Radio-O at Carolina Forest 8/14/2016 Results

The event was a great success in that almost everyone found all the controls and had fun.

In this White/Yellow level event there are 5 transmitters, each on a different frequency, transmitting continuously.

There were a reasonable assortment of issues that make any ARDF event “unique”, shall I say.  We picked up a box of Chinese receivers from Patrick for everyone to use.  We got one ready and discovered that there were only a few headphone sets.  Then Joseph went out to set controls while Ruth set up all the Start/Finish and meet equipment.  Fortunately, Joseph called Ruth to see if she could hear the transmitter with the receivers we were using — and she couldn’t hear the control.  So Joseph redesigned the course to bring them all within 400 m of the start.  During the setup, one of the battery connection wires broke loose, so a quick field repair was necessary.  When Joseph got back, Ruth had everything set up and was handing out the receivers.  There were almost enough head sets, so two pairs went out needing to share the receiver.  After the class, everyone had marked the frequencies on their receiver, and was psyched to go out.  Unfortunately, no one could hear #5.  It was set at 3.63, which was no problem for the receivers we tested with, but the receivers we were using couldn’t tune that high.  After most had started, Joseph went out to #5 and changed it to 3.53.  Surprisingly, most found #5 and those who didn’t mostly went back out to get it. On the bright side, when the pairs who went out with one transmitter went back out for #5 there were transmitters available for each to have one. To add to result calculation difficulties, some didn’t clear their finger sticks and others didn’t punch Start.

For those who didn’t punch the start or clear ,we used their average time between controls to assign a Start Time.  For those who came back without #5 because they couldn’t hear it and went back out, their Finish Time includes all the hanging out as well as the time to go back out for #5 and finish again. Speaking of going back out, Harold first went out to get #5 and went out again with a different receiver and got all of the transmitters a second time.

So here is the Result Data. Highlighted fields we adjusted.  You can analyze it any way you want, and if we have made any errors please let me know and I’ll fix things.