Seven teams braved this wettest evening DF so far with Mark Coventry running his first ever station G4MDF/P. Most teams heard a fairly weak signal at the start giving a bearing of around 60 degrees. Three teams waited for the approx bearing. I, with navigator John, arrived just short of Beaconsfield when the 8pm Tx came on. To our surprise, it was quite strong. With this in mind, we progressed up the A40 to Gerrards Cross, where the next signal was very weak taking us back to Beaconsfield. On arriving at the Motorway junction we encountered Alan Simmons and Geoffrey Foster who, like us, were debating which way Mark was transmitting from.

Three transmissions later, we decided it was in the grounds of Hall Barn to which a small footpath crossed a large field. On running around part of the field I noticed a small coppice which did not show on the map and with a fairly constant transmission managed to find Mark and his friend hiding near to a fence which he had attached his aerial to! This time I found that we had gained fifth position with two other teams not finding site before closedown. After trying to disqualify three teams for driving down a road marked private and then being threatened with expulsion myself for crossing part of the field without a footpath, it was decided to keep the results as recorded...

Credit to Mark and Co. in that they actually regained all the aerials they had for the event before coming to the pub.

Brian Bristow