Northern Champs Controllers Comments

It is a major undertaking for one club to organise a two-day event, especially when one day is the Northern Championships and the Senior Home International. Airienteers were quite stretched but succeeded in staging a very good event on Saturday.

Chris Burden’s attitude as organiser was consistently positive and cheerful.

Alistair Wood planned very good courses which, from the comments received, were well appreciated. The longer courses mixed long legs with shorter legs making the most of the more complex areas. He overcame the constraints, caused by the many uncrossable walls, very well.

Thanks to those stalwarts who transported and erected the many stiles. I know some of them were a little rickety and vertical, especially in the East, but also that on the whole, only the younger and more agile competitors would encounter them.

Just two weeks before the event, land access was withdrawn for a significant part of the area. Alistair responded very positively and quickly came up with revised courses which were still of a good standard. There was not time for a complete replan and it did mean that some courses were probably a little on the short side.

Thanks to Tony Thornley who helped with checking the extra control sites required by the re-plan. Tony also did much of the mapping and prepared the maps for printing.

The cows on the land did cause us a significant problem because they took too close an interest in the control points and several were badly chewed when we came to check them. I think we had repaired them all before any competitors arrived.

The maps were laser (rather than offset) printed and were perfectly legible, even at 1:15000. I heard no criticism of this from competitors.

Most courses had 1:10000 maps while the shortest courses had 1:7500 which most people seemed to appreciate. Some commented that circles at 1:7500 were too large but others preferred the larger circles.

It was a pleasure to work with Airienteers and I certainly enjoyed the six days that I spent on the area, especially as the last three were in such pleasant weather.

David Rosen SROC