Planner's / Organiser's comments

Night Owl

Forty people at a Night event in darkest Dorset is a goodly number and you were rewarded with a beautiful clear and moonlit evening. It was a shame that two control boxes, one on the Yellow and one on the Night Owl, shut down before the event - they had been fine when we put them out mid afternoon. The easiest fix was to take the control  out of the course on the computer. Other than that, using the boxes in "sleep" mode meant we could conserve battery life for the day event afterwards, which meant that we were spared the task of collecting, reprogramming and putting out between the events. Congratulations to Martyn Case for his convincing victory. The Night Owl course was a true Green standard and rather more testing than in some areas we have used in recent years.

Dorset Schools League & informal

This event ran with very few hitches - the boxes behaved perfectly and the use of the campsite games room made the Organiser's life so much easier, even in the wet weather. We had more people than we expected and the last few on the Green & Blue courses had to use master maps - it shows I think, that the option of local events with less travelling is highly valued by our many of members, even if others travelled to the Concorde Chase.

Thank you to all the volunteer helpers on both days, particularly Cris Tween for help with the computing, and to Chris, Lynn & Simon Branford, for all their assistance in hanging controls and the general legwork involved in staging an event.  Increasing infirmity means its probably time for me to hang up my planners boots -  these events couldn't have happened without them.

As ever, we are all grateful to the Cooper family for allowing us to use the beautiful Inside Park estate for the event.

Dick Keighley

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