2024 National Qualifier No. 6

24 March 2024

Position Competitor Finish Time A Time B
1 Justin Snow 15:48:07 14:37:42 15:48:07
2 Alan Simmons 15:51:49 14:55:18 15:51:49
3 Geoffrey Foster 16:17:05 16:17:05 15:33:28
4 Colin Merry 16:22:00 15:16:36 16:22:00
5 David Ryan 15:14:13 15:14:13 NF
6 Justin Oldham 15:41:58 NF 15:41:58
7 Bill Pechey NF NF -

Paul Clark has compiled an excellent report of the event in a PDF file here.

Confessions of the winner of the booby prize

For me, this was an event plagued by mistakes and bad luck.

At the start, Geoffrey turned on his little signal source; it was fine on the DF set but very weak on my monitor. I thought it was a bit peculiar but forgot about it. Then when I took the bearings I noticed that the nulls were quite broad and the signal didn’t go right down as it usually does. However, the bearings seemed OK and, as it turned out, they were pretty accurate.

We decided to cross the river for the 2pm bearing as it was the best way to get a good cross on both stations. This was the correct strategy but, sadly, rather badly implemented. We decided to go through the outskirts of Exeter rather than using the motorway as it was shorter and we had plenty of time. We made a couple of navigational errors and didn’t get quite as far as we had hoped. We stopped in a field gate but, as I reversed out there was a nasty noise from under the car and a couple of plastic covers fell off from the region under the front bumper. I had a quick look and they didn’t seem very important so I picked them up and off we went.

Our 2pm bearings were quite good and we decided to go for Paul’s station. We weren’t sure whether it was on the coast or in woodland inland so we went off to the west. We managed to pick a very narrow road with steep banks on each side and kept meeting cars coming the other way. Trying to find a place to stop was very difficult. We missed some transmissions before finding somewhere. We had failed to get far enough away from the previous bearing so the result was inconclusive. Again the null was broad and I noticed that the signal changed when I put the headphones down. Nothing heard so far on the monitor receiver.

We then took a couple more bearings after fighting our way through Dawlish and concluded at last that Paul was on the coast at Teignmouth. We arrived quite close to the Tx at about 3:20 but couldn’t find anywhere to park so we went into a car park and bought an hour’s parking. A weak signal was detected by the monitor receiver. I fairly quickly reached the vicinity of the transmitter in the field on the side away from the lane. I tried to find a way in to where the bearings and signal strength indicated but couldn’t get through the blackthorn. I decided that the access was probably on the other side. I asked a local chap about the quickest way round; he pointed me to a gate at the bottom of the field. Once in the lane, I found the end of the aerial quite quickly but couldn’t find a way over the wall that blocked the way. As I went up the lane the signal diminished and I reckoned that Paul must be back on the other side. Once in the field again I went up the hill and found another peak in signal but it was not loud enough and there was no sign of Paul. I then went back to the blackthorn and bramble barrier and had another bash at getting through. I got some evil thorns across my face and felt a few drops of blood. When I came out of the hedge muttering, a passing lady asked if I was all right. I later realised that I must have looked awful.

About this time Doreen got a look at my face. She wasn’t very sympathetic and said that the scratches looked like a cross of Lorraine on my forehead! Blood was still dripping on my shirt. At that point (about 4:15) I decided that I’d had enough. Geoffrey appeared and was keen to find the station; I pointed him in the general direction (the transmitter was off) and started to walk back to the car before our parking fee ran out. I heard some whistling of “Test DF” in morse and thought that Geoffrey was hoping to get some feedback via the Tx microphone (there wasn’t one); I later discovered that it was Paul trying to help us in. Had I realised that, I would have got in just after Geoffrey. We reached the car, Doreen washed most of the blood away and we decided to skip the tea and go straight home.

A few miles along the M5 there was a nasty noise from the front of the car. I pulled onto the hard shoulder and found that the front mudflap thing had come loose and was rubbing on the tyre. This was a consequence of the bits of plastic falling off earlier. I managed to refit the mudflap. We had no further problems until we got home.

I realised on the way home why the bearings had been a bit funny. My trusty old headphones had packed up beyond repair after the Friday evening DF and I used a spare pair at Torbay. I remembered that, about forty years ago, I had found that RF picked up on the headphone lead got into the set and blurred the null. So I always used screened cable after that. Needless to say, my spare headphones did not have screened cable. When I unloaded the car I found, at the bottom of the box, another pair of headphones that did have a screened cable…

The problem with the monitor set is my active antenna; I think the front end FET has blown up.

In spite of everything, we did enjoy ourselves and will be back next time! Thank you Paul, Matt and Dick!

Bill Pechey.