Ten Txs to find.

Sunday April 10th  2022    Multi-DF    Location   Pods Wood, near Tiptree.   Road map with zoom here Event Format - full details here .

Organiser  Roy E

I spent a very pleasant 4 hours in the sun, wandering around the wood on the Saturday, placing the 10 Txs and having plenty of chats with dog walkers. This must be the earliest time of year that we have used these woods, normally there is plenty of undergrowth but apart from a few daffodils, bluebells and a lot of brambles there was very little green cover for the Triffids, needed some brown ones!  All that was available was moss, so it was fortunate I had a trowel available to shift bits around, note the pile around the base of the tree in the right-hand photo reducing the the angles from which Triffid H was visible.

Tx Locations             Easy      Moderate difficulty     Hard  (Ghost is 1) I suspected that after the long break from Multi-Exercise, keeping the distances down may help some of the more mature participants - or it could have been that my own joints were influencing my sub-conscious!

13:30  All Txs heard at the start - phew!

Colin M gets the first of the new 2022 Multi-Star trophies, I have been told that the stars are solid 26 'carrot' silver.

Proper job (2nd) for Tom, may have won if he had realised that the Ghost goes off at 15:00.

With a case of golfer's leg Steve did an eggcellent job to come in 3rd.

While Philip was in the 100% spot.

So over to our winner Colin: After a five month break during the winter months I couldn’t wait for the multi-DF season to restart. It was good to see everyone again on the path into Pods Wood, raring to go. After the usual briefing and photo call we all listened for the first round of transmissions before setting off to find them. I had decided not to attempt to accurately plot the bearings to the TXs but simply to mark their ID letters on the edge of the map, in the rough direction. (This seemed to be adequate for a multi-TX event). My joker was C. I ran down the track to the south expecting A, B and C to be near to the south edge of the map in order to spread the TXs out. However, I had shot past the turn-off to C and had to retrace my steps a bit. There I also heard H clearly. One more transmission from C and I had found it. Then the old chestnut of finding the nearby triffid. Yes, spotted it, then on to B which only took another two transmissions. Then on to A which took a little longer, but I remember looking at my watch and seeing that I had found a 3-TX group in under half an hour (before 14:00) and I don’t ever remember achieving that on any previous event.

Hunt for ghost triffid!

I now needed to decide which group to attempt next. The nearest group to TX A was the K,L,M set. But I was not to know this and, since I had heard H strongly near C, that was the deciding factor to go for F,G,H. I had anticipated coming across TX H first on heading off to the east. However my DF set’s peak control had been inadvertently moved off-frequency and I was confused by the weak signal. So decided to go for F instead and headed northbound, almost to the road. Just got to F before the end of a transmission and saw Steve and Rosie in that area. Then I headed south for G hidden near to a mass of rhododendron bushes. A weak signal told me that H was even further to the south – it was weak because of my DF set peak control maladjustment which was then readjusted and so found it and the triffid in due course. Colin F was just approaching H as I was leaving. Again, on checking my watch, I had found another set in less than half an hour (before 14:30). Now, whilst listening to H I got an occasional signal from the ghost. If I was going to find it then NOW was time to do it since it would cease transmissions at 15:00 and it was also conveniently en-route to K, L and M. It was much further north than initially expected, and very near where we parked the car. Found the tree hosting the TX and aerial amongst some rhododendrons but failed to find the triffid! Another three transmissions passed while searching. A lucky shaft of sunlight finally revealed the triffid’s hide, on the ground below the rhodo.

Then across the road for KLM. Can’t remember any detail apart from seeing Tim in the area and located the last TX at 15:06. Now, it has been a long time since last doing a multi-TX DF event and I had forgotten that finding all the transmitters is not all that is required. I strolled back to the car, talked to Roy for a while and then casually meandered off down the track to collect TX C (my joker). So I got to TX C and this is where it could have all gone very pear-shaped. I had simply forgotten the rules and the requirement to dib in again at the joker TX. I would have overlooked to do this but for a stroke of luck and my total points would have been zero. Fortunately Colin F had also made a mistake. His joker was B but he mistook station C for station B and dibbed at the wrong TX.  So we were both at station C. After some discussion he recognised his mistake and duly headed off to find B again. I was thus reminded of the need to dib in at the joker TX and so did just that – but only after being prompted! Well done Roy, not just for a good event but also for maintaining all of the kit including some 130 battery cells which all need to be charged beforehand.

Colin finally sees the ghost!