OK, I know this is two in one day, but this event just has to be
reported.
Tour day was today. The Mausoleum is what you would expect...a
lot of stairs and not much when you get to the top -:)
There was one amazing event today, however....
As part of the afternoon tour, we were taken over the Nanjing
bridge over the ChangChang (Yankze) river. The bridge is over
1.5km long. Impressive as
it was, it was not nearly as impressive as the lengths the
organisation went to to ensure
smooth passage for the ARDF bus cavalcade.
bicycle peak hour traffic was halted over the bridge for us to
have exclusive access (we're talking like trying to block the
Sydney Harbour bridge
here). We wound from one side of the road to the other, a line of
about 15 buses with multiple police car escorts. Traffic was
stopped in one direction or the other based
on where we happened to be with other squads of police cars. Any
cars getting in the way of our official speedy transit were
blasted with the extremely serious horn
on our bus (we happened to be in the lead bus behind the two
police cars).
This was amazing enough, but at the far end we left the highway,
did an odd U turn in a nearby road, and then proceeded do it all
again back over the bridge in the other direction. I have some
pictures of all this, but it doesn't really capture
the amazement we felt about the whole operation. The bridge
itself tended to be secondary -:)
The police escort, with sirens blazing, then led us into the
middle of downtown Nanjing, the whole caboodle into a pedestrian
only zone into the middle of the
market for our dinner in a nearby restaurant.
Anyway, 80m tommorrow so I'm off to bed.
Bruce
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***** Remember, an out of tune piano makes noise, not music! *****
call, (805) 966-7060 .
E-MAIL: dennis(a)rain.org .
*** Bye from the Paradise Playground of the Pacific Beaches.
*** Dennis Schwendtner *** WB6OBB ***
*** http://www.rain.org/~dennis ***
*** Schwendtner Piano and Service ***
WB6OBB repeater web-site ***
Firstly, Peter is putting up pictures when I manage to send them
to him
at the
following web address:
http://www.qsl.net/vk3zpf/china/day1.htmhttp://www.qsl.net/vk3zpf/china/day2.htm
...and so on.
Well late last night we got the official results for the 2m
competition,
and we're quite
happy with them !
The full results will probably appear on http://www.crsa.org.cn
at somne
stage.
Here's some highlights:
Team Australia 9th in Senior division. China 1st.
What is of note is we beat Japan, Kazakstan, Korea, USA(Yay!),
France
and Yugoslavia.
If we count only the truly 'A'RDF teams (those who actually have
Amateur
callsigns,
we came 3rd !!
In individual results, The best China time was 57 minutes for 5
TXs.
Nikolay from
Kazakstan was 2nd with 57 mins. Adam was 15th with 94 mins, I was
32nd
with 115mins
(4TX) and Bryan 39 with 125mins (3TX).
Adam was thrilled he beat the tall Chinese guy from Korea.
Kurt (Belgium) was 38th with 113mins & 3TX.
Alex (Kazakstan) came 7th in the Old Timers with 74 mins.
Best US result was Rob Cooley (an orienteer) who managed 9th in
Vets.
Some of the comments we have heard about the course:
It was long !
Many of the tracks weren't there.
You had to read the map and keep track of where you were in order
to
have a chance
of finishing reasonably. It was a good 'navigational' course.
Map detail was lacking.
I will take a photo of the map soon.
This morning we visited a Masoleum. Lots of steps and photos.
What more
can be said ?
Some titbits of info:
The New Century Hotel turns out to be fully owned by the Phone
campany
that is
sponsoring the event. It is 5 star and otherwise would be costing
a
fortune -:)
Speaking to a Yugoslavian student who is competing: He was born
in
Slovenia, but had to
move to Yugoslavia in 1991 due to the war because his father was
born
Yugoslavian.
However, the Croatian, Slovenian and Yugoslavian teams are all
good
friends. They
had to get individual sponsorship in order to come here.
