[ARDF] Cincinnati ARDF at East Fork SP, June 12...

[Matthew Robbins]

Here in Cincinnati, we had a small event Sunday.  It was on an
essentially new map, but in a location that has very poor parking
opportunities, so it doesn't offer us much use for larger events
(unless we use buses).  It's an unused corner of the map we used for
this year's Flying Pig A-Meet.

Competitors were Dick Arnett and Bob Frey.

I had <a href="http://www.kkn.net/pipermail/ardf/2003-September/000333.html">more</a>
transmitter troubles.  Of the five Ts, I had reprogrammed four
transmitters the night before, but when the delay was over, and they
"started", only three came on, and two of those were on top of each
other.  1 and 4 were okay, but 3 was transmitting on top of 4.  (I
have cards with the programming codes, and I'm sure I was using the 4
card when I was programming 3.)

Part of the point of the course was to have multiple decent orders,
so, luckily, 1 then 4 was an okay beginning order.  We had been
listening to the transmitters, so I told Bob and Dick to get 1 then 4,
and by then I could get to the others and get them working.  Bob said
"Don't you mean 4 then 1?  4's a lot louder than 1."  I should have
said, "Yeah", but I didn't.  Lost opportunity...

I fixed 3, then 5, then 2.  Five was the only one I didn't reprogram,
so 2 should have been working.  Later, Bob said 2 was actually
working, but it was just really quiet.  He got 2 first, way before I
got there.  We're thinking maybe antenna or battery for 2.

I went back to the start, and checked the Ts with my tape measure
beam.  3 and 4, the two farthest Ts, were the loudest, which made
sense because of the line of sight.  The other three I could barely
hear.  The funniest thing was that every bearing from the start, all
five (!), pointed toward a powerline corner in sight about 200m from
the start.  I laughed about that for a while, although I'm sure it
didn't affect them once they started.

I had a homing beacon, but I didn't have the antenna high enough.  If
I have the finish in a place like this again, I'll try for a 20 foot
crappie pole with one of those twin-lead J-poles, or something. Dick
didn't hear the homing beacon from about 800m out.

Despite not hearing the beacon, losing his map due to a wet mapboard
(the velcro adhesive still had paper attached), and having radio
trouble, Dick won by about 12 or 15 minutes.

My biggest mistake was not testing the transmitters.  I usually
program them, then turn them all on and make sure they start when the
delay is over.  I actually started that process twice, but both times
something was wrong, so I stopped, changed programming, then
restarted.  After the second failure, I made changes and went to bed
(at midnight)  Big Mistake.  I should have started them at midnight,
and gotten up at 3 am to verify everything, and then gone back to bed.

 The navigation was pretty challenging.  It was mapped in Oct/Nov, and
the summer vegetation is out.  It wasn't too bad, but it did slow
things down a little.  One of my big mental associations with East
Fork involves briars, but this area just has small, well-mapped areas
of briars. There were a few patches of stinging nettles, which I hate.
 I had to pass through about 100m of it on one flood plain.  The
stinging only lasts 10-20 minutes, but *man* is it a long 10-20
minutes.  This map should be really fun when it's not summer.

Overall, it was a really good workout, but the transmitter troubles
made it a little less challenging than I'd hoped.

Matthew
AA9YH
Cincinnati, Ohio