Sunday April 27th 2014 Top Band Multi-Tx DFOrganiser Gary P |
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 Originally the plan was to use Blake's Wood but that was incredibly busy with people taking pictures of bluebells. Some quick thinking from Gary and the Txs were set up on Lingwood Common instead, just 200m down the road. |
 Gary had the daunting task of finding a site and getting up very early to hide ten Txs for us to play with, he says: Nine competitors assembled at Lingwood Common, in Danbury, for the second Multi DF of the year after two previous site changes due, in both cases, to bluebell invasion. |  Lingwood Common seemed a suitable site with a network of footpaths and enough cover to cause enough disorientation during the event. A footpath running parallel to the main bridleway would also prove to cause confusion for some competitors and myself, during set up. |
 |  Welcome to Kathryn, Pete and James. Left - being interviewed on the way to the new start - a first! Above ... the average age is decreasing ... another first!! |
 Due to the northern part of the wood being fenced off, the event area would be more narrow than usual so the plan was to use as much depth of the wood as possible to ensure the triffids were sufficiently apart from each other. A malfunction on my phone (used as a site map) meant that I had to guess and hope, in some cases, that I was positioning them correctly. In hindsight it looks as though 'I' was far too close to 'A'. The plan was to make sure all green transmitters were fairly close to each other and not too well hidden, with increased difficulty towards the red end of the scale. This was certainly achieved with 'Y' however 'Z' was probably not as well hidden, being in the open, next to the edge of the wood. A couple of difficulties were incurred during the set up, which commenced on site at 8am, including breaking the earth on ' Tx G'. Luckily Roy was on hand to offer the services of the spare transmitter. |  Looks as though the boys need help .....  |
 |  Daddy it's over here! |
 |  Posting all their hard earned points at Maxi A. |
 Richard's new set was working well. |  Graham using my old set was doing well too but we are not talking about that! |
| The event went smoothly though, my afternoon being spent with Peter, Kathryn and James, as they competed on their first event. Kathryn was able to use her geocaching skills to help Peter and James find six triffids before returning to the 'A' station at 3.20 to find Phil resting on the bench after a maximum haul of triffids. |
 All
competitors faired well during this event, but it was Steve who romped
to victory, helped by 4 x 40 scores very early on in the event. |
 Approximate Tx locations |  Philip's Strava trace starting from R near his Joker S. |
| Top
man Steve won the
Multi-Star 2014 to keep and also became the first person to
achieve 80 HPs and take away the Multi-Hero Challenge Trophy. HPs to carry forward: Steve 40+50-10 = 80 Philip 40+10-10 = 40 Colin 3 +3 - 0 = 6 Roy 43 - 0 = 43 Gary (organiser) 30 - 5 = 25 HPs count as handicaps and 'Hero Points', explanation here . Thanks to Gary for putting on an A1 event. |
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So how did Steve do it ? An interesting event with the switch of area. From the start followed Phil up the hill, with initial information on A & B being further on and to the left slightly. When F & G came on these also were to the left, so decided to go for these since they seemed reasonable close. Lost sight of Phil, so wasn't sure what he was heading for. The other TXs during the cycle seemed to be further up the wood. however Y & Z were across the wood, probably about the same distance from the start as the 4 green TXs. With Y as my joker I thought about going there first, but decided to stick with the A, B, F, G, and decide after that. Picked up G fairly easily and took a while to get F. Back out to the path and up the hill, just in time for A to come on and found it fairly quickly. Then went for B which seemed a fair way back towards F & G. I think I saw one other competitor during this time and was surprised to pick up 4 x 40 points. At this point decided to leave Y & Z until the end since I had a good score going and didn't want to spend ages on these two and loose points elsewhere. I & J were next and Phil was in the area. Saw him by a thicket and went and had a look but didn't spot the triffid for J. Following I took me down the hill, but ended up backtracking when J came on - back to where Phil was. Found it ok this time, then back down the hill for I. Wasted a bit of time here. Headed off for R & S. Went down the hill towards R then backtracked when S came on. Had to back out of the grot at one point and find a way around. Met Rosie coming in to S. |
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| Back out to the path and down the hill to R.
Managed to get a turning
bearing just as it went off. Crossed the small stream and luckily
spotted the triffid. At this point was completely lost and had no idea in which direction Y & Z were, so climbed (slowly) back up the hill to the main path. Eventually headed off for Y & Z. Took a couple of cycles to get in the area. Z was relatively simple as the bearing turned sharply as I went passed it, pointing down to a stream, so that limited how far it could be. Y was a pain as I never seemed to be getting closer. Waited about 200m from Z, which should have been the limit. Saw Phil coming down the hill, didn't know whether he'd been to Y or not. Still took two transmissions to get on top of it. Luckily spotted the triffid before I wandered away to far. Walked back to the Maxi and met Phil just finishing as well. Many thanks to Gary for organising a good event, especially considering an area change as well. |
| Thanks to Gary, Philip, Steve and Pete for the pictures and words, and thank you all for coming along. Steve is running the next event on Sunday June 1st, details to be announced here soon. Pete is producing a report for Essex Ham, read it here. |