Jack, The Region 3 championships will be in Mongolia next year
(2001)
around about the
end of June. The Mongolian team captain invites us all. We are
not sure
if we'll be hit
with the Kareoke yet.... There was echo on the tour leaders
microphone....
First aid was not required, but Adam did damage himself a bit
falling a
couple of times.
I used my first aid kit for one of the Yanks who had cut his
hand.
This afternoon we go on a bit more touring, after a team leaders
meeting
and lunch
I must go !!
Bruce
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***** Remember, an out of tune piano makes noise, not music! *****
call, (805) 966-7060 .
E-MAIL: dennis(a)rain.org .
*** Bye from the Paradise Playground of the Pacific Beaches.
*** Dennis Schwendtner *** WB6OBB ***
*** http://www.rain.org/~dennis ***
*** Schwendtner Piano and Service ***
WB6OBB repeater web-site ***
Yes, well that's the question you all want to know the answer to
!
...and at the risk of being a spoiler, the answer is Yes (we
think).
Some rough results (I will confirm more later) are:
Adam 14th-ish (an excellent result for all 5 tx's on a longer
course
than we've ever
experienced before
Me (Bruce) 24-ish (last I looked....)
Bryan 43-ish
We do know Adam's time beats Yuri (the USA previous world
champion from
Hungary), and
my time beats the other USA seniors, so it's looking good -:)
Now, we will have some pictures for you. Peter Fraser has
volunteered to
put them up
on his site, I have emailed them to him. Peter will hopefully
announce
where to find
them when he has !
The pictures might lag the story a bit. Hopefly I will catch up
eventually !
Today was a 5am wake up (groan), breakfast & hopefully grabbing
all the
gear we needed
& out to the buses.
Off we go is a mammoth porcession, complete with Police escort
and
traffic priority
provided. There were police holding off traffic even on a freeway
at one
point so we
could do a strange exit up an entrance lane ! All very
impressive, and
at the same time
the scale of it all a bit unnerving.
Off the freeways we headed down bumpy roads through small Chinese
villages about 1.5 hours
out of Nanjing (don't ask me where !). The villagers were all out
in
force to witness the
spectacle of the bus cavalcade. There were even ARDF posters
plastered
to some of the
walls. We arrived at the destination out behind yet another small
village. All the local
children were out to see the foreigners.
Bryan was first out with the 6th group. Groups are let out at 5
minute
intervals. I had
about a 2 hour wait till I went out, Adam went last about an hour
or so
later. The sun
came out today and it ended up being quite warm and clear. Lucky
I
happened to pop the
sunscreen in my bag. I was in the same group as my Belgium team
leader
friend, Maurice.
I was number 001, but he lucked James Bond - 007.
The course itself was quite long and hilly. There were areas
where it
was very slow
movement, as well as areas of closely spaced plantation that was
possible to move
through reasonably quickly, and a number of tracks, but some
areas of
the map were
a bit inaccurate in ths tracks (some new tracks were there, and
of some
old tracks shown
there was simply no sign and had to be bush-bashed.
Every 2m TX was atop a significant hill. Sometimes you could tell
the
transmitter wasn't
far away, but to get there was quite a different matter !
Unfortunately I did the transmitters in a non-ideal order, having
to
backtrack at the end
to get one, but in retrospect it wasn't too bad a route choice.
It just
toome a while.
I had about 15 minutes left of the 130, and I decided to abort
getting
that last transmitter,
and turned around to head for the finish. Later I found out I was
less
than 200m from the
transmitter, but the time I didn't feel I could risk being late
(which
means instant
disqualification).
I had some trouble with my smart card at the readers, especially
at the
last two
checkpoints. I personally would not recommend this system !
Now I have to go and talk about my post tour details. I will give
you
more results when
we know them, as well as the fastest times (and some pictures).
Bye for now
Bruce
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***** Remember, an out of tune piano makes noise, not music! *****
call, (805) 966-7060 .
