Results for EM Champs, Stanton Moor, 20/03/2022

16.45pm Sunday provisional results uploaded

Lost property:

Navy Pertex jacket with LAB logo, claim as below.
Course splits

Course 1	M10B W10B White
Course 2	M10A M12B W10A W12B Yellw
Course 3	M12A M14B W12A W14B Ornge
Course 4	M14A M16B W14A W16B LgtGr
Course 5	M75 M80 M85 M90 M65S M70S W65 W70 W75 W80 W18S W20S W45S W50S W55S W60S ShtGr
Course 6	M70 M55S M60S W16A W55L W60L W35S W40S Green
Course 7	M65L M18S M20S M45S M50S W18L W20L W45L W50L W21S ShtBl
Course 8	M16A M55L M60L M35S M40S W35L W40L Blue
Course 9	M18L M20L M45L M50L M21S W21L ShtBr
Course 10	M21L M35L M40L Brown

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Organiser's Comments

A lovely day on the Moor, for once the Weather Gods were smiling on us! Fantastic to see Podium and CompassPoint trading again, meaning we can all have a good chat!

 

Congratulations to the winners of East Midlands Championship trophies, from MW10 all the way up to W75 and M85. What a fit bunch we are!

 

The East Midland Junior Squad cake stall took £94.50. They're really grateful for your custom, as this will go towards minibus hire for a weekend away (in fact it's only 1/4 of the cost, but the best quarter). We loved having them.

 

Our Planner and Mapper – Richard Parkin – has probably been tweaking this event since 1st lockdown. We were delighted when the farmer offered us this particular parking field in January, as it made everything so convenient!

 

Thanks to all our DVO helpers, a 'well oiled machine'. I say this every time, and it's a great endorsement for each of them and for the help teams system. Each Team Leader holds their team equipment and have their own practices, so all that needs sharing before each event is the location of the Start/s, Finish and Download. )A DVO club mate found my car keys during his warm up, for those who saw yesterday's taxi drama on Facebook!)

 

Finally, thanks to Historic England for their detailed guidance in avoiding control placements/route choices on any archaeological sites, and Richard for his diligence in this (unlike the Spring Equinox campers). As ever, grateful thanks to Stanton Estates and the farmer Mr Henry Holland for being so accommodating and giving the CompassPoint van a tow!

 

See you all again soon!

 

Sal Chaffey

 

I’d like to thank controller Pete Gorvett and organiser Sal Chaffey and all the DVO helpers. Plus whoever arranged the weather. (We placed the order early last year—you have to book well in advance these days and even then …). Thanks too for the feedback, the good and the bad and the in-between. As mapper, I now have a couple of notes to check. As planner, I was glad to hear a variety of routes were taken. Please add your routes to Routegadget. I’d love to see where you went. Best wishes, Richard P

 

Controller comments

It was a pleasure to control on Stanton Moor, it is such a varied area with a lot of different technical challenges.  Richard’s new map was a real bonus and the people I heard enjoyed his courses.  The DVO team handled the organisation very effectively, as expected.

Apologies to the white course competitor who lost a lot of time 2-3.  There was a junction that when checking in 2020 for the 2021 iteration of this event had seemed so minor that following the track was obvious.  But by 2022 it was no longer clear which was the main track and which the minor path; it should have had a control.

I’d be interested in any feedback on three areas:

Vegetation boundaries or not

There was some discussion in the finish field about the use of Copse Edge (137) and Forest Corner (121) and whether it is reasonable to use them if there is no vegetation boundary.  I wasn’t sure when I first checked the sites, but after discussion with Richard I agreed they weren’t against the rules. One argument might be “why do the symbols exist if they can always be replaced by the vegetation boundary symbol”, but perhaps that is over simplistic.   The rules simply say:

·        Features used as control sites must be clearly defined, distinct from the surrounding terrain and marked on the map.

·        Control sites must be chosen so that the competitor is able to locate them with an accuracy consistent with the scale of the map and the amount of detail shown near the control.

In both cases the flags were high and I didn’t hear anybody saying they couldn’t find the controls.  There were trees one side of the control and none on the other so I felt the boundary was “clearly defined” despite no veg boundary symbol.    Perhaps a bigger question is why we tend in the UK to reserve the vegetation boundary symbol for young trees where there is a clear and obvious line at eye-level, but not use it when there is a high canopy even if there is a clear mappable distinction between wood   and open, so it could fit the ISOM vegetation boundary definition as a “distinct forest edge”.

Exact placement of controls

Should gully and narrow reentrant controls always be in the centre of the feature?  For various reasons (including attempts to avoid vandalism) there were at least three at this event that were to one side, but within a metre of the feature line.  One of these (134) prompted a query as it seemed to the competitor as on a spur.   At the gully end it widened to become a reentrant. As often the case there are options: the feature could fairly be described as gully end, reentrant upper part or spur foot, but in this case the spur and reentrant were just indicated by a very small bend in the contour on the map and the gully was the main feature.  I felt that in all cases the kite being visible if you were close to the centre of the circle was sufficient.  I’d be interested if anyone else felt any of these gully/reentrant controls were unfair.

Simultaneous punching

A very experienced and regular orienteer failed to have a record in their non-contactless dibber despite being confident that the control had beeped.  However, another competitor with a SIAC card wafted past at the same instant and their card started beeping at the same time.  Is there a possibility that the control firmware didn’t handle the two simultaneous events properly? 

Peter  Gorvett, SYO  (petergorvett at hotmail dot co dot uk)