:00:12 15:05:01 14:23:47 15:21:52
Debbie L * 13:58:27 14:25:57 14:50:03 15:29:41 16:00:00


Colin: The weather had been exceptionally hot for many days and Sunday 1st July was no exception. Fortunately, Roy had chosen a woodland site for this multi-tx hunt(in the relatively cool shade)  and had also provided several bottles of water anticipating several dehydrated contestants.
On this occasion Rosie wanted to try using my DF set (in case it had some magic ingredient perhaps) so we agreed to swap sets. So I would be using the other DF set which Rosie had built back in the 1980s (before the availability of commonly-used receiver ICs). It was not as sensitive as my usual set but quite adequate, I thought, for this type of event. This meant that both Rosie and I were using sets which we were not familiar with! (Not normally a good practice.)
Roy’s pre-hunt briefing included the warning that the difficult TXS (the red ones on 1910kHz) were going to be particularly difficult. Given that the site footprint was fairly small and the red TXs were going to be extra “difficult” I decided to take the TXs in a strange sequence. Usually I would find a group of three TXs then move on to the next group. But today I planned to find only the green (easy and strong) and yellow (moderate difficulty) TXs on the first pass. Then I would return to each group again to find the red TXs on a second pass.
The idea was that, whilst most competitors were struggling to find the red TXs, taking several transmissions to home-in,  I would be able to collect more points by going for more, simple ones. Of course that did mean that I would eventually need to cover more distance than others but hopefully the relatively late arrival at the red TXs would be overshadowed by an earlier visits to the greens and yellows. It was going to be risky – but nevertheless worth trying.
At 1:30 I heard all three green TXs from the start and sketched rough bearing lines on a prepared map. In rough terms, A was to the  east, F was south-west and K was north-west, which indicated that it was across the road.
My joker was K and after the first 5-minutes everyone set off and I crossed over into the northerly wood and headed to where my rough bearing indicated. Tim was also heading towards the KLM group and we ran to the northern edge of the wood as indicated by my initial bearing. I recall only being seconds before Tim at station K. We both relocated to another area further along a path to where we thought L would be. When L transmitted, Tim got there first and then Rosie appeared from nowhere. We both headed for where Tim had been. Although Rosie had spotted the TX, I was lucky enough to find the Triffid first.

While Colin explains his strategy 2nd and 3rd places review theirs.
Then, to implement my master plan, I headed due south ignoring TX M and heading for the FGH group. Back into the south wood. A few more transmissions and F was in the bag, and a few more transmissions later I found G. Then, ignoring H, I set off in a north-easterly direction to find A.
I remember TX A going off when I was some 50m away. Using a compass I continued along the sight-bearing line and found some rhododendron bushes. I looked for a gap in the bush and went in. Amazingly I spotted the A Triffid on the ground, without the need for a transmission! Then I retuned for B (using a coarse manual tuning control!) and eventually heard it, heading off in the right direction. I soon heard voices. It was Roy, loudly encouraging Vaughn and Debbie to carry on after finding the B station. They must have laughed as they saw me blundering about (I could see the TX but not the Triffid) for sometime. After 3-minutes I had finally spotted it at head height in a small tree.
I had now found K, L, F. G, A and B. Now was the time to go for the hard ones. I may as well start with C since I was nearby. Waited for a couple of scheduled transmissions but didn’t hear it so decided to abort finding C and headed off towards H. Then, by some miracle, I heard a feint peep from station C. I reverted to locating C and found it a few transmissions later. I also heard the ghost at this time but with only 20minutes of transmissions remaining it was dismissed as unachievable.
Then I headed off for H and finally due north for M. M turned out to be in a nasty, thorny area. This was close to K where I made my final TX visit of the day to validate my finds and prepare for TX collection. This was about 15:20. Hence about 40 minutes remaining. I could go and find the remaining TX (the “ghost”) but, alas, it stopped at 15:00 so went to the start to get a drink of water instead.


Left - Vaughn had tales to tell too, bearing from France and an Organiser who had forgotten where the Txs were, but Debbie had cleverly planned her strategy to get the 'After Eighth' prize.

The Hero League



Once again Gary topped the score sheet until the handicaps were applied. In fact his performance has been so good that we have had to adapt the scoring to cope with him. He is almost certain to reach his goal of 200 Hero Points when he runs the August event and at that time everyone's HPs will be scaled back. In future this will occur if any competitor exceeds a handicap of 150, see the modified page re the handicapping system here.

Thanks to all who came along to brave the unusual temperatures and hope to see you on the next one. This will be organised by Steve in the Berkhamsted area, at least two cars will be leaving from the Colchester so if you want to book a seat(s) let me know.

Details for July 22nd 2018 here.