ASIA-PACIFIC RADI-O

AUSSIE MEDALS AT ASIA-PACIFIC RADIO ORIENTEERING CHAMPIONSHIPS

Bruce Paterson

A team of four Australians had unprecedented success at the recent Radio Orienteering (ARDF) Championships held in Niigata, Japan, in September. Never before at a championship level have we come away with podium finishes in each event, both as a team and individually. Let’s start the story at the beginning.

Why Japan?

REGIONAL championships are held every second year, with the world championships held on the intervening years. The previous regional championship was held in Ballarat in 2003, and there the Aussie team did well, especially the juniors. This year it was Japan’s turn to host the events, the first time the regional champs have ever been held there. For some years they have been postponing, claiming it would be too expensive, but the cost of entry was almost the same as two years ago.

Help on the way

We were able to get a bit of a tour around Tokyo for a couple of days prior to the competition, guided by a friend who lives there now, but who used to do direction finding here. It also helped the team acclimatise to the more humid and hotter conditions.

Adam Scammell nears the Finish

On the Floor

Niigata is in northern Japan, a mere 2.5 hours by bullet train from Tokyo, but the accommodation was well out of town. It was the full traditional Japanese-style guesthouses (ryokan) with rice-paper walls, hot spring baths, sleeping mats (tatami), rice husk pillows and dinner on the floor. Each guesthouse had limited room so the nine competing countries were spread across seven houses in two villages. The real buzz was the great cultural experience, with the disadvantage that socialising was more difficult with no common gathering area. On the first couple of days, which included technical testing & calibration against their transmitters and the official opening ceremony, we were happy to catch up with friends (with varying amounts of English) from Mongolia, Kazakhstan, US, China, Japan, Korea, Russia and to greet the newcomers from Thailand.

Lets get into it

Day 3 is where things really got going with the first competition, this one being on the HF band on 3.5MHz. It was unusual to have this one first, but since in many ways it is more straightforward it was a good call. The A3 1:15,000 maps weren’t to IOF standards and in fact showed no runnability information at all. As it turned out they could have all been shaded largely dark green, but knowing where the green wasn’t would have made quite a difference. It was a bit like a RadiO street-O event - any venture off the tracks was fraught with danger. I did go bush (read jungle) once on my way to my first transmitter to avoid a very long backtrack, but in retrospect the backtracking may have been faster, and a lot less arduous!

The jungle, the rice fields and the surprise

my one jungle crawl fighting head-height bushes and knee height vines). I was first competitor to the finish which was encouraging as I’d left in the 7th start group (35mins). The disadvantage of an early run is less tracking near the transmitters to help you during the ‘transmitter off’ time. Bryan had a very respectable time of 1hr17min for 4 transmitters. In M40 we were not required to find transmitter #5. His time was so respectable in fact, that he won M40 outright. I was only about 10 minutes slower (refer jungle, and the early start) coming outright 2nd, a good 30 minutes ahead of the 3rd placed Korean. The time limit for both events was 2hr20min.

Team results are calculated on the best two results of a team of 2 or 3. In M40 we didn’t have a 3rd team member, which is a risk as often things can go wrong, but this time it worked out. Of course our individual placings also gave us team Gold.

We both ended up going within 40m of transmitter #5 anyway due Bruce Paterson in the Finish lane. to our route choice, so it’s encouraging to note that the best Open/M21 time was over 1hr47min.

In M21 Adam Scammell pulled a respectable 4th outright (2nd Asia-Pacific) despite a dreadful transmitter order. His 2hr11min was beaten by two Kazakhs and a Mongolian. Nikolay Tarrasov (Kazakhstan) was 2nd with 1hr51min, also choosing a similar order to Adam.

Mark Diggins came 5th (3rd Asia-Pacific) but with 4 instead of 5 transmitters in 2 hours. Sometimes it’s strange the way the team results turn out, and in this case, despite both Adam and Mark not placing outright they got team Silver (and of course team Gold in Asia-Pacific).

Water World

The rest day in between is often taken up with a cultural tour of some sort. In Japan they decided to let us loose in Niiigata for a few hours to go shopping or do whatever. They supplied a college student studying English with each country to look after us. Afterwards we were taken to an amusement park. We looked at the rusting rides with some trepidation as they groaned to reluctant life at our arrival. Was there no-one else here ?

Our guide enthused about the ferris wheel but we weren’t to be sidetracked. Yes, it was straight up to the top of the hill for go-karts and water world! That set the right frame of mind to enjoy it, till all suddenly stopped (broken?) dead at 4pm. Obviously time to go to the Japanese BBQ. This was in the grounds and was actually very good. We had to cook our vegies and thin sliced meat on our table gas burners (the meal is Shabu-Shabu) washed down with free Sapporo beer. Our guide got into the Karaoke, in fact, he couldn’t stop himself, much to the dismay of all but the severely tone deaf.

Jungle and Hills

The VHF competition turned out to be in the vicinity of the amusement park, and in fact the finish had a (rusting) mini train run right past every now & then. Hills and VHF tend to make it a tricky competition with misleading transmission reflections giving wrong bearings. For this reason I took very careful initial bearings as we were at least some way from the hills and they would be more accurate. None of the team had a particularly good run. I dared the jungle again due to an earlier guess that didn’t pan out and got stuck in very deep green which was also incredibly steep. I finished with the required 4 controls after a very long run from the most distant transmitter with only 3min to spare (time - 2hr17min). Surprisingly this still gave me 5th place. Bryan had all sorts of problems with one of the transmitters and eventually had to abandon his search to get back in time. He found 3 controls in 2hr09min, coming 7th. A Japanese was the M40 winner here with 1hr50min, which is a pretty long time. It was a tough course.

The team scoring magic worked for us again and we pulled a team Bronze out of the hat for that, only 4sec ahead of Mongolia’s team score. In M21 Adam didn’t have a clean run, but it seems neither did many others and he came an excellent 2nd (1st AsiaPacific) with 1hr58min, only beaten by Nikolay Tarasov with a much more typical result for him of 1hr15min. Mark found 3 controls in 2hr08min coming 8th (5th Asia-Pacific). The importance of finishing within the time limit and not getting a DNF shows here because Mark and Adam’s combined score gave them team Silver (Gold Asia-Pacific).

Bryan Ackerley won Gold. Mark Diggins finishes strongly.

So where to from here ?

Despite a small team Australia is very competitive in our part of the world. Against Europe is another matter, and we’ll get to test that again at the World Championships in Bulgaria next year.

For a more detailed account and links to pictures: http://members.optusnet.com.au/bmp/ardf/reports.html Full set of results and more photos: http://www.jarl.or.jp/2005r3ardf How to get involved: http://www.ardf.org.au