[ARDF] 2004 USA ARDF Championships

[Kenneth E. Harker]

Since I haven't seen it posted here yet, the 2004 USA ARDF Championship
now has a web site:  http://www.sbarc.org/ardf/

For those who do not know what the "epunches" the welcome page refers to, 
these have become popular in traditional orienteering meets.  The manufacturer 
is SportIdent.  The e-punch is a small plastic device with an elastic band 
that you wear on any finger.  It weighs essentially nothing.  You insert the 
e-punch into a box at the control, where in a matter of about a second, you 
will hear a beep and see an LED flash - and that's it - you've punched!  
(There will be a similar box to punch at both the start and the finish.) 
The process is much faster for the runner than fumbling with cards and 
hand-punches, and the e-punch system will record your time at each control, 
so that after your run, you will know not only your overall time, but how 
long it took to get from each control to the next.  In the case of ARDF, it 
will also let us know the order in which runners chose to find the 
transmitters.  

More information online:
  http://www.baoc.org/faq/e_punch.php
  http://www.sportident.se/ol/edefault.asp

The only drawback to the e-punch system, as a competitor, is that you lack 
the visible feedback of the punch on the card to remind yourself that, yes, 
you did visit a particular control (transmitter.)  Since most ARDF competitors
are already marking bearings on their maps, marking out a transmitter as
"found" (if you feel that you need to do that) shouldn't be a big problem.

-- 
(Note: I have changed my primary personal email account.  Please replace
 your address book or alias listings of kharker at cs.utexas.edu with 
 kenharker at kenharker.com.  Thanks! - 31 March 2004)

--
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
kenharker at kenharker.com
http://www.kenharker.com/