[ARDF] How did I do in Brno?

[Marvin Johnston]

Thanks MUCH for sharing your thoughts at the World Championships!!! This
is the type of information that everyone who competed should be sharing
with the rest of the team. I would certainly encourage everyone on the
US Team to also write down their course description and thoughts. It
certainly adds a dimension to the competition that others might be able
to appreciate, and perhaps get them to give it a try.

Well, I also had a truly great time in Brno, but in a different way
since I was one of the International Jurors along with Dale Hunt from
Region II. My main interest is in mainly in how to develop a competitive
US Team, and each time I attend the World Championships, I learn more.
Here are some of my observations that apply to most of our team.

In talking to Tcherman Gouliev from Russia in Slovokia (2002), his
comment was that he was basically a professional, and he was concerned
about taking seconds off his time. We are not in that position and most
of us need to be concerned about cutting tens of minutes from our time.

Serving as a jury member was a VERY enlightening experience since I was
able to see most of the top competitors in a competitive situation. The
most enlightening thing to me was the way these people came into the
control. They came in running with their SI stick ready to put into the
SPortID control, and took off running again in the direction they needed
to go next with no wait time. Most people came into the control, some
running and some walking, put their SI stick in the control, stepped
aside and looked at their map, looked around, decided which way they
wanted to go, and took off walking or running again.

One of the things I did at the hamfest (social gathering, not a
swap/meeting type event) was to get both Tcherman (M50) and Karel (M21
2M/80M winner) to write their course routes down on one of the maps.
There were some comments about how the top competitors knew enough to go
to number 2 first on the 80M competition for the second day. When I
asked Karel why he went to #2 first, he said that it was strongest. And
because of the terrain, it had to be located about where it was. This
implies we also need training in course setting techniques so we can
predict the location of the transmitters given a direction and signal
strength.

I have a LOT more comments, and will put them into some sort of order
and post them later. For anyone interested in competing, we will have
the US ARDF Championships again next year at a date and location yet to
be announced. Stay tuned, as it will most likely be announced on the
HomingIn web site (http://www.homingin.com) and the listservers.

