After forecasts of gales and torrential rain all week prior to the event, 10 teams gathered at Maidenhead Thicket on a mercifully mild and dry night at the start of this year’s Mid Thames treble night event. Good signals were heard from all sites, but a considerable amount of skywave resulted in some competitors getting start bearings 20-30 degrees adrift from the true bearings.

The majority of competitors decided to attempt Tx C first, some thinking that Tx A was Roger Shepherd and therefore likely to be the hardest to find. Unfortunately, Tx C proved to be Roger Shepherd and was indeed hard to find, hidden under a mass of fallen trees and thick undergrowth in Balhams Wood, about 8 miles northwest of the start. After about 40 minutes on site, Mark Coventry’s team member Dan Andrews found Roger and the remaining teams followed in fairly quick succession.

Meanwhile at Tx B, Peter Lisle was being visited by Graham Phillips and Alan Simmons plus teams. This site, 12 miles South of the start just north of the M3 at Junction 3, was fairly hard to pinpoint and Peter was also well hidden under rhododendron bushes which kept Graham and Alan and their teams pre-occupied for some time.

Tx A operated by Steve Stone was situated in Hedgerley Wood about 8 miles northeast of the start and was designed to be a fairly easy site with a simple half-wave aerial and relatively few potential hiding places. For various reasons competitors found this site hard to locate and the tx hard to find. Geoff Foster chose this site first and both he and competitors approaching the site from Tx C took the best part of two hours to find Steve. This allowed Alan Simmons, despite atrocious bearings and road closures on his way up from Tx B to just nudge in ahead of Andy Mead at this site.

With just under an hour left of the competition it was now a race against the clock for any of the teams to find their third transmitter. Alan Simmons came the closest being around ¼ mile from Tx C at the end of the competition and justifiably won the event with Andy Mead in close 2nd place.

Competitors gathered afterwards in the convivial setting of the Queen and Albert at Wooburn Green to ruminate on the nights events and to chide Peter Lisle (gently!) for putting on what in the end turned out to be a slightly too challenging event.

Peter Lisle