E-MAIL: dennis(a)rain.org .
*** Bye from the Paradise Playground of the Pacific Beaches.
*** Dennis Schwendtner *** WB6OBB ***
*** http://www.rain.org/~dennis ***
*** Schwendtner Piano and Service ***
WB6OBB repeater web-site ***
Hi Barb and Dennis,
I ended up not doing as well as I would have liked, but
considering the course, I did okay. Below is a short report of
the competition.
***********************
Today was the 2Meter competition. We left the hotel about 6:45AM
for a one
hour drive to the competition site. I was lucky and ended up with
a starting
time 2 hours and 25 minutes after the first competitors left.
One thing different about this competition from other
competitions was that
we would be using electronic scoring. This would be done with a
small credit
card sized circuit that would be inserted into a reader that
would
automatically record the time. It really worked well and I found
it easier to
use that a punch card.
After picking up the map and equipment, I headed out to the
starting area. At
the start signal, I headed out North along the trail and started
listening. I
had the rough location of transmitters 1 though 4 in the first
five minutes
(I didn't need to find transmitter #5.)
It seemed like transmitter #4 was the first one to find, but I
didn't find a
trail heading that way until I got clost to #3. While I knew it
was longer, I
picked off #3 which was at the top of a hill a couple of hundred
meters high.
Heading down the hill, I passed through a small village on the
way to #4.
After picking off #4, I went back to the village to a trail that
went in the
direction of #2. #2 turned out to be about 2 Km and in the
process of
running, I fell and ended up with a very bloody hand from a
relatively small
cut. About 15 minutes later, I got to transmitter #2 and climbed
slowly up
the steep grade to find it.
At this point, time was running out and I headed back to #1 which
was also in
the same direction as the finish. As I was running along the
road, I passed
#1 but I was in real danger of being disqualified for being over
time, so I
passed it and headed to the finish. Running along the finish
corrodor, I
punched in with 15 seconds to spare.
Quite a number of people did not find all 4 transmitters and I
ended up at
about 38th place in a total of about 50+ competitors. While it
certainly was
not where I wanted to be, it was better than I did in Hungary so
at least
there was some improvement.
It was indicated the results would be available in an ASCII file,
and I will
forward that as soon as I can get it. Tomorrow is a local tour in
the morning
and shopping during the afternoon. The 80M competition will be
held on Tuesday.
***** Remember, an out of tune piano makes noise, not music! *****
call, (805) 966-7060 .
E-MAIL: dennis(a)rain.org .
*** Bye from the Paradise Playground of the Pacific Beaches.
*** Dennis Schwendtner *** WB6OBB ***
*** http://www.rain.org/~dennis ***
*** Schwendtner Piano and Service ***
WB6OBB repeater web-site ***
As I write this, it's 4 AM Sunday morning in Nanjing, China. I'm
not there, but ARDF Team USA is. I hope the team is sleeping
well, because Sunday is the day of the two-meter competition in
the ARDF World Championships.
Not much in the way of reports from the team so far, but the
first team photo
from Nanjing has arrived. It's posted on my Web site, URL below.
There are over 350 competitors from 26 countries, plus team
leaders, trainers, referees and organisers. On Saturday, our
team participated in the opening Ceremony which was on an island
in the middle of the lake outside the host hotel.
Will also post any other Team USA reports and photos as received,
so keep checking the site.
73,
Joe Moell K0OV
USA ARDF Coordinator
http://www.homingin.com
***** Remember, an out of tune piano makes noise, not music! *****
call, (805) 966-7060 .
E-MAIL: dennis(a)rain.org .
*** Bye from the Paradise Playground of the Pacific Beaches.
*** Dennis Schwendtner *** WB6OBB ***
*** http://www.rain.org/~dennis ***
*** Schwendtner Piano and Service ***
WB6OBB repeater web-site ***