Eight teams arrived at the Maidenhead Thicket start to hear John Mullins' first attempt at running a DF event. Geoffrey Foster, who drove down from Stratford upon Avon, unselfishly thought it was best if Claire Barrell and son team up as two teams in one vehicle so Claire can get first hand experience on actually using the DF set kindly loaned to her by Geoffrey. A fair signal was received by all teams with a bearing of around 90 degrees taken by most.

A few teams, like myself, took the lower M4 direction across the map towards the Slough area and the rest drove across and up the M40 towards Gerrards Cross. As expected, we crossed onto the little-used West London map. I managed to get right through the Slough traffic and stopped in a built-up area besides the A412.

The 8pm signal was very strong giving me a bearing up the map towards Denham. Due to my poor map reading, I managed to divert away from the area I was heading for and finished at Stoke Poges, miles to the west. The 8.15 signal was very weak and, on re-examining the bearings, saw I had plotted a reverse sense at 8pm and was less than a mile away at that time from John!

As I drove nearer the site at the Langley Country Park, I came across Mr X's car parked in the lay-by. "Ah ha!" I thought and promptly ran into the opposite park thinking this is my event (wrong). The signal proved that John and Mr. X had left their car to fool the likes of me and were across the other side of the busy dual carriageway. After eventually getting to the other side, my heart sank as Peter Lisle's and Graham Phillips' vehicles were parked in a lay-by. With signal on, I managed to get to the the area where John & Co. were hiding and, with the sudden urge to find them before Graham, I managed to follow the ever-decreasing circles leading into their hide. "Yippee I'm in!", only to find out that Steve Stone ran 2km to finish first with Mark Coventry a close second. Feeling satisfied with actually finding the Tx, I made my way out towards where I thought my car was. After getting onto the main road it appeared that I had walked in the wrong direction and after walking a further 1.5 k managed to thankfully find my car. (phew)

It was great to hear that all eight teams actually found John's Tx with Bernard Poole coming in last with his son Charlie (Welcome back Bernard).

Brian Bristow