Radio Society of Great Britain
3.5 MHz Championship - Planner's Comments

The weather for the 3.5 MHz competition was simply diabolical with temperatures in the 7-10 C range instead of the seasonal norm of 17C. Stoicism was the order of the day as we all waited to start in the rain which just got heavier and heavier.

I tried to set one or two 'challenges' for the 3.5 MHz event. The first of these involved the location of TX #4 which optimally should have been visited either first or last. Michael Dunbar on the M40 course made an inspired call by visiting it last and secured the British 80m ARDF Championship as his reward. David Deane in M50 also got it right as did Simon Beck in M21.
A very popular sequence was Start > TX 1 > TX 4 and this involved climbing 60 metres up to TX 1 before descending to TX 4 and then having to repeat the 60m climb to get to TXs 2 and 3.

The second decision competitors had to make was whether to go across or round the big re-entrant between TXs 5 and 3. Since the climb from TX 5 to the high point of the road was 85 metres and the climb from the lower road up to TX 3 was only 60 metres, going across was the best choice.

There were some pretty impressive times between punching at TXs 2 and 3. The best of the day was by Michael Dunbar who managed a sub 5 minute time in the uphill direction!

Congratulations to Alexandr Kochergin of Kazakstan for returning the fastest time of the day as he powered round the M60 course in under an hour. The absolutely amazing thing is that he declined to take a copy of the map with him. He studied the map at the start line showing how it could be folded to A4 and then set off using map memory and the signals he picked up on his receiver.