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Organised by Chris Plummer
| Christmas over again this year, time to run off some of the excesses. Again Clive (ex G3SZE) was up over the holidays visiting the heights of the Farm at Biddulph Park, and was again pressed into helping Chris run the foot DF in Macclesfield Forest area. This year due to 'popular' demand the event was run on the Saturday after Christmas so that the 'Runners' could attend, thus well armed with wet weather gear this year... What No Snow?... Clive acted as Starter at the top of Teggs Nose Country park. |  |
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Two
competitors arrived ON TIME, John Jocys and Dave
Chippendale, and complained about the wet not having
brought wet weather gear, however Noddy Heys was missing
again (must have a back problem, sticks to the bed)..
With a quick mobile phone call to Chris he was reportedly
only going to be 5 minutes late, so it was decided to
delay the start for his arrival. Thus duely 5 minutes late (and still no Noddy) the TX was put on the air. This year Chris Plummer was the operator, and he had intended to hide for real (not in a nice warm dry car) however the rain sheeted down just before the allotted start time so he parked up in car park at the top of Stony Croft ( a CP that was not marked on the OS 50,000:1 map) and ran a wire up in the trees around the empty picnic area. Although the TX was at full power the signal was quite weak but audible at the start 2 miles away. This was when the fun started... There are two categories of entrants, a) young and fit, and b) the over fifties, this allows the over fifties to decamp from the start to the Leathers Smithy (pub) and not to have to run down the 1in2 hill. |
| It turned out that Chris H was not only late at the start, but when he turned his (Dave Hollands) DF RX on, it didn't work... second lesson here... check DF RX before the start (lesson one was to set the alarm clock early enough), add to this that he had been over clever and brought the 25,000:1 detailed map, that is the one that doesn't have the whole of Macc. Forest on it (lesson three ... check which map was to be used) he thus decided to help JJ and you can thus see he was not of much use helping John all morning. |  |
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Dave Chippendale in the over fifty category drove down to the pub and by circuitous route duely burst from the woods at 11:25, when all he had to do was walk up the road like the rest of the people about at the time. Well kn...ered, Dave took 5 minutes to get his breath back, and having won then set off to lead the others astray. He was out there for a long time when JJ with son Nicholas and helper Chris H appeared and seeing the car, decided to beat up the fallen tree that CP was going to hide under. Perhaps the end of the aerial being connected to a wire fence helped to confuse them. Anyway tricky DC appeared and ran towards the car thus tricking the others to run the final 50 yards as well. All finished it was decided to troll off to the pub, but some fowl person decided to get some revenge on Chris P and nicked his car keys while he was taking the aerial down. This sort of behaviour only maddens Chris P and will make it worse for next time. (He did have a spare set, but seeing the state of CH when he thought he had lost his wallet only heightens the FUN factor) TeHe... |
Results
1 |
Dave Chippendale |
11:25 |
2 |
John Jocys |
11:52 |
3 |
Chris Heys |
Did not
even start let alone finish, |
Chris Plummer
