Training Log Archive: mikeminium

ARDF 80m course at Peaceful Valley, Elbert CO.
Orienteering A-, Radio C+ Not good enough for a medal, but good enough to edge out K4BRI by about 6 minutes.

Followed by 675 mile driving day.

ARDF 2 meter course at Peaceful Valley. Not a good run.
Couldn't pick up any signal at all, at least a third of the time. Seems to be a loose connection on my receiver and/or bad earphones.
Finally found two of four controls, then broke an element on my antenna while going to the next one. Hasty field repair sorta worked, but by then I was pretty discouraged and took about five cycles within 100m of my last control. Orienteering from there to the finish gets an A, radio work gets a D-

Not very physical, but hey it is worth the story. Came back from dinner to find a snake soaking up the last heat from the gravel parking lot, right by the walkway to the admin building. It was almost completely dark, and the snake was definitely in a place that would soon see a lot of foot and vehicle traffic. So I herded it to the relative safety of some tall weeds nearby.

Well. That. Sucked.
ARDF Sprint at Peaceful Valley.
It would sure have helped if I had known which frequencies to set on the borrowed radio.
Found 9 controls by luck, then the last one after I finally figured out that I had the frequencies reversed.
Orienteering "B", Radio "F".

Event: US ARDF Championships (Radio Orienteering)
 

Ten control Fox-O at Peaceful Valley Scout Ranch. What this amounted to was a ten control yellow / or range course, with an Easter egg hunt once you got to the circle. The micro transmitters were weak and my receiver was so bad that I could only pick up the signal when I got within 2 to 4 meters. I lost a couple minutes on one control and probably 4 minutes on another, both because of searching for the transmitter, which in at least the one case was actually outside the circle. Probably only one 10 second or so orienteering mistake. I finished third. First place beat me by 58 seconds; second place by 15 seconds. Oh, to have had a decent receiver!

Borrowed Dick's Ukrainian receiver and went back out to try it out. Now I could hear the controls from 20-40 meters. That would have saved me at least five minutes on the course.

Control pickup.

After second consecutive 1000 km driving day.