RADI O

2008 World ARDF Championships Korea

Namyang

scale 1:15,000 contours 5m

Bryan Ackerly 6th in M40 at World Radio Orienteering (ARDF) Championships, Korea 2008

Bruce Paterson (ARDF, VIC)

A small Aussie contingent attended the Radio Orienteering (or ARDF - standing for Amateur Radio Direction Finding) World Championships held in early September in Korea

Rare Regional Opportunity

This year is only the second time the World Championships have been held in our region, which is largely Asia-Pacific. Though the seasons are still opposite due to the Northern hemisphere, there is no jet lag due to the convenient one hour time difference, and comparatively less travel time for us antipodeans. This was an opportunity not to be missed !

Location

Hwaseong city is a mere 50km SW of Seoul. As a large industrial and accommodation town it isn’t particularly pretty, but we were accommodated in La Vie D’Or Country Club, a golf retreat on the outskirts of town, which was picturesque. There are some striking differences between a large orienteering championship and an international ARDF championship. One of these is the ARDF is a much more packaged event. Your pre-entry fee basically covers everything, from when you land at your nominated Korean airport to when you leave. Accommodation, board, transport and even tours are all covered and organized by, in this case, the Korean Amateur Radio society. Of course you are free to do your own thing on non-competition days if you wish, but sometimes it’s nice to have it all done for you. The weather was pretty warm (28-30 oC) but very humid. Similar to the recent Australian Championships at Maryborough, but even more humid. With only one day to acclimatize this was a bit of a shock to the system.

Typical Format

There is a pretty standard four-day format to the World ARDF Championships: • Morning - Practice/Model event;

Afternoon - Opening Ceremony • VHF (144MHz band) competition • Tour Day • HF (3.5MHz band) competition; Closing Ceremony Dinner Each country is allowed only three competitors per age-group, so attendance at a World Championships is limited by how many countries compete and how many have “full” teams. This year a very impressive 452 competitors attended from 31 countries, plus many other team leaders, jury members and trainers. Particularly encouraging for ARDF in the future was the record number of junior class (U19) entrants, the largest age-classes, with some as young as 14.

Practice & Model Event

For bush orienteering, a model event is an optional adjunct that allows competitors to see what terrain they might be running in. This is true of ARDF also, but there is another, more critical task to check out how your receiving equipment works with the actual transmitters that will be used for the championship events. Has your receiver withstood whatever the various baggage handlers could throw at it? What strength does your receiver show when you pace 100m away from a transmitter? Can I tune in the actual frequency being used? (There unfortunately can’t be an international standard ARDF frequency(s) due to differing Amateur radio band plans in different countries). Bryan Ackerly was experiencing all sorts of problems with his VHF gear, until later discovering, to his acute embarrassment, he had assembled it backwards. I came across a receiver failure mode on mine I hadn’t seen before that we later diagnosed as a cracked battery holder inside. We were both very glad there was a practice event ! Here were some of my impressions at the time: Yesterday we all trooped onto the buses for the practice event. The area is a mix of mainly dark green (jungle) and what appealingly looks like open land (orange) till you check the legend which tells you it’s “cultivated land” - read mainly rice paddies. This one was largely a matter of sticking to the tracks and making a short excursion off the side right near a transmitter.

Live Translation !

A clever addition to what can be long winded opening ceremony speeches was the supply of live translation receivers to everyone. This cut the speech time nearly in half as they could be delivered in Korean and English at the same time. Two flag bearers were called for, so the whole Aussie team was required, and, since this time the English alphabet was used, we were out on stage first without having a clue what we were meant to be doing. The post-speech entertainment mix of modern and traditional turned out to be good fun: See: http://au.youtube.com/ watch?v=iwPounUSohw

Sorry, remind me how this ARDF thingy works ?

Another difference with Radio Orienteering from Bush-O events is that all competitors must be at the start and surrender their receivers to an equipment quarantine till just before their start. Only then are the transmitters at the controls out in the forest turned on. No-one may leave the starts quarantine area unless they aren’t coming back. Though this may be similar to Sprint quarantines for elite orienteers, in Radio it applies to everyone. It means an early morning, but, at least all transport is provided (in fact in theory no competitor even knows where the event is to be located), so all that is needed is to have breakfast and get on your bus. For ARDF events, there are 5 transmitter controls in the forest, and a 6th one at the start of the finish chute. All controls have SI punches. Only M21 attempt all 5. Others attempt a specific 4, or even 3 pre-specified for their age group. The positions of the transmitters are not marked on the map – that would make it all just too easy. The specified transmitter controls must be found within a maximum time limit. The 5 transmitters take turns transmitting for a minute each on the same channel. You can tell which one you are listening to on your receiver as each identifies itself with morse pips. The orienteering comes in when you have to relate the bearings you measure to the map, so you need to know exactly where you are on the map, as well as making route choice decisions once you begin to build up an idea of where the transmitters might be, and re-locating

yourself after a mad dash to find a close transmitter before it turns itself off again for 4 minutes. The 6th transmitter is on a different channel, runs continuously and isn’t really required unless you are truly lost and need to find the Finish.

