Hi all,

Bruce here from the Australian ARDF team in China. If you'd like to see future installments of this bulletin, I'll ask you to subscribe to the melb-ardf for the duration (only this first posting will go to foxlist). This is because this is likely to be an very biassed account of events, with dollops of parochialism, so I'm noy going to subject everyone to it if they don't want to ! (Hey, is it a co-incidence my name is "Bruce" also ??)

You can subscribe to melb ardf by sending message (in the body) containing subscribe melb-ardf to majordomo@planet.net.au

There will be pictures too ! They will be uploaded to a web-site somewhere and the reports will point at them. Coming soon......

[My ICQ seems to have died temporarily, but when I get it going again you can message the Australian team direct on 32015991]

Anyway, on with the story; I have just got back from the team leaders meeting. Australia is first alphaetically so I was first to pick a number out of a paper bag to determine our team start positions for the 2m event. It also meant I was last (had no choice!) for the 80m competition draw. We got 8 and 18 respectively. This doesn't mean a great deal at the end of the day since it only determines the start group for the first competitor of a country. The others are spread through the field. By the way, there are 26 countries in this world competition. Only the USA team didn't seem to be at full strength, still missing their team leader Dale and some others. There are varying numbers of competitors for each country. We have only a team of 3 in the Senior (Open division).

Some of you may recall my mention of Kurt, from Belgium, in my previous missives from Korea. Well it turns out I'm rooming with Kurt.

Today it was warm, with occasional rain. We travelled by Bus from Shanghai to Nanjing, a distance of about 400km by bus with the Yugoslavians and Bulgarians (and a couple of Yanks). There will be some photos later, but one thing becomes obvious as you travel: you never really get out in what we'd call the country. Near Shanghai it is dead flat, and only late in the journey did we start to see some hills which surround Nanjing. There is almost always a building (usually a block of flats) to be seen, and ususally a continueous row. Otherwise there are rice fields, canals and dams and occasional other crops. Very little ground is left to waste

The Hotel in Nanjing is excellent, and after some teething troubles we now have permenent ethernet (hey this is better than at home!!). After our arrival here we went out for what turned out to be quite a long walk around the nearby lake. There is an old city wall which circled old Nanjing which borders the lake (see photo soon -:))

Caught up with some friends from Korea and Townsville. Yes, Jack, madam Butterfly is back.

At the meeting we were shown the electonic tagging system they will be using for the ARDF events. Each competitor has to carry a Smart Card around and insert in the reader when they find a transmitters. The times are stored on the card. They aren't too worried about rain, but point out sweat might cause problems with the reader. Hmmm, not quite up to Sport-Ident standards, but we'll see how it goes !

Tommorow we have what is called a Model event. It isn't really, since it will be on completely differnet terrain to the actual events, but it does give a chance to make sure our gear still works. They have scheduled a team leaders meeting at the same time !! Obviously there aren't too many team leaders like myself who also compete, so I hope there will still be enough time after for me to test my gear.

That's all for now. Feel free to ask any questions. Cheers, Bruce, VK3TJN ----------------------------------------------------------------- -------- To un-subscribe from ardf-list, send requests to: majordomo@planet.net.au with the body of the message stating: unsubscribe ardf- list Please send postings to: ardf-list@planet.net.au Problems to: owner-ardf-list@planet.net.au ----------------------------------------------------------------- --------

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