3-in-2 Weekend, 25/26th April
Inverawe
Results, RouteGadget, WinSplits, SplitsBrowser.
Oban street
Results, RouteGadget, WinSplits SplitsBrowser.
SOL 2 Ardnaskie
Results, RouteGadget, WinSplits, SplitsBrowser, String course.
Controller’s comments
Many thanks to ECKO for asking me to control their SOL in a wonderful part of the world. Mind you, when the first thing I had to do was agree to a change of venue and then shortly after that, a change of date, I wasn’t sure what I was getting into…. In the end though Paul and in particular Andy made my job very easy - by the end I was hoping Andy would make a mistake so I could feel useful! He didn’t, but I did have a couple of very enjoyable days pottering and geeking. Everyone I spoke to seemed to enjoy it and I hope you did too!
Ross McLennan
Planner’s comments
I hope you all enjoyed yourselves at Ardnaskie. It’s a great orienteering area - certainly tough going at times, but there’s plenty of compensation. I wish you’d all seen it on Saturday when the sun was filtering through the oak trees and the views were stunning. I tried to keep the courses to the nice stuff, but there’s such a patchwork out there that I’m sure you all blundered into tussocks at times, if not one of the infamous bouncing bogs. Well - that’s Argyll for you!
My lasting memories of planning will be the gradual arrival of spring and getting to know the local cattle who curiously accompanied me as I hung the last few contorols on Saturday. Thanks to Ross for being wonderfully tolerant of the last-minute nature of it all, to Paul for all his organisings, especially dealing with all the SI side of things despite his other duties, and of course to the landowners for generously letting us run all over such a fun area. Hopefully Kerrera in spring will happen another year!
Andy Dale
Organiser’s comments
When I volunteered for the job it was for SOL 2 on Kerrera.
So a change of location, date and quantity of events later, here we are.
The location
Kerrera was starting to get difficult when the farmers began to understand where we wanted to go, and with lambing in full flow, there were some concerns. The island community has been very supportive up to now and we didn’t want to upset that. So the search for an alternative began in January. Whilst we have many quality areas, lambing is an issue on many of them, and so Ardnaskie was chosen as it only has Highland cattle on it.
The map
Ardnaskie is part of the original Airds Park map but due to access restrictions by the owner we can’t use the East end of that. It was not a digital map, but last year Andy Dale produced an Ocad version of it and we used it for a local event. After that it was felt that the vegetation changes were so significant that a re-survey was required. A begging phone call to Stirling Surveys to see if they could squeeze the job into their busy schedule followed. The weather didn’t play fair for visits to survey, and it was the 18th March when Andy got the first draft of the updated map.
Parking
Originally there were lots of fields to choose from to use for parking but as the date got closer the options were being reduced (bull in field till mid May was one loss). Then it was revealed that the estate had signed up to a scheme with SNH to leave our chosen field un-used so ground nesting birds could use it. A week later we discovered that that field was part of the same scheme, we now only had room to park about 80 cars at most. Some detailed negotiations with SNH that would allow us to use the field without them penalizing the owner followed. We had to “walk” the field in the days prior to the event to check if there were any nests and promise to set a 100mtr exclusion zone if any were found. If there were numerous nests we would have to go elsewhere.
The 1.5km walk to the start was one of the consequences of our change in parking field (but at least we didn’t have to bus people!). The remote finish was also necessary, and I apologize for the mud that had to be negotiated to get out to the road.
On the day
Underestimating the power requirements of the laser printer meant that the generator couldn’t cope with both the computers and the printer, so I had to use the splits printer for results between printing splits. The generator also threatened to die on several occasions, and I suspect old/dirty fuel in it when we hired it, as after we needed to add some more fuel it worked smoothly.
I was using the latest version of AutoDownload (the event management software from SPORTident) which was only officially released on Thursday. I had been playing with a beta version for a couple of weeks but was still finding out how it works. It has a start time allocation option that I used with the online entries from Fabian4. In tests it seems to work pretty well and didn’t require any tweaking, but a couple of people commented that it didn’t seem to have picked up split start requests, so apologies for that and I will investigate the issue. Overall I am impressed with AutoDownload and think it is much easier for non-experts to pick up and use.
Thank you to everyone for leaving the assembly/parking field in a very clean condition with no litter.
Special thanks to Blair Young, Terry O’Brien and their helpers for enabling us to offer the Oban street race on Saturday evening. Putting on three events in two days (plus a club event on Thursday & and a schools training event on Friday) was a major challenge for a very small club and needed the support of all our members. I’m sure that after a rest and a bit of time has passed we’ll be saying when is the next one?
Paul Frost
String course participants
| Name | Age (years) | Club | Time |
| Mark Haley | 13 | INT | 10 min |
| Joe Young | 13 | INT | 10 min |
| Finlay Duncan | 7 | KFO | 6 min |
| Finlay Downie | 8 | TAY | 6 min |
| David Downie | 5 | TAY | 5 min |
| Morven | 5 | KFO | 18 min |
| James | 3 | INT | 20 min |
| Kirsten | 4 | CLYDE | 22 min |
| Ellis Hunter | 6 | ECKO | 12 min |
| Lucy Hensman | 3 | FVO | 25 min |
| Katie Hensman | FVO | 25 min | |
| Jamie Connor | 1 | FVO | 26 min |
| Alasdair Lilley | 7 | ECKO | 8 min |
| Laura Nicoll | 9 | TAY | 7 min |
| Alice Nicoll | 6 | TAY | 10 min |
| Emily Hunter | 9 | ECKO | 6 min |
| Daniel Spiers | 10 | IND | 5 min |
| Alice Wilson | 6 | CLYDE | 7 min |
| Kirsten | 4 | CLYDE | 7 min |
| Ruaridh Flint | 5 | FVO | 15 min |
| Kirsty Flint | 3 | FVO | 26 min |
| Tom Lines | 9 | ECKO | 5 min |
| Eloise Lardet | 8 | FVO | 7 min |
| Ceri Powell | 8 | ECKO | 8 min |
| Duncan Raitt | 12 | TAY | 4 min |
| Euan Shearer | 8 | ECKO | 5 min |
| Eilidh Shearer | 8 | ECKO | 5 min |
| Rhona Shearer | 5 | ECKO | 9 min |
| Anja Powell | 10 | ECKO | 5 min |
| Pierre Lardett | 5 | FVO | 13 min |
| Callum Hunter | 10 | ECKO | 4 min |
| Callum Hunter | 10 | ECKO | 6 min |
| Tom Lines | 9 | ECKO | 3 min |
| Eilidh Shearer | 8 | ECKO | 7 min |
| Mark Haley | 13 | INT | 3 min |
| Joe Young | 13 | INT | 6 min |
| Rhona Shearer | 5 | ECKO | 9 min |
| Alice Wilson | 6 | CLYDE | 6 min |
| Kirsten | 4 | CLYDE | 22 min |
| Breagha Charlton | 10 | IND | 7 min |
| Roanne Lilley | 9 | ECKO | 4 min |
| Oran Charlton | 5 | IND | 10 min |
| Finm Charlton | 8 | IND | 10 min |
Posted on 28th Apr 09
by Paul Frost - Website, Membership, Publicity
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