Radio Society of Great Britain
Dudmaston - Winners' Blog

2m competition
As soon as I registered a start with my SI 'dibber', I took a bearing on control 1 and estimated from the weak signal that it was in the valley near the western lake. I marked the roughly estimated position purely as a reminder of the general area of a transmitter to help me work out the optimum order for finding the transmitters. I don't actually plot bearings anymore. I can't tell when they are good or not, so I prefer to rely on bearings only when I get into the general area of a transmitter.
When TX 2 came on air, it was strong and in the direction of the Western corner. As this was obviously the first TX to go for, I headed off down the road to find it and took bearings on the other TX's on the move. TX 3 seemed very weak and down in the South East corner near the Eastern lake. TX 4 seemed to be in the same direction but slightly stronger. I decided to ignore that bearing; it couldn't be in the same area as TX 3 so it had to be a bad bearing! TX 5 was directly East and in the middle of the map.
I proceeded to TX 2 quite easily. I left the path to get it when the carrier came up.
After TX 2 I decided to get back on the path. It may appear quicker to run straight across country, but I prefer to stay on paths for as long as possible. Fortunately, I was on the path going downhill into the valley when TX 1 came on the air and so I climbed the opposite hill and 'punched' this control while the transmission was still in progress.
While locating the first 2 TX's, I occasionally stopped to take bearings on the other TX's and continued to have problems with 3 and 4. I therefore decided to continue up to the top of the hill from TX 1 and get reliable bearings. This route took me past TX 4 but I didn't know that for sure because the bearings on this transmitter were so abysmal. I decided to go for TX 3 next as I had a good bearing on it from the top of the hill and it was then quite easy to locate. I then went back up to where I thought TX 4 was located and decided to leave the path and start searching. Another carrier failed to give a sensible bearing, so I decided to go in the direction indicated by a bearing taken near TX 3 that seemed quite good and immediately found TX 4.
Only TX 5 was left now and I was able to map navigate my way close to it because of the various earlier bearings from different areas all seemed to indicate a single area. Only one extra transmission was needed to find it and then a short easy run downhill to the finish.
During, and shortly after the event, I thought I had made a big mistake going uphill to TX 4 before going for TX 3. However, after hearing about the tremendous difficulties other competitors also had in this area, I think getting up high and taking bearings above valleys is a good way to sort out the real bearings from all the multipath ones we all experienced. I still can't explain why I couldn't properly take a bearing on TX 4. It was in flat open forest on top of a hill; it should have been easy!
Phil Smith