4.September

The start. In the morning a packet of food was delivered and we moved in the direction of forests in the North. 1 and a half hours of drive and then we were somewhere beyond Seoul.

No 173 - Andres. Photo by Lee (HL1DK)

Next to the road, only rice paddies were to be seen and the mountains in between. The map of the track was unusual, since much was different there from what really was in the landscape (there were tracks on the map that are not added to the map at ours and at the same time some tracks and open fields were absent that really existed in nature).

Kalle. Photo by Lee (HL1DK)

As the previous information kindly allowed us to run across rice paddies, I did think that there weren’t any of these on the way but having reached the track I was amazed that there were hog-backs obliquely across the map and there were rice paddies in between. My first attempt to clear the rice paddy failed because the clay ground grasped my right boot and I had to dig there around 3 minutes in the depth of 20 cm before I could touch anything resembling a boot. After that I decided to avoid paddies which however was a failure since this way I only managed to run 19.3 km instead of 8–9 and also exceeded the control time limit by 5 seconds which, then, was not of much importance since I had made a lot of mistakes and a great place was gone.

Tarmo after having rammed the bush. Photo by Lee (HL1DK)

With the benefit of hindsight it was still much easier a landscape compared with that of the next day of competition, so that achieving the best result would have been possible here, but 29 degrees Celsius didn’t give me much chances for that. This was 7–8 degrees more than what I would have been able to stand effectively. Additionally, the time factor must be introduced to the substantiation of my mistakes. In Estonian time, the competition took place at night that precisely didn’t let the head to make the right decisions (due to one such critical moment I lost at least 30 minutes). More practice with the gadget would have probably made up for this, but we hadn’t had such an opportunity in Estonia.

Andres. The Photo by Lee (HL1DK)

Analysing afterwards for the sake of next competitions, we decided that we have to acquire from the Chinese transmitter sets for both bands with the cost of 15 thousand Kroons so that one could organise track practices in Estonia as well. Now only a source of money is needed. The Chinese surprised us positively with the offers of technologies. Sure enough nothing can be said of the susceptibility of those transmitters, since we haven’t had the opportunity yet to test the gadgets bought there.

As has become customary, in sum the best part for us was effectively the 2m contest, 80m proved to be a general stumbling block, although Kalle surprised us with a relatively good outcome there.

So the results of our men are such:
( Source : http://www.2008ardf.org/results-2m.htm ):

M21

aL. Tarmo Gede EST 140'05 6 :( Баранка - "zero")

M40

17. Kalle Kuusik EST 101'35 5

23. Andres Viira EST 109'23 5

M40 as a Team

10. Kalle Kuusik EST 101'35 5 210'58 10

Andres Viira EST 109'23 5