Future Events
Sun 18 Apr
Ham Hill
Near: Yeovil more details...
Thu 29 Apr
Wellington
Near: Wellington more details...
Sat 22 May to Sun 25 Jul
Taunton West
Near: Taunton more details...
Wed 26 May
Wiveliscombe
Near: Wiveliscombe more details...
QO Featured in SaxAlert
Having seen the British Orienteering article on the Missing Maps Project, Graham Denny, the editor of Saxons OC's magazine got in touch for an interview.
You can read the result in the spring edition.
Easter Orienteering
Why not do a bit of Easter Egg O instead of the usual hunt?
You could make a course and hide eggs at the controls. Perhaps even make it a score course, with hard controls having more or better eggs.
Some of our families did a similar thing for Hallowe'een.
Torus Temp-O Results
March saw the third Torus online Temp-O series. Competitors came from Hong Kong to the US, with a healthy European contingent.
The best five results from the eight events counted for individual scores, and the individual scores added to the club and national scores.
Our Chairman finished 112th in the B-class, which was the urban series, and was invited to join members of the GB Trail-O team for post-event analysis on Zoom.
QO finished 291st. It would be great to have more members taking part next time. BOK came 20th, DVO 78th and WIM 108th, so we have local competition!
Maintenance to the Longrun POC
And an upgrade...
Our President and our Membership officer have been out and about checking the wooden posts on the Longrun Meadow Permanent Orienteering Course. Replacement plaques have been made and attached, and more significant structural repairs to one post are being arranged.
New QR code plaques have been added, allowing their use with MapRun6 QR punching. We'll be releasing a new range of courses using these in the near future.
Virtual TempO
Ever wanted to try Trail Orienteering? Well, now's your chance to have a go at an online version.
Instead of running from control to control, TrailO involves looking at the map and identifying which of the controls you can see in the landscape matches the one on the map. It allows everyone to compete on a level playing field. In the popular modern form, TempO, you are timed making each decision.
If you want to have a go at the March series, go to http://temposim.yq.cz/tempo.cgi. Make sure you select 'GBR Quantock orienteers' when setting up your account (or your own club if you just happen to be visiting our site).
Restarting Events
The government timetable for England currently has competitive outdoor sport restarting from 29 March. British Orienteering has indicated that to be the earliest date that they will support orienteering events. Obviously, this is dependent on what happens in the next few weeks.
Quantock Orienteers is planning on restarting with a few events where social distancing can be easily managed. They will be MapRun events requiring no touching controls, no download, and only minimal contact at map collection. As before, there will be online registration and only a few competitors allowed within each 15-minute start window to avoid queues at map collection and any congestion on the course.
Missing Maps Project
The Missing Maps Project was set up by the British and American Red Cross, Medecins Sans Frontiers, and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team to produce maps of vulnerable areas in the developing world that can be used to support humanitarian aid and disaster relief.
Quantock Orienteers would like to encourage orienteers to help with this effort as they already have the map awareness needed. The mapping is done using OpenStreetMap, which many members will be familiar with as we use it to create the base data for our Street Series maps.
Skills matrix
This skills index is aimed at all from those attempting Orange courses to those who would be considered experts.
Most of the articles were written by QO's Richard Sansbury but we have borrowed from other resources on You Tube and other clubs' websites.
Also highly recommended: the Better Orienteering website (here)