Ended up choosing Penn Wood simply because I had to take Fran to Amersham station in the afternoon, so needed somewhere close to home to save time. Fully expected a lot of competitors to make an educated guess on this.

Sorry about the poor signal strength to the start, yet again failed to get enough height on the aerial. The approximate bearing was set to point to the South side of Wycombe, just to add confusion. Seemed to work as some people went to odd places for the 8pm transmission. Only Justin took a gamble and came directly to Penn Woods for 8pm, although a lot of other people had a bearing of 90 degrees or so, but choose not to believe it.

Penn Wood is a large area, with large clumps of rhodies. I didn't want to use these as it would have been to obvious. Decided to be just South of a long row of rhodies, but couldn't find a decent spot near to them on the other side of a fence. Where I ended up was OK. Was hoping that most would search the rhodies for a while, but most came in from a direction that avoided them.

Justin parked South of me, which was the shortest run in and I first saw his torch just after the 8.30 transmission. He searched around for a bit, but found me quite quickly. Sorry about the 8:50 transmission being late, I had a pile up of Alan, Graham, and Geoff and missed the time. Peter & Ruth spent some time searching the wrong woods, and then after finding me got lost getting out. luckily they were still nearby when Bill appeared and which much shouting and cajoling managed to get him in with a minute to spare.

Steve Stone

At the start, the signal was weak and some people didn't hear Steve's signal, so an approximate bearing of 100 degrees was given. My rough bearing was 83 degrees and that was the start of my troubles; I should have ignored the approximate. 100 degrees indicates that the site would be on the Reading and Windsor map but the 4km error bars could mean that it was just on the Aylesbury map, as it,in fact, turned out to be.

I decided to go to a known reasonable spot near Little Marlow but I could not hear the transmitter. Logic then told me that it was nearer the start. I went back towards Lane End and got a bearing that went through High Wycombe. I then went to Wheeler End Common and got another Wycombe bearing; the signal was still weak. The tale of woe continued as I missed a transmission because of traffic in Wycombe. After a couple more transmissions I was gradually getting closer to Penn Wood, having lost my way in Widmer End and almost missed a transmission that was late.

Once in the wood, it was straightforward but I stupidly decided to deviate from the main path too soon and struggled through rough stuff at a snail's pace. I was eventually helped in by Peter and Ruth with about a minute to spare.

If there had been no approximate bearing, I would probably have gone to somewhere near Penn Wood, knowing that it's not far from Steve's home.

Nevertheless, it was a nice event and the weather was not too cold.

Congratulations to Justin, whose brain worked the way mine should have done, and parked at Penn Wood at 8pm!

Bill Pechey