CHCCS ARDF
2019-04-06, Spring #1, 80 m Classic
-
Carolina North Forest - East
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].
It was nice cool day. Perfect for running. We had eight participants from three families. All were runners.
If you find a mistake or need some information changed, please let me know [ patrick (dot) r (dot) sears [at] gmail (dot) com ].
We provided our usual five courses ranked by the number of foxes to find. As usual, the first event of the season is slightly shorter. The top two courses were the green course (4 foxes, 2.4 km) and the red course (5 foxes, 2.7 km). The distances listed are straight-line distances, so participants will be running a fair bit longer distance on each course. The longest distance across the course area was 1.7 km. Radial exclusions zones around controls was 300 m.
To successfully complete a course, participants must punch the start, at least one fox on that course, the homing beacon, and the finish. These are the same rules used in the championship events.
This was one of the most exciting developments for us as event director and planner. After two years in development, we finally have a working system. We thought it would change many aspects of the event, but we weren't certain. Wow! It changed everything. With the automatic timing, it truly felt like a real event.
It was super fun to have people get back and crowd around the laptop to see their times. The different courses had more meaning. We could put the start up by the main trail with no worries. The biggest change may have been at the start where the timing box had more use than ever. Finally, it reduced the load on Kelly. When Patrick was on course with the class, Kelly would be trying to keep track of precise start and finish times while doing all the other base table work. This time, it all happened by itself.
There are still a few rough spots in the system. A few controls didn't get registered. The time of day is reported rather than time from start. All this should be easy to fix in the code. But it was so much better than the punch cards!
John and his father Mike arrived first. It was their first time trying ARDF. The learned all about orienteering, 80 m directional receivers, and the timing for ARDF classic events. They decided that they wanted to try it on their own and pretty soon they were on course. Even with this being their first time ever, they found four foxes. Excellent!
Morgan and Owen, and their parents Scott and Sarah arrived while the class was going on. They grabbed their equipment and came over for a quick refresher. Mostly they got to learn about the new electronic course timing system and how classic events are different from the foxoring they had tried last year. They took two RFID cards and so got listed as two groups. Mostly though, they stuck together and found all five red course foxes. Fantastic!
Emmett and James arrived some time before noon. After a quick refresher they were off on the red course. They also found all five foxes. Super!
Back at the finish, we had several students run in. Having that RFID card on the arm and that finish box waiting to be punched makes it an exciting run down the shoot with everyone cheering.
For the first time, most of the results are generated by the electronic course timing system, "cts-evpro". Unless someone asks to be put on a different course or have something adjusted, the results are directly from cts-evpro.
The cts-evpro find order and time for each control can be found here.
| # | participants (school, grade) | finds | time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red course - five foxes. | |||
| 1 | Emmett (SMS-6), James (f) | 1 2 3 4 5 H | 55'17" |
| 2 | Owen (SMS-6), Scott (f) | 1 2 3 4 5 H | 58'36" |
| 3 | Morgan (SMS-8), Sarah (f) | 1 2 3 4 5 H | 59'10" |
| Green course - four foxes. | |||
| 1 | John (SMS-6), Mike (f) | 2 3 4 5 H | 148'41" |
Participants are first listed by course. Then within a course, by number of foxes found and then by time on course. The # column gives the results placement for that course. The finds column notes the controls found: foxes 1 through 5 and H for the homing beacon. Fox numbers in parentheses were not on the chosen course. The time column is the time on course. Students are listed with their school and grade. We use the following schools abbreviations: PMS Phillips MS, SMS Smith MS, McDMS McDougle MS, CMS Culbreth MS, CHHS Chapel Hill HS, ECHHS East Chapel Hill HS, CaHS Carrboro HS, f family or guest friend, es elementary school, s chccs student (no school info). t teachers and staff members.
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), Al McArthur (Technology Facilitator, 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), Femi Jayeola (Librarian, Carrboro High School), Margaret Devetski (Library Assistant, Carrboro High School). Thanks to Dave Waller for mapping Carolina North Forest and to the Backwoods Orienteering Klub for the use of the maps. Thanks to Greg Kopsch (Park Manager at Carolina North Forest) for the use of CNF.
Clicking pictures will bring up original full-sized versions. All participants are listed as seen in the picture from left to right. Pictures are generally listed in chronological order trying to keep groups together. If you took any pictures during the event, we would love to post them. If you would like that, email us your pictures.
Mike, Patrick, John. Talking about orienteering maps, contour lines, colors used for vegetation, boulders. All the ways we keep track of our position.
Morgan, Owen, Scott. Pre-run discussion. Probably how to divide up search tasks.
Patrick, Owen, Morgan (in back), Sarah, Scott. From the direction I'm pointing, I think I'm showing the hawk nest that was in a tree just 10 m behind our base area.
Emmett, Patrick, James. Reviewing the two gain patterns of the receiver antenna.
Emmett. Running down the finish shoot.
Emmett. Approaching the finish control. The finish punch is just behind the small orienteering flag hanging from the tree.
Emmett, James, Kelly. James is just arriving.
Owen. Running down the finish shoot.
Morgan. Running down the finish shoot.
Mike, John. They're heading to the homing beacon.
John, Mike. John is coming down the finish shoot. Mike is punching his RFID card on the finish box.
Kelly. Our base area. The big box on the table is protecting the download laptop for the RFID cards.
Our class area. There is the demo control in the foreground at left. The string holds some notices: the fox timing and sounds at left; the schedule and transmitter frequencies at right.
The start. It is just off the main trail going into CNF. Under the start sign, there is the starter timing description. Under that on the tree, there is the RFID start box and a small orienteering flag. At the base of the tree, sticking out to the right, there is the starter timing box.
The cts-evpro results are listed here mostly as they appeared during the event. We had a few miss-reads and added foxes for those in the correct order. Those are the ones with missing times. ToC is the time on course. The finds are listed as "control number/fox".
All the pictures we took are free to use as you wish. The web page (text and layout) is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Link to License. This means that you can copy anything you want, use it and alter it as you want, as long as you give credit to us for the original work, provide a link to the license, and explain any changes you made. We try to make sure all other content we display is also available to use. But check the sources we list before using them.