[usa2003ardf] Equipment tryout and Opening Ceremony

[Adam Scammell]

Equipment tryout and Opening Ceremony: Tuesday 3 rd September

Breakfast was different here, it is similar to a German breakfast.
Choices included a platter of meat and one of cheese, rolls, bread,
(and accompaniments). Their idea of orange juice differs somewhat from
mine though. I made a dash for Internet and was successful. The typical
que requires a 20minute wait.

After this detour we all collected our receivers and headed out for the
equipment tryout. We soon discovered that the 80M transmitters here are
stronger than back in Hungary. I calibrated both sniffers by marking
distances against range numbers. This will give me some idea of how
close I am tomorrow and Friday. It was interesting yet again to compare
our equipment to that off everyone else. Our receivers still surpass
the rest of the world technology wise.

A member of the Russian team, Chairman showed us the tight beam width
characteristics of his 2M sniffer. Last night we sat down with him and
the US team to discuss various aspects of the sport. Chairman had in
the past been a paid ARDF team member, he has ran 16,000 Km in his 32
years of ARDF training. He was impressed with Bryan’s sniffer when it
was in audio mode with manual ranging.

After training I had a swim in the cold indoor pool. I had visited it
earlier and the blind attendant complained about my shoes. This time he
complained about my lack of ticket. I soon discovered that I had to get
a ticket from reception. Everything was fine now, however I soon
discovered that the pool was very cold. A sign advertised 29-29 deg C,
however I think the 2 was in error. I am sure that in the middle of
winter the water would feel very warm.

At 2pm we were transported to the opening ceremony. This was held at a
near by park. Photo’s and general chitchat was interesting. School kids
led us either side of a lake parade style. The stage was attached to an
island in the lake. The official speeches were reasonably quick, we
were soon treated to some local music and dance. We were invited \
dragged by one of the dancers in a snake style dance to the live music.
It wasn’t too long before it all wound up and we caught a bus back to
the hotel. 

Dinner was as expected (and hopped) a good carbohydrate loaded meal. I
met up with Sergei a Ukraine competitor that I met at the USA
championships in 2001. In Australia we are lucky that there are not too
may competitors, and even less that want to travel overseas. Most other
countries have a National Championship to choose their National team.
Sergei didn’t make the team this year. He came this year just as a
visitor. It was great to catch up with him and discuss how he has been.

The team leaders meeting ran overtime so it was quite late when they
eventually finished. We joined the US team for their meeting. Bruce
appeared sometime later. Competitor numbers were allocated
alphabetically first by country then by surname. Bryan had 1, Bruce 2,
and I was 3. The yanks however had numbers in the vicinity of 270. We
learnt our start orders Bryan 15 minutes past 9 (the third group),
Bruce next at 10.10, and me at 11.40. The time limit would be 150
minutes. It is ok to assume that the winning time will be 40% of this.
We also learnt that the map would be 35 x 27 cm, this is bigger than
usual, (we had to fold them to make them fit our map boards). There are
29 countries represented by 308 competitors, 61 of which are in my age
class (M21).

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