Marvin, KE6HTS



Matthew Robbins wrote:
> 
> Someone asked me how I did in Brno.  Normally, I'd be asleep right
> now, but I got home a little after 1am, and since I was really tired
> during the drive, I massively overconsumed caffeinated beverages.
> Someone asked me how I did, and I decided to write two or three
> paragraphs and then go to bed...
> 
> Now it's 3 hours later, and after I hit send to answer that person, I
> decided the folks on the ARDF list might want to see it too:
> 
> I'm actually proud of my performance, even though I did pretty poorly.
>  On my first day, I did 80m.  I got all five Ts, but I overtimed by 86
> seconds.  Which really hurt.  Luckily Vadim and Csaba both finished,
> so we protected our team score (you need 2 finishers on each day for a
> valid team score) (that's within each age category---We were M21).
> 
> Here's a map to follow along:
> Day 1 80m Map: http://arg.hamradio.si/2004/12wardf/12WARDF-1kv_map.htm
> 
> The maps are big.  The magnetic north lines are the standard 500m
> apart.  The scanned ones on these links are smaller than actual size.
> 
> The "leg" to the finish really surprised me.  All the controls were
> 200m or more higher than than finish.  So at my last control, I had
> over 200m of descent to do.  As I found the transmitters, I hadn't
> taken a good look at the approach to the finish, other than to notice
> there seemed to be plenty of trails/roads to get me to the finish, so
> it would be no problem, right?.  After I punched my last T, 5 (80m), I
> egressed the control location so as not to aid anyone, then I looked
> at the leg to the finish.  It would've been a decent long leg on any
> O'course.  About 1900m long, and the big trails I noticed earlier were
> on the wrong side of a big reentrant, so they weren't useful.  I
> picked what I thought was the best way, then I executed it just a
> little too slowly.  If you look at my times, I tended to be quite
> slower than the average leg time.  On my way to 5, I had a good
> crossing, so I ran trails, and got there not below the average, but
> closer to the average than my previous 4 controls.  On the finish leg,
> with only orienteering to do, I was still slower than average, but
> again closer to the average than my first 4 Ts.  I stopped several
> times to look at my map (which I kick myself for), but overall, the
> leg was just a little slower than I expected, and I hadn't allowed
> enough time.  I got hung up in some fight going into 5 for a good 5
> minutes, and I should've bailed out sooner.
> 
> Looking at it another way, the fastest time to the finish was just
> under 10minutes for about 2km, or 5min/km.  I did 25min, or
> 12.5min/km.  Which is just about as good as I do.  I've decided to
> become a runner again.  I did track (Mile) and cross-country (5K) in
> high school.  If you're fit, you can spank these courses.  Rather than
> be spanked by them.
> 
> One thing I've been dying to say about the Day 1 finish is that I
> think the organizers planned a terrible finish.  Every once in a while
> on a course, usually when I'm descending a really steep slope way too
> fast, I realize I could hurt myself really bad.  This finish was like
> that.  It kept going through my brain that I could die right there.
> At that time, I had about 90 or 120 seconds left, so I just went for
> it.  My shoes stuck like glue on the dirt.  If it had been a little
> bit wet, I think a bunch of people wouldn've gotten hurt.
> 
> I hit the beacon with maybe 60 seconds left, then I had to go down a
> contour line to a stream crossing.  I heard the announcer say, "And
> now, at the beacon, Matthew Robbins of the United States."  The stream
> was over a foot deep; I hit it going just under full speed; and I
> almost fell when I hit the water.  It was something I will never
> forget because there were about 20 people there yelling at me, and a
> whole bunch of flashes went off when I hit the water.  Maybe 8?  I had
> tunnel vision.  (I think people mistook my uniform for some other
> country.  I wasn't wearing the normal USA uniform, with the red and
> white stripes on the shoulders.  I think my subdued red white and blue
> "uniform" resembled several other countries', including the Czech
> Republic's.)  I then had to go up one really steep contour line, then
> down 3 BIG steps (50cm each--about 20 inches?), which were the stadium
> seats, to a really nice cinder track.  I was running on the track; I
> looked over to the finish; saw it was about 300m.  I turned over my
> left wrist and saw I had 30 seconds left.  Instant deflation.  I know
> I can't do 300m in 30 seconds.  That would be a world-class time. I
> know I can't make it.  But I'm still running.  I turn over my right
> wrist, and look at my heart-rate monitor.  196.  I just instantly
> started walking.  When I train, anything over 180 scares me.  196 is
> the highest I've seen in at least 8 years.   In California, I got to
> 189 as I was finishing.  If I had any chance of making my time, I
> would've kept running---They had a doctor at the finish.  I ran in the
> last 150m or so.  I heard Dennis, Jay Hennigan's mom, and one more
> American (non-competitor) (whose name escapes me) yelling at me as I
> was running in, and it really meant a lot to me, because I was pretty
> down.
> 
> Day 2 2m Map: http://arg.hamradio.si/2004/12wardf/12WARDF-2ukv_map.htm
> 
> Realize that I've only been doing ARDF for 18 months when I say this:
> Day 2, which for M21 was 2m, was the hardest ARDF course I've ever
> run.  It's the first course I've run where I didn't get all the Ts.  I
> expected going into this, the World Championships, that the course
> distance would be beyond my fitness level.  I expected to have to skip
