Six teams all armed with torches took part in the last Gage Tyler dark event. There was a welcome return from Bill Pechey. The first signal from Mark Coventry was very weak with only a few teams actually hearing the weak morse that with adjacent QSOs. An approximate bearing of 15 degrees being read out. Bill Pechey and I managed to get up to Beaconsfield whilst others decided to go towards the Holmer Green and Prestwood area. The 8 pm signal was also very weak from all locations and with constant QSOs and slight sky wave made it impossible to pin the location of Mark's hide. With rain now starting to come down I drove to the middle of the area where it was possible Mark was located. The next signal was improved but still weak putting Mark near to the edge of the 4km max bearing field. As I managed to drive back from the 4km bearing the signal still pointed out of the projected area, and after driving miles around Coombe Hill I managed to DF down the hill towards Dunsmore where Bill Pechey's car was parked. With torches on started the long haul up into the woods and with the clock ticking near to close-down managed to scramble into Mark's hide with a minute to spare, only to find the three other teams also had problems tracking Mark's site down. After a few moans regarding being outside the 4km max (yellow card shown) we all plodded back to our cars and eventually to the local pub to hear how all the other teams (who were actually near Mark) failed!

Brian Bristow