CHCCS ARDF
2017-04-22, Spring #2
Event Report
Island Creative TimeThe family website of Kelly and Patrick Sears
This page is an event report for one of the Chapel Hill - Carrboro City Schools ARDF events directed by Kelly and Patrick Sears. For comments, suggestions, and questions; please contact Kelly Sears [ksears (at) chccs (dot) k12 (dot) nc (dot) us].
We were expecting rain but it never came. It was beautiful. We met in our usual place by Carolina North Forest. Unfortunately we had a super low turnout. But hey, that's ok. It's going to happen some times and it's still worth it. Thanks to all those who emailed us to let us know that you couldn't make it this time but were excited for the next event. It made us feel really good that the interest was still strong. In total, four participants went out in two teams. Dale Haiducek (Phillips Middle School teacher) came by to support us once again. That's so super! And he brought a friend, Jen. After talking for a bit, they went out as the first team. Soon, Stella and Sara went out as the second team, Team Papillon. Nadia and Charles Scharlau were also there as volunteers. They helped check that all the foxes were transmitting and with control picking up at the end. Also, Charles donated 6 antenna tuners for us to experiment with in planning larger events in the future. We even got one of them hooked up (on fox #4) at this event. Thanks Charles, that's awesome! Dale, Charles, Nadia; thanks again for coming out and supporting us.
For this second event of the Spring, we made some progress in putting on larger events. The 80m course was a bit longer, 2.4 km instead of the usual 2.0 km. And the course area was also a bit longer, 1.5 km instead of 1.1 km. We kept the scale at 1:5000 and so provided maps printed on 11x17 paper. First time for that ☺ . Also, we had sub-sets of foxes to find. Participants could try to find just foxes 1, 4, and 5, or all five foxes. This is similar to the way championship events are run. It will allow us to present a challenge at several different levels. We kept the sizes of the exclusion zones the same: 300 m around the start and 200 m around each fox.
There were also two new components to the event, the course timing system and 2 m foxes. A big thank you goes out to Joseph Huberman for loaning us the fox transmitters. That was super cool. We set out two 2 m foxes with an RFID card writer at each fox. Since this was our first time putting out 2 m, we placed them both less than 300 m from the start. At the start, we had the master RFID card reader/writer. It doubled as a reporting station and as a start/finish control. Unfortunately, all the participants had to leave after their time on the 80 m course. So no one tried a search for the 2 m foxes. Still though, it was really handy for us to put out that second course. We're still working out the bugs in the system and this was our first test. And we got to demo the master for Charles which lead to some interesting discussion about how to do the timing.
Thanks to all the middle school and high school teachers and staff who helped get the word out to the students. Rachel Hopler (Science Teacher, Culbreth Middle School), Christine Lippy (Science Teacher, McDougle Middle School), Dale Haiducek (CTE Teacher, Phillips Middle School), Haley Wamble (Science Teacher, East Chapel Hill High School), SaCola Lehr (Media Specialist, Chapel Hill High School), Libby Diesel (Library Assistant, Chapel Hill High School), Kara Watson (Media Specialist, Carrboro High School). Thanks also to Marny Ruben (Principal at Seawell Elementary School) for the use of the Seawell area and Greg Kopsch (Park Manager at Caronlina North Forest) for the use of CNF.
The entries in the table are not listed in any particular order, it's just the order in which the sign-in sheets were stored. The finds column notes the controls found: foxes 1 through 5 and the homing beacon (H). When noted, times on course are very rough. The schools are abbreviated, Phillips (PMS), Smith (SMS), Culbreth (CMS).
| entry # | participants (school, grade) | finds | time(h:mm') |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dale Haiducek (Teacher) and Jen (guest). | not recorded | 0:58' |
| 2 | Stella (PMS 6) and Sara (mother) - Team Papillon ☺ | 5 | not recorded |
Only one picture this time. Clicking pictures will bring up original full-sized versions. All participants are listed as seen in the picture from left to right.
Sara (mother) and Stella of Team Papillon.
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