Rice anyone ?

The VHF competition map indeed turned out to have large areas of rice paddy fields, with hills covered in green in between. There were two start corridors to spilt up the age groups. Unfortunately the M40 corridor was badly chosen as it took us away from any of our required 4 transmitters and towards the one we didn’t need to get ! We weren’t allowed to run back down the corridor to the start, which would have in fact been the best route choice. Since I figured out I wasn’t anywhere useful, and I felt I had a reasonable but rough grasp of where the transmitters seemed to be, I chose to not go to the closest transmitter to the start, but instead go to one a bit further away in order to later take advantage of a main road to get around a large chunk of green between me and the finish. As it turns out, it was a pretty good strategy, but marred a bit by the difficulty I experienced getting across paddy fields. The little mounds between the ponds just never seemed to go the way I wanted to go, so a bit of time was spent zig-zagging around. Parts of the dark green shown were indeed nearly impassable jungle with clinging creepers and plants that deposited fine white powder all over me, but others were quite passable and you could run in a dodging sort of way. Unfortunately the map wasn’t going to reveal to me which was which. After finding my first two controls and taking the main road option, the signals from the remaining transmitters started to get very weak as a hill was in the way. I started to have terrible doubts. Was I doing the right thing or would I have to fight my way back through the jungle I was attempting to sidestep? I got past the green and was well on my way back into the map when my transmitter #2 came on, bang ahead ! WhooHoo !! Bag that one quickly and only one more to get. Despite being exhausted at the finish due to the interminable 500m+ finish corridor, I was happy to see I had probably my best result in a World Championships so far. It got cooler due to some cloud as the day wore on, so I wasn’t surprised to see my place gradually dropping, but I was still happy with my 15th place. Bryan Ackerly, also doing M40, was mucked up a bit more by the bizarre start corridor and took a wildly different route, but the same transmitter order as me, coming in 26th. Together this gave us a team result of 8th out of 16 countries in M40.

Palaces, Tombs and … Memory ?

The tour day, which is all organized by the host radio society, commenced with traditional tour fare of a palace, with a live show of ancient weaponry followed by the tomb of a king crowned posthumously [!]. Hmmm, so those perfect grass mounds we’d be standing on in small oases in the jungles were in fact the tombstones. A promising tour of the Samsung electronics giant, who are based in their own little-city within Hwaseong, was a bit disappointing because they couldn’t actually show us anything other than PR videos and presentations. Still, it’s all a chance to meet with other competitors in a more relaxed environment than at the events.

Mega Map

At the team leaders meeting the night before the HF event, we were told the map would be 52cm long. Whoa ! I couldn’t even hide that under my pillow. Luckily, after some careful questioning, the organizers admitted it could be dropped down to a little over A4 for the important area. More rice paddies again, but perhaps of less impact on the event this time. The hills were certainly more punishing though. Due to some confusion at the start line resulting from accidentally cutting the North arrow off the enormous map, I did one of my transmitters badly out of order, affecting my time significantly for a 23rd place. Bryan Ackerly had his turn for a good event, the extra steep hills suited his running and he picked up the transmitters in one of the better orders to give him 6th place. This great result and my middling one pushed our team result up to 6th. Not a ‘podium finish’ in ARDF, but if we had both done well in the same event we’d be in with a chance. To do consistently well you’d need a 3rd team member.

And for Afters

No championship event is complete without presentations, a final banquet and extensive gift-swapping between competitors. I’d swear there are some competitors who come only for these occasions, loaded down with little (and some not so little) gifts. We became well familiar with the Russian, Ukranian and Slovakian national anthems at the two presentations, with occasional showings from Czech Republic, Germany, Kazakhstan and Lithuania. The dinner was served in the garden, like many of our evening meals which was a beautiful setting. I’d have to say except for the difficulty with the paddy fields and the minimal grading of the forest green, the Koreans put on an excellent world championship event and are to be congratulated for their first World Championships. The next Region 3 (Asia Pacific) Championship will be, for the first time, Thailand, in November 2009. The next World Championships will be in Southern Croatia, 2010. Some competitors keep asking us when will Worlds be held in Australia?

And There’s More !

For more details check out my report made during the championships at: http://www.ardf.org.au Full results/splits/tx-order analysis best viewed at: http://www. darc.de/ardf/english.htm

Bryan Ackerly finishing in 6th place in Korea.

Bryan Ackerly

Bruce Paterson Receiver for 80m wavelength event