I had spent some considerable time planning this year’s event even prior to offering to run it early in the year. Brian was so frightened at the prospect that he concocted some story [afraid of the dark or something] in order to avoid the showdown.

My idea was based upon giving the teams a good event without resorting to driving massive distances. The minimum distance between the optimum parking spaces for all stations was about 8 miles.

Bill and Doreen Pechey offered to run a station, I accepted them at their word, their idea was to run a station together, mine was that they run one each. Given that I was taking a bit of a liberty, the least that I could do was to locate the stations so at least they could talk to each other. OK they needed a walkie-talkie but the stations were less than 100 metres apart. Both Doreen’s station A [G4TRY 1900kHz] and Bill’s station B [G4CUE 1910kHz] were about 4Km north of the start clearly on the exact same bearing. Although the Mid-Thames DF Tx sets are of the same design and nominally the same there is almost a 2:1 difference in power at the output terminals, Doreen had the most powerful with an aerial which was as close to a vertical quarter wave that we could manage. Bill had the weaker set with a very low dipole, connected via an attenuator built on the afternoon of the event from items in my scrap box, the ends of both legs of the aerial connected to the same fence. I had hoped to dummy the teams well up the map [if we could introduce sufficient sky wave into Bill’s signal], either that or get a sufficiently strong signal for people to start running from the start. In any case eventually everyone should get to the locality merely from the strength of station A at which time the master stroke would come into play, the stations were the minimum frequency apart [10kHz] permitted by the rules and operating to exactly the same schedule making Bill a bit tricky to find. In the event this fooled most teams the quickest was Peter Lisle who logged 13 minutes between the 2 stations.

Station C [G4MDF 1950kHz] was operated by Steve Stone and located about 8Km East of the start in Penn Wood. This is a location that has been used on quite a few occasions, this time it was chosen for its extensive selection of rhododendrons. There is an area about half of one mile square with a range of paths bordered on both side by the plants, although not very thick they are extensive. The transmitter was located under a fallen tree trunk in a location that had been subject to about 3 hours increased excavation, the aerial was pretty much the same as station B. At both station B and C the aerial was an asymmetric dipole about 100M in length, unfortunately [or otherwise for the teams] my attenuator that had been planned for use at station C had a failure so it was not possible to reduce the signal strength. It had been hoped, by keeping the aerial low and the signal weak to persuade everyone that the station was towards the edge of the map [maybe in Rodger’s Wood which is a bit further away on the same bearing]. In any case it still took George Whenham nearly 2 hours to be the first into this station followed shortly afterward by Mark, Peter and Tim. There were some curious sense indications close to the station, perhaps caused by some nice new barbed wire fencing running parallel to the aerial behind the rhododendrons on the other side of the path – strange that.

In the end everyone got 3 good signals at the start, 5 out of 8 teams found all stations and the winner was not embarrassingly quick, so it can be done. I think Eric would have approved.

Finally, I must once again extend thanks to my wife Sheila, for offering to run the supper single-handed after the Pub that I had arranged contacted us and declined to do the food. At the end of the evening I didn’t have any takers for more pudding. I have been warned not to rely on this level of catering again [or at least for awhile] so someone else will have to run the event next year.

Roger Shepherd