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Radio Society of Great Britain 2m competition
When I checked in, the info sheets were not being distributed and I forgot to ask which transmitter I should omit. I realised this after starting and so had to go and find all five instead of the four I would have chosen to hunt.
I took a set of bearings at the far side of the orienteering car park. TX 1 was furthest left but only of fair strength, TX2 was weaker and more or less straight down the road I was standing on. 3 and 5 were loud and I plotted decent bearings for both. Finally TX 4 was pretty weak but I got a good bearing by holding my yagi as high as I could and swinging it about. From this I deduced that 4 was in the north west corner of the map and so ignored it for the time being.
TX 5 seemed very loud and I was undecided about whether I should head for TX 5 en route to TX1. After some indecision, I eventually headed for TX1 but must have lost a transmit cycle while I made up my mind. I got to the area of TX1 to be joined there by Stuart who had started 5 minutes after me. When TX1 fired up it was only about 30 metres away and easy to run down.
A bearing on TX5, combined with the bearing taken from the start, pinned it down (I thought) in the wood along the south side of the coffin shaped oob area. TX2 was weaker and away to the WSW. I opted to go for TX5 next and was heading across towards the oob area while it was sending. Just before it went off the air, the bearing began to swing to the left and I spotted something on a small fir tree which stood alone in the open area. ‘Neat siting’ I though; like most competitors I expected to find the TX in the trees.
Another bearing on TX2 pinned it down to the far SW corner of the map and I headed for a small open area with lots of paths radiating from it and had to wait there for it to transmit. I was only 20m from it when it came on and I punched quickly; Stuart had also appeared there and got it just before I did. We then headed northwards and my new bearing on TX3 was slightly east of due north as I headed up the track along the western edge of the map. My bearing from the start told me that the TX was near an open field with a couple of houses on it and surrounded by the woodland. It fired up as I was halfway up the west side of this ‘field’ and I ran round the north side but was just too late to find it before it went off. I failed to search quite widely enough and missed it by about 10 metres. Consequently I had to hang about until it transmitted again. While I was waiting I got another bearing on TX4 which combined with the one I had got from the start, to place TX4 on the top of the hill in the NW corner of the map.
Once TX3 had come back on and been found and punched I set off for TX4 knowing that I had five minutes to get there before it would transmit usefully for me. My next bearing from the top of the hill, was pretty much due west but the signal was surprisingly weak so I thought the TX must be somewhere close to the road. In fact it was nearer and part way up the hill and it took me another transmission to run it down.
After that it was the long haul back to the finish. I made it back just as the heavens opened and I scuttled across to Stuart’s car for shelter.
I obviously lost a five minute cycle in that Stuart caught me at TX1, then if I had searched a bit whilst waiting for TX2 to fire up, I could have saved another 2 min and finally if I had searched better at TX 3 another 3 minutes would have been saved. That adds up to two TX cycles.
Bob Titterington
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