Planners: Alasdair Wilson-Craw & Andy Curtis
Organisers: Patrick Smyth and Ann Curtis
Controller: Colin Matheson
A number of technical issues were encountered in timing the Saturday's courses. See below
Full day 1 split time results Available only through Splitsbrowser and RouteGadget
Full day 2 split time results Available only through Splitsbrowser and RouteGadget
RouteGadget Please visit to upload your route and see where other courses went.
Many thanks to patrons of the cake stall which raised £102.70 for the NE Junior Squad
Comments from Results Person
My apologies to everyone for the various messups mainly on Day 1, all entirely my fault.
The boxes at the start were incorrectly programmed to go off at 1300. Then I succeeded in programming the replacement boxes as Finish boxes - those involved in programming boxes will understand when I say Full Mode instead of Quick Mode and the previous box to be done was a Finish box. This meant that for a while, starts after 1300 ran with uncleared cards, some of which overflowed. The finish punch goes into a separate place on the dibber so all the finish times were there. The start times could all be retrieved by downloading the 'finish' box used as a start box and entering those start times by hand. And the overflowed dibbers were corrected by downloading the relevant control boxes and entering the times manually. This works for the first 6 overflows on a card. After that, the corresponding control box just records an error signal instead of the time so I had to invent reasonable split times in these few cases. The important thing for the competition is that the start and finish times are OK.
Unfortunately that wasn't all. Control boxes 101-140 were not passed through the Timemaster box so their times were out of sync and this affected both days. One group were only a few seconds out but the others were around 5 mins out. It was possible to establish the error for each box and we owe a large debt of gratitude to Alastair Mackenzie of CLOK who very kindly wrote a programme to correct the splits file. I don't know how to reimport the splits into the event software but the corrected splits can be viewed on SplitsBrowser and RouteGadget.
Box 155 on Day 1 Yellow and White came on OK but its clock has gone awry, perhaps due to the wet weather on Friday. The times have been estimated so that the splits look reasonable.
Day 2 seemed quite an anti climax!!
Thanks for all the understanding remarks, thank you to Robin Strain who discovered that the boxes were finish boxes and to Alastair Mackenzie for correcting the splits files and rendering them suitable for RouteGadget.
Andrew Nicoll, (Timing & Results)
Controller's Comments
Well done to NATO for staging a successful October Odyssey, and special thanks to co-planners Andy Curtis and Alasdair Wilson Craw for their excellent courses. Planning did start quite late in the day, but Jeff Mason (and Paul Taylor) had produced an excellent map that was very reliable. This meant that once sites had been selected, visited and checked there were very few that were discounted as being unsuitable due to poor or vague mapping. Jeff did continue to make map tweaks right up to the week before the event, and the more the bracken grew the more he mapped it! It's dying back now after today's rain. Andy and Alastair supported most of the changes I suggested.
There were concerns a month or two before the event when Natural England declared the area a SSSI. We did establish good contacts with Natural England and once I submitted a map showing all controls and all likely routes (avoiding marshes) consent to hold the event was granted (permits issued to landowners). There was a big effort in the last couple of weeks before the event to visit the sites and I reckon I covered close on 40km checking control sites -- it's a big area and tough going in places. I am sure the planners covered a lot more.
Problems with the results and timing on Day 1 were finally overcome by Andrew late into the evening. There were a few other minor glitches on the day, including a rogue control where a number had been written onto the actual control flag. This differed from the correct number which of course was on the SI box itself as per all other controls. Most competitors seemed happy with the control sites and the map, though in the course of controlling I had found the intended control site was taped on the wrong crag (hence the last minute change to some control descriptions). Nobody complained that a 1.2m high boulder was described as .7m.
Day 2 weather was dreadful, and there were concerns over groups of juniors who seemed ill equipped (navigationally and equipment wise) for the courses they were attempting. All the "easier" courses from Light Green down to White were at the upper end of physical and technical difficulty so I was very pleased to see one little girl whizzing around the White without to much trouble on both days. Future star in the making I reckon.
I hope that Organiser Patrick makes a speedy recovery from illness, and must thank Ann Curtis for standing in and taking over much of the responsibility of the event only a few weeks after organising Fell Plantation!
Colin Matheson, (Controller)
Notes
If J. Havenhand (DVO) would get in touch (via web contact page) we would be pleased to return her map kindly lent at a time of crisis.