For some reason people looking for sites like big things, they like pylons. There was a Friday night DF, up at the South Manchester club. Now people had been saying that one transmitter was too easy. So being an obliging sort, this time two stations were hidden. With the sites used, any self respecting Df'er could have done this on a bicycle. Unfortunately the organiser forgot a simple bit of physics, and the DF contingent of SMRC had an off day.

Site one was a small Rhododendron bush in a little place called Priory Woods, about 2 to 3 miles from the start. Not a long antenna, but at that range not a problem and the station was heard at the start. If you were lucky you went for this one first, and found something I'll talk about the second site later. Now a couple of teams got lucky, and arrived in Priory Woods in reasonable order. Their logic now went something like this - note the lack of DF set use here-

1. Dave B has organised this
2. Dave B likes swamps
3. Look there is a small gulch
4. This gulch has lots of squalid water and mud
5. This gulch also has Brambles
6. That's were he is.

But never mind, they spent a happy 30 to 40 minutes getting really filthy, whilst Mr. B watched from the seclusion of his bush supping the beer delivered by his mates from the cricket club just across the road. Had they looked up from their mud bath the game would have been up. Eventually good (?) DF practice won the day, and having satisfied themselves the gulch was (a) indeed very nasty, and that (b) MR.B was not in it, used the DF set. Forms were signed and off they toddled to join the rest of the unfortunates in trying to find the second transmitter.

The second site, was not more than a mile from the first. The location was in a small wood between the M60 and the A56, all this had to offer was lots of scrub and a pylon. The transmitter was placed in the scrub at the bottom of the pylon and a short wire connected the transmitter to the first bit of barbed wire round the pylon leg. This tuned up like a dream, well it would -the wires so kindly provided by the National Grid made a wonderful top hat to tune the pylon to top band.

Now this station was a really good signal at the start, and everybody got a good cross on the nice vertical pylon shaped antenna. This is where the organiser forgot his physics. The pylon radiated just fine. But, the signal coupled onto the national grid (and the 'Earth' wire between the very tops of every pylon for miles around). Now the receivers most commonly employed just love a current maximum, and every pylon on that stretch of line looked a nice short circuit, and radiated very nicely........

Now just over the A56and the Bridgewater Canal, is Sale Water Park. Sale Water park has a lot of pylons in it. All the pylons radiated. If you were unlucky and went to the Water Park first you found nothing.

So although this station had a lonely evening, he had the victory- on a perfectly simple site, nobody found him!