Socially Distant ARDF - Results and Discussion

Here are the 80m Tx locations...

I was conservative with distances between Tx - each had had at least one path between the it and the start in "hops" of less than 200m.  With my Czech receiver I could hear them all clearly from #2 and get sharp "nulls" on all but #4.  Tuning #4 from #2 would have been tricky though.

• How did other folks find this?  
• Given that 2 to 3 is 400m - should I up the inter-Tx distance to 300m next time?
• If only 20s every two minutes to hunt down a Tx - where the yellow tapes in general TOO visible or NOT VISIBLE ENOUGH? 
• Andrew was led a merry dance by #1 - did anyone else find this Tx tricky?
• There is a lot of inteference from broadband (and ethernet near the care homes - cables are run outside) - did anyone suffer because of this.

Here are the 2m Tx locations - showing bearings I got from my house.  Not too bad - except for #5  (shown in cyan)...

It is still early days for urban 2m planning and Tx postioning.  You can be 10m from a Tx by line-of-sight but 500m by practical route.  In retrospect perhaps I should have declared the railways as an eastern boundary for the competition area.  Optimum route S352164B or reverse - but relies on getting a good bearing to 3 in the first cycle and you would not have known how far to travel, while 6 could have been findable first transmision if you had been motoring.  Same - would anyone be brave enough to go for #4 first on the strenght of one bearing?

• Did the buildings cause much multipath or distortion?
• A couple of folks found #4 to be tricky - there are many metal fences close by and the railway has over-head electrification.  Why was finding this Tx so tricky?
• Bob found #2 to be very loud (it is on a hill top and above the height of nearby buildings) and was tempted to cross the A38 rather than going for the quieter #5.   Also multipath near #1.

On 2m I did TXs 3, 4, 5 and 6 well and TX2 especially badly and 1 poorly

I was caught by the 'near-far' trick with TX2. It was so loud at the crossing of the A38 that I was convinced it had to be close. In contrast, at the same point TX5 was pretty weak.I should have stayed on the far side of the A38 to get both 3 and 5 instead of coming back over to find 2. It took me an inordinate number of transmissions to edge my way closer and closer to TX2.

I was tad unlucky at TX 1. Had it fired up as I was passing a block away then I would certainly have saved one and probably two transmissions. I also had some multi path error after passing TX1, which did not help. Finding 3,4,5 and 6 was relatively straightforward although there were some interesting wild fluctuations of signal strength in the approach to TX6.

• Andrew assessed #6 as being much further away than in reality.
• Where any of the other Tx gving problems?
• Robert found the beacon to be giving unreliable and variable bearings.  It was on the local high point but did have tall buildings close by to to the West and North.
• Were the tapes too visible or not visible enough?  It was not practical to get appropriate 360 degree visibility without making the Tx too visible from one or more directions.  I tried to make it so that if you ran past the Tx you would easily see the tapes,  I placed the tapes up to 5 metres from the Tx - to avoid giving the actual location away to curious passers by.

Times:

80m


John Marriott       39:23   6/6 S-6-2-5-1-4-3-6
Tim Raven*          39:--   6/6 S-2-5-1-4-3-6
Robert Vickers      39:44   6/6  
Andrew Soltysik     44:15   6/6
Mike Dunbar         55:51   6/6 S-4-2-5-1-3-6
Angelo              86:11   6/6
Bob Titterington**  no time 6/6

*Times recorded in minutes only.
** Watch lost

2m

Andrew Soltysik      86:45  7/7
John Marriott       120:03  7/7 S-1-2-3-5-6-4-B
Bob Titterington    135:--  7/7 S-1-2-3-5-4-6-B (or 4-5-6)
Robert Vickers      151:47  7/7 S-1-2-3-5-6-4-B
Tim Raven           130:--  4/7 S-5-2-1-B
Mike Dunbar***       67:51  3/7 S-5-6-B 

***Child 2 hairdresser appointment. Kirstie has an impressive head of hair in normal times.  One can only imagine the impressive mane after 12 weeks lockdown.

Here are John's routes...