> controls to finish in time.  But on this course, the most notable
> thiing was the control placements.  The placements were very
> challenging.  Almost all of the control locations were high up, but in
> places where you didn't have line-of-sight signals from the start.  So
> pretty much everything was a reflection or so far off it sounded like
> a reflection. If you were in a low spot, which you often were, the
> reflections were all over.  I made some bad choices early on and had
> to climb 4 medium-to-big hills to get to my first control.  Just that
> one took 56 minutes or so.  I got the next one, 3, pretty quickly
> after that, maybe 17 minutes.  After I left 3 I was on the top of a
> hill next to a huge reentrant that split the map, and that location
> let me finally get bearings I could trust for my last three controls.
> (What I'm saying is I went half of my allotted time with almost no
> decent bearings.)  2 and 5 were on the far side, near the finish, so I
> went to 4.  I thought it was on the same hill I was on, but it wasn't.
>  I spent maybe 20minutes getting to another enormous reentrant, and 4
> was on the far side.  It looked like about 100m of climb, and I knew I
> needed all I had left to climb to the finish, so I skipped 4.  I knew
> 2 was a long way away, and I knew I couldn't get it because of the
> time.  I had a good crossing for 5, and it was near the finish, so I
> went for 5.  When I got to my crossing, having been in the shadow of
> the hill as it was transmitting last, I was waiting for it to come on
> again, and I noticed an 80m runner, and then another, and then a
> third.  I knew I was near the finish, but I took all these 80m runners
> to be a bad sign.  I popped into the woods and saw an 80m control,
> which meant, Damn!, my 5 had to be over 400m away.  Looking at the
> finish exclusion circle and eyeballing the circle for the 80m control
> near me, I thought I knew where my 5 was, and I took off.  It came on,
> but I didn't have a clean shot at it, so I just kept moving.  I was
> looking at the finish beacon location, and the time.  It was about 13
> minutes until I overtimed.  5 would come on in 2 minutes, and at that
> time, I'd have 11 minutes to finish.  I was standing about 800m away
> from the actual finish line.  So I figured if I was lucky, 5 would be
> within 150m of me; I'd get it in a minute or so, and have 10 minutes
> to go about 1000m.  Which is completely doable.  No problem.  (It
> looked a lot easier than the descent into Day 1, where I did 12.5
> min/km.  Here, I'd have to do 10min/km.)
> 
> So at 11 minutes before I overtime, 2 hours 19 minutes into my race,
> yagi over my head, back and forth, 5 comes on.  I look at my blue
> Australian radio for the attenuator setting (which gives me a distance
> estimation) and it was on "4".  If it were on 5, it would mean I was
> 228m or closer, and I'd go for it.  But the range of 4 lasts from 228m
> up to about 700m, and I just couldn't take the chance.  So I turned
> around and headed for the finish.  I finished with 3 minutes to spare,
> with 2 transmitters.  I was again really upset with myself, but after
> I thought about it, I wasn't.  The course was extremely long.  Almost
> no one, including the gold medalist, got the order right.  It was,
> I'll say again, the hardest ARDF course I've ever seen, both
> physically with the distance and climb, and with the difficulty of the
> transmitter placements.
> 
> It was good that I was conservative with my 3 minutes-to-spare,
> because our number 1 guy on M21, Vadim, overtimed by 10 minutes or so.
>  That meant the team results were calculated from Csaba's and my time,
> and w00t!, we had a valid team score.  Woohoo!
> 
> Again, hindsight 20/20, I screwed up 5 big time.  First, I was using
> the calibration distances from Marvin's US Champs event, and the Czech
> radios were weaker.  So my 228m for a indication of 5 and 700m for 4
> are too long.  I'm almost certain that if I'd run at Transmitter 5 for
> a few steps the indication would've stepped up to five.  It was just a
> little over 100m away (but I didn't know that).  I think if I'd taken
> 10 or 20 steps toward it, my radio would've gone to an indication of
> 5.  When I see a five on the radio, I run like hell.  Or the closest
> approximation that my large belly and me can get to running like hell.
> 
> I love ARDF.  It is so interesting.  Other than fitness, the one thing
> I want to improve is my ability to think more quickly about tactics.
> I keep thinking of ways I could've saved 86 seconds on day one.  There
> are so many ways.  My big problem was underestimating the difficulty
> of the finish leg.  I took a really good route, but I didn't know I
> was in deep trouble until 10 minutes from the finish when I saw my
> progress was too slow.  When I was struggling through the fight into
> 5, I should have realized I was in trouble.  On Day 2, I tell myself
> that if I had put together some information that was right in front of
> me just a little bit faster, I could've gotten 3 transmitters for
> sure.  For me to have gotten 4, I think I would have needed more
> experience.  I've noticed that the high-up/no direct line-of-site
> transmitter placement is often difficult, but I'm used to seeing no
> more than 1 or 2 per course.   (I put one of these on a course I set
> just before the US Championships this year, and I was really surprised
> how out-of-the-way the competitors went to get it.)  I really want to
> set out some transmitters and do some serious testing so I can better
> sort out the signal from the reflections.
> 
> This was my first trip out of North America, and it was great.  I had
> so much fun.
> 
> Matthew
> AA9YH
> Cincinnati, Ohio USA
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