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Multi-Tx DF
Sunday 22nd
September
2019 Location West Bergholt - click here for map with zoom facility Pub The Cricketers Event Format - full details here . |
 Organiser
Philip
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Multi TX Hillhouse nature
reserve (Woodland Trust).
We have used this wood before, several years ago, thought we would try it again. Orginally planned to have some Txs much further out on the periphery, but then discovered that this might be outside the distance rules. The wood looked dense and big enough for a fair spread. The logic was to put the A set just off the northern entrance, one string to the southwest, the other on the south east corner and the Ghost in the middle to give everyone an even chance to get all ten stations. Concealing the triffids next to something they could be tied to, was tricky. The Ghost triffid I tried to hide in branches – but could in the end be seen easily at some distance, only the tricky route into location made it difficult.  |
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 Good turn out and a walk down to a start, half way down the track worked out OK as did the parking. Weather to start was warm, humid and despite threats of rain from the met office dry apart from some drizzle mid-afternoon. Number of new teams were out and though I was lined up to assist, most went off and did their own thing fairly successfully. |
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| The wood did end up being
difficult to navigate and though there were a fair amount of paths,
getting off them was tricky in places. Gary arrived latish having been held up on the A12, but nothing stopped him on site and he got back to the entrance just after 3.00 pm with all ten stations. It was a case of ‘end of event panic’ for several though. Roy appeared at the car with only 15 minutes to spare with no sense of where his joker was. Tom had been having a good afternoon, but failed to make it as did Richard and Vaughn. Top marks to winner Gary and second place Colin. Given the difficulties in getting round the wood, did not manage to find many people on the go to take photos of. Cricketer’s pub did us another fine meal with excellent service and seems to recognise us as the strange Radio people. Philip |
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Results
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Times for info - see below for meaning of red
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The effect of the 'Multi-Spice' - See here for what this means In the times above the red indicates that points at these Triffids were not validated by a later dib at the competitor's Joker Triffid. If you look at the times for Chris you will see that he first found his Joker 'A' at 13:44, then went to K but returned later to find B but banked his points by dibbing again at A before going off to look for others. Once off the path it was very easy to get lost and some found themselves apparently trapped in areas of brambles with apparently no escape, including Chris - just as well he banked! First time competitors get a 'Wild Joker' which means they do not have to return to their Joker to validate. Below I have changed the Jokers for those who failed to validate their finds to wild (*) so that they get the points for all the Triffids they found . This affects other competitors scores because points are awarded for the order of arrival , if you don't validate those behind you move up taking your place and its extra points. These are NOT the results but may help to explain 'Spice' , 'Banking' and the risks involved. If you compare the table below without 'spice' to the official results above, particularly noting the effect on Tom and Chis then hopefully you will be better equipped to judge just the right amount of spice to add to your next event!
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 | Over to our winner Gary: Thanks to Phil for organising this event - it was well thought out and thoroughly enjoyed it. True to form, I turned up relatively late after being stuck on the A12 but just managed to make the pre event photo. I thought that there would be the odd downpour based on the weather forecast, so I opted for full length leg cover. This proved a wise decision, taking into account the level of harsh, brambly undergrowth. My legs would have been shredded! The only downside was that it was incredibly humid and so made it quite hard work, wandering around dripping with sweat for 2 hours. My joker was M, but used K to get me close and decided to take the risk and go for M second and hoped that no one had it as their joker. I got to K very quickly but landed close to the transmitter just after it had gone off, meaning that Tom and Colin M were in close pursuit. It could have been any one us who took the 40 points, but I managed to locate after spending a good 5 minutes looking, and grabbed the maximum. I had to go for my joker next and therefore bypass L which was en route. I could hear someone hunting around in between K and M, which gave me an indication as to where I needed to go on my way back. I traced M down the main path through the wood, until the perimeter near the stream and managed to squeeze through some tough cover over towards M. I wasted a fair bit of time here as there was a large tree with lots of cover close to M. I was expecting for someone else to be close by at this point, but no one materialised and I managed to grab the full points tally again, by 2pm. I located L very soon after, by going back to the main path and towards the area where I spotted someone thrashing about earlier. A solid 32 points here and I had already built up a good score. I decided to go for the ghost next as it was quite loud. It was really humid at this point and Steve and I were both struggling. Steve had been hunting for the ghost but didn't have any luck. I ploughed through some tough undergrowth and managed to spot the triffid first, although I think he had already been in the area. Another 40 points and I knew that I was already relatively close to A, B & C. I found A, B & C within 9 minutes of each other which might be my personal record. Looking at the scores, Colin M also had the same success here (9 minutes) as we traded points with each other. (Dad found K, L & M within 8 minutes (is this an all time record Roy?). It did take me a while to find C though. The triffid was relatively easy to spot but I kept running passed it several times. Not always easy to judge the distance when the harder transmitters are on for less time. |
I had plenty of time to find F, G & H. I was hunting around with Colin M and Tom at F and was just in the right place at the right time to dive in first, with Tom following next. After also finding G relatively quickly and grabbing 23 points, I took a while to pin H down. It was fairly hard to access, but I managed to find a tempting looking tunnel towards the bottom corner of the wood. There was no one round at this point and it was my loneliest part of the event. I struggled to locate the triffid, despite being close by for so long. After fighting through some brambles I managed to locate it at 3.06pm. I was pleased with my afternoons performance and knew that I had some time to cool down before heading along the main path back to M. I grabbed some much needed water and eventually dibbed back into M at 3.37pm, shortly after Richard had found it. A great afternoon and thanks to Phil for putting on the event. It proves that excellent events can be put on, within slightly smaller woods. It wasn't too over used by walkers too, so proved to be a perfect choice. It's good to see some newer faces and with a solid marketing campaign over the winter, hopefully we can encourage some more fresh blood next year. I struggled for a long time to even find one transmitter in the early days of multi events, so it's impressive to see people take to it more quickly the I originally did. Gary |  |