Radio Society of Great Britain
144MHz Championship - Winner's Blog

2m competition
All the transmitters were clearly audible at the start and I was not sorry to be starting 100 metres or more above the finish! I was hunting 1, 2 and 5. 1 and 2 were over to the south behind the hill on which we started. 2 was louder than 1 but with screening between me and the transmitters I did not bother to get a bearing at the end of the start corridor. 5 was to the north and I took some bearings when I got onto the top of the hill. I spotted the track on the map which runs northwards from the SW corner to the top of the map and thought that would be a good route to get from 1/2 up to 5. That made me opt to go for TX 1 before TX 2, to reduce the distance to be covered.

Having sorted out where everything was roughly located I set off for TX 1. At point A it fired up and I checked the bearing - pretty much straight on down the forest road. Range estimation gave an answer of 250m (i.e., somewhere between 125 and 500 metres!). With the edge of the wood less than 500 metres away, I opted to go to the forest road/track junction marked 'B' for the next transmission. If the TX transpired to be off to the west, I then had a good route to take in that direction. When it did fire up it was further on down the track and a bit left. I ran as fast as I could until it was at ninety degrees and I then turned into the trees. It was getting loud but went off when I was about 50 metres short. I spotted some pink tape in the trees and was drawn to that. From there I spotted the TX.

I knew TX 2 was in the SW corner of the map and after some pondering decided to take the forest road to point 'C' and not the parallel ride to the south of the road. With hindsight I might have saved a TX cycle if I had chosen the ride.
When TX 2 came on again I charged across to the ride but was short of the top of the re-entrant when it went off. Who should appear at this point but Michael Dunbar who had started after me. I was the other side of the re-entrant when it came on next and missed it as I ran (well tottered) the bearing back up to the ride. Turning round to look back I spotted another bit of pink tape and the same ploy that worked at TX 1 worked again here.

Then it was onto the south-north track. I took a bearing when 5 next came on and plotted this, showing the TX a bit to the left of the line of the track. The exclusion circles around the start and finish restricted its location quite a lot and it had to be somewhere to the west/northwest of the Beacon.

TX 5 fired up when I was at point D but this is a high spot with an excellent 'takeoff' to the north and as a result I did not pay a lot of attention to the signal strength as this was likely to be high relative to the distance to the transmitter. I also made sure I kept to the track which looked out over the falling ground to the west - I did not wish to descend too soon.
The TX was next on when I was at point E. Now it was weaker but still pretty much straight ahead. All the bearings were parallel'ish and so it was down to range estimation again to decide how far north to move before stopping to wait for the next transmission. I stopped at point F and was delighted when the TX fired up and was directly down the slope. I had not come a step further north than I needed to. I headed off down the hill 'running the bearing' and before long the signal strength started to climb fast - a sure sign that I was close. Just as it went off the air, Alan Poxon emerged from the trees just in front and a short look round the corner of some bushes had TX 5 in the bag.

I tried to re-tune to the beacon but could not find it, so I used the map to navigate to the circle. When I was about 100m from the beacon a buzzing in the receiver told me it was in fact on the air but with B all modulation. The route to the finish seemed a bit vague and I only spotted one bit of pink tape, but I ran in the general direction taken by early orienteering finishers and soon spotted both the finish and the 144 MHz planner waving his camera about.

Bob G3ORY M60