Radio Society of Great Britain
Foxoring - Winner's Blog

3.5 MHz Foxoring competition
Titterstone Clee is an extraordinary landscape, carved out of a hillside by generations of quarrying and mining activity. I think I was more prepared for the technical challenge than the visitors, since it is an area I have orienteered on many times. Always when orienteering here in the conventional way, I have had difficulty with the fine detail - so to be able to run towards the controls using rough navigation and then use the radio signal to home in made things a lot easier for me.

The course itself was quite straightforward, since the limited number of controls removed the need for agonising route choice decisions and left just one obvious order to hunt them. I did spend a little time at some controls actually pin-pointing the SI box on the ground, usually requiring some careful inspection of the gorse bushes, since the receiver tended to lead me round in a circle. It should not have done this!

I found the signal strengths quite variable: I recall E in particular being unusually weak and G particularly strong. There was a noticeable shielding effect from nearby steep slopes, but that did not account for the range of strengths observed. Once or twice I experienced the crossover between neighbouring controls, when both were relatively strong (eg F and G).

Credit and thanks to David Williams for laying this on: it is a format we have only recently introduced in the UK but one which I particularly enjoy.

Robert Vickers