Radio Society of Great Britain
Alice Holt - Winners' Blog

2m competition
In the absence of a start corridor, I set off northwards in the belief that there were bound to be transmitters in that direction given the location of the start within the area covered by the map. I made sure that before I started to descend northwards from the main car park, I had taken a decent bearing on all my three assigned transmitters from the high ground. These are marked on the map as 2(1), 3(1) and 5(1). Tx 2 was somewhere down to the south east and so I ignored that, 5 was to the north east and 3 pretty much due north. That set the sequence in which I decided to find them with Tx 3 first.

I headed northwards and as I emerged from the path through two areas of fight, I noticed that Tx 5 (which was on the air at the time) was on a bearing directly along the line of the path to the left of the T junction. I quickly sketched a line on the map to record this.

Continuing northwards, I was caught on the main forest road to the south of Tx 3 when it came on. I decided to take a decent bearing but range estimation was inconclusive in deciding if it was to the south or north of the 'grot' SW of the pond. I opted for south and headed round via the small car park and figure of 8 track. I had plenty of time to get into position, so I took another bearing on Tx 5 (5(3)) as I passed the felled area and now knew that 5 was over near the eastern edge of the map close to the big area of fight.

I moved closer to where I thought Tx 3 might be and was rewarded when it fired up and the range estimation was 50m. I soon ran it down as it was transmitting. Dave Deane was nearby and came in as I left.

I now legged it across to Tx 5 and arrived SE of the area of fight to see Jim on the track. When the Tx came on I ploughed through the grot but missed the Tx. I waited on the track to the east of the grot (shown as 'run' on the map) until it fired up again when I soon ran it down. Passing Ken Jones on the way out, I now headed down towards Tx 2. This had to be in the small area at the south end of the map between the 400m circle and the edge of the map. When I got a bit closer I took another bearing (2(2)) which indicated it was east of the hill. Heading around on the track I was pleasantly surprised to spot a banner behind a tree when I was still 100m short of my planned point to take another bearing. It was then a matter of legging it for the finish.

Bob Titterington