Report on the RadiO Hageby 2010

Perfect conditions greeted the competitors for the 2010 RadiO Hageby, despite the near freezing start for the organisers earlier in the morning. This event was held in conjunction, as in previous years, with the BK Bush-O event, sharing infrastructure and a Bush-O leg.

The event consisted of up to 4 loops. 2m FoxOr, Standard Bush Orienteering, 80m ARDF and a 5-in-5 2m ARDF course. Despite efforts by the organiser to set a shorter event than last year, the terrain was quite a bit tougher than it looked on the map (for the Bush-O competitors too), so times were similar. A few competitors took the option of skipping legs which was allowed this year. Some also (sometimes unintentionally) cut short some of the legs themselves.

A huge thanks must go to Greg Tamblyn who, having finished putting all the Bush-O controls out the previous day, offered to help put out some of the radiO controls on the cold Sunday morning. I doubt I'd have got them all out in time otherwise ! Suzanne O'Callaghan setup the start whilst I was out putting out controls and had everyone organised already with SI sticks. Also thanks the Henry Post who has got the dual event entry down pat now. I appreciate you bringing the big battery Ewen. It's good to know it exists for the future.

I realised once I started turning on the 5-in-5 2m transmitters that, due to getting the FoxOrs only the Saturday afternoon following the Ringwood FoxOr and heading straight up to Daylesford, I'd completely forgotten the need to re-program the FoxOrs to a different frequency from the 145.3 MHz 2m ARDF transmitters. Ooops. I can't have  those all going while people are trying to find the low powered FoxOrs !  I briefly contemplated going out and re-visiting every FoxOr to re-program, but that would have taken way too long, and besides, I didn't know where Greg had hidden half of them. Instead elected to simply swap the 5-in-5 to be the last leg, and hoped everyone would have finished the 1st leg FoxOr before I had to start turning them on. Luckily this just about worked, except for poor Peter who had to contend with them beeping away while he was still trying to FoxOr. I figured it was mainly his own fault for starting late though. I managed to get them all turned on in 14 minutes or so by sprinting back and forth with the transmitters so as to not have to wait 4 minutes at every one to sync them up.

After all the RadiO controls were finally brought in (Thanks to just about eveyone), we met for coffee and post-event dicussions in Daylesford.

Recording loops splits using SI controls was a success, and after a fair bit of mucking about I've been able to piece together the results from those competitors who skipped loops or did them out of order. Here are the full results:

Well done to Adam and Darian for taking out the honours in the Long and Short courses. I'm also particularly impressed by the results of the Pierre/Ryordan partnership, with times only a couple of minutes after Darian.

There was some feedback on the event, and some of my own observations, and all will be taken into account for the next RadiO Hageby.

• FoxOr still a bit long. I agree. This was partly imposed by the rugged and in parts green-ish terrain. The trick was to avoid the green, but sometimes there was a bit more than was mapped. Since I don't think we should put FoxOrs any closer together than they were, potentially causing interference issues, I think instead 6 FoxOr circles would be plenty for the Hageby loop. This has the added advantage there are fewer to put out, which helps for the early morning scramble to get 3 sets of gear out.


• A number electing to skip loops. Again mostly terrain related. I'd set the course to roughly match the Bush-O loops in length, but of course you often travel quite a bit further for RadiO, so the loops need to be shorter than the corresponding Bush-O for the same category. Suggestion that we have a really easy course option (eg. RD much easier than I had, RC and RA course options). RD might only have to get a single pre-nominated ARDF TX and have only 2 or 3 FoxOrs.


• 5-in-5 shouldn't have a barrier in the middle. I wanted to send competitors out in a new direction from the other loops and also didn't want them stumbing across 5-in-5 TX's whilst on earlier loops. The only way to go out in that direction was around the railway cutting barrier. I'm not sure if a barrier is such a bad thing anyway. The 5-in-5 is meant to be training exercise for ARDF close in to controls, and there is no guarantee there won't be some sort of barrier in ARDF. Suspect a better solution is simply to have more 5-in-5 events at low key events. As they are short they'd make a good fit for post-O tryouts.


• TX-5 for 5-in-5 was too far. Possibly a little. It is meant to get harder as you go, and slipping only 5 minutes isn't a big deal. I note those who had trouble on the 5-in-5 didn't slip just 5 minutes, but many cycles, and not only on TX 5. Reflections (and brain fade) seem to have been more the problem, and this is just one of the things you have to practice in ARDF.


• The new 80m squid poles are fantastic. Thanks Gary. I used the pole, held high in my hand, to loop the wire over a branch or stub on a tree rather than actually holding up the wire full time. That way you can end up without excess vertical wire on the ground, and you don't need to secure the squid pole.


• Some of the club 80m receivers seem deafer than others. We can check these out properly when we have the sniffer mod day. Since the distances on the 80m ARDF were shorter than a full ARDF, the receivers should have had no problems at all. There is also an extra mystery receiver in a plastic bag. Does it work OK ?


• Part of the map seems to be private property.  Yes. I even herad a rumour that the start location was on private propertly, but only discovered the day before ! This was not my fault. A competitor should assume anywhere the map says is OK to go they can go, but just beware the evil Mastiff and any unhinged shotgun wielders.


• The 5-in-5 transmitters have no O flags. They never have. A 50s walk between the TXs means you'd have a good chance of seeing the flag from the previous location. You also don't want them to be found (too often) on earlier loops. Suzanne's SI punch of 33 during an earlier loop caused me all sorts of confusion when formating the raw results from the sticks :)


• I didn't notice the 5-in-5 transmitters had SI controls till I saw one on TX-3. Read the pre-event instructions ! No sympathy :)


• How many FoxOrs do I have to get ? Read the pre-event instructions and/or the map.