Nillumbik Emus Orienteering Club  StreetO Training Nights - Results

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What's all this Radio-Orienteering stuff about then...

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The Map

Comments from Participants

Course Setter (Bruce) - Ian Stirling made a good suggestion - he couldn't see the white Foxor Transmitters and asked if I could put flouro tape around them. This seems a fair point, but on the other hand you don't want to be able to spot them from too far away (eg. other side of creek etc). Strangely, no grumbles from Keith this evening - he was so proud of himself for sneakily moving #17 that in his fit of euphoria he forgot to think of something to complain about. Even Ian Greenwood enjoyed it !

Ian Greenwood (recovering from his recent trip to NZ) - Good fun tonight. David and I teamed up and went for the 'you get this one and I'll get that one approach'. It worked well except for our technical problem of a flat sniffer half way around. It prevented us from getting the last 2 controls at 11 and 17. I was also amused to pick up a piece of TV aerial near control 3. About 20 minutes later, Marta and Ian passed me and I asked them if they were missing something (I was pretty sure it was their's as they were near me at 3). They had been frustrated by their faulty sniffer that was missing its front legs! Anyway, thanks for the fun night, Bruce! (BTW - I found my blue wrist-band later in the evening).

Geoff - We decided that Judy would take the map and I would do the radio controls by map-memory. This worked out pretty well - as I ran with David Beard to #13, two streets down and right-left-right to #14, headed down to the school (but on reflection #15 was probably better) but didn't realise that there were 3 circles there as I hadn't thought to focus on that at the beginning. 18 was in a bush next to a steep embankment and I walked around the steep side gingerly before finding it...then headed across the oval to #15 where I teamed up with Ian Greenwood, Bryan and Rick to find the well-hidden #15. As I headed towards #16, I bumped into David Beard with a faulty sniffer - so we decided to tag-team for the remainder of the event. David sniffed to #16 and found it pretty quickly. By this time, map-memory was beginning to fade - my intention had been to run along the East side of the drain until I hit the second bridge, but we saw Ian Stirling appear from a road opposite us as we came away from 16 and decided to go that way. We knew that we were looking for an EW side-road with a NS road off one end....and peered down each court as we ran past. Eventually, we found it...but it took longer than expected...and was made even harder by the high-fence between us and the fox.

#11 was a disaster for us - I had inadvertently planned a route from the footbridge - "run out the road, turn right and then keep going until you hit the parkland that takes you up to the control". Unfortunately, this strategy fails when one is already past the parkland and has no map....so we ended up taking the long-way around. Sorry David!! Even closing into the transmitter proved challenging and I fumbled around in the park and finally decided to give up...but as I walked out I noticed that there was a gate in the fence and sure enough, the transmitter was behind a bush 3-4 metres on the other side of the fence. As I ran back towards the finish, I was already pretty late and got a solid signal from #17 as I passed the Mitsubishi caryard (although, if I'd had a map, I might have run down the parkland and then across the oval....very sneaky Mr Bruce. The picture below shows "the long way to #11..."

From Mark Besley - I teamed up with Greg Swenser. We stayed together for the whole event which obviously cost points although I don’t think I was up to memorising much. Greg held on to the map for most of the event and although he showed me the route to the next control each time we stopped to write the number, I forgot several and just relied on following him! We decided not to do 17 & 18 as we thought the risk of spending time in the wrong circle was not worth the points for these. This turned out to be a wise decision when I offered to pick up no. 18 after the event. I went to the two “wrong” circles first, kept hearing interference (probably from school computers) and thinking it was the control. Wasted about 20 minutes which could have happened during the event.

We went 8 – 12 – 7 – 11 – 6 – 4 – 16 which was OK until I went directly east from 4 and bashed my way through the bush to 16 rather than going in the far more sensible way in a bit further north. I also cut my arm on a bolt on the fence – the arm started bleeding profusely and I had to tie a hanky round it to stop the bleeding. I told Greg to finish the event then send someone back if I collapsed from loss of blood. We finally got going again but lost a lot of time getting 16. From there we went 5 – 3 – 2 – 15 – 1 – 14 and then to the finish as we were out of time.

Despite the dramas we had a lot of fun. Yes the transmitters were hard to find by torchlight but I think reflective tape would have made it too easy. Thanks to Bruce for setting it up and to Bryan for providing extra sniffers.
 

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