It was another Final. Just the usual kind of thing three transmitters in an afternoon. The map was to the north of Manchester -the Hebden Bridge map; just visiting the place brought back happy memories of childhood, my grandparents used to live there. Any way the start I recall was up to the North of the map and two stations were I think East and West. The third station was in the South, and was intended to be the "on your way home to tea" station.

Two novices at final hiding were given the Hedben bridge site. The location was the steep -very steep 1in4 or better- hill side above the rail station. From the road it looked not too bad just a hill side with a wood at the bottom. In fact the initial plan was to hide in this wood with the aerial about half way up the hill. BUT when we looked at the map and thought about it for a minute or two.......

You see there was a quarry and a footpath at the top of the hill. So now we looked at the top of the hill with a dummy on the footpath at the bottom..........

Well the quarry was a bit obvious, so we found a ledge half way down the hill, well obscured by bracken with a nice line of trees to get a feed to the top path. So rather a lot of wire was lost in the quarry, just in case the temptation to go and look at the obvious was too overwhelming, and a nice long straight wire was run along the top path. When we came to put the lower path wire in place we had a lot of wire left over, so all the hiders did was go back to the top of the hill, find the wire running down to the hide connect to that and run the wire down the hill to joint the bottom wire. This was when we found out just how steep the hill was -we only went down it and were absolutely kn*****ed! Well satisfied with their efforts the hiders retired for the night.

The day of the final dawned and the two intrepid explorers returned to their site. At this point they noticed the additional hazard of a low bridge on the only road into the site at the bottom of the hill; several contestants reported having to stop to remove monitor aerials, and one or two forgot.....

Any way, the transmitter was given pride of place on the ledge, and with a small squirt of RF the hiders found that the beast tuned up. Two hungry hiders settled down to lunch.

At the appointed hour the signal from this site into the start was by all accounts "strong" so strong in fact that people were convinced that the site was only a mile or two from the start, not at the other end of the map, and not "do us" on the way home. The reason for this strong signal became obvious when we looked at the aerial dimensions, the hiders had in effect constructed a big H aerial, with multiple wavelength arms -little wonder it tuned up well and apparently radiated like a trooper.

Whilst setting up in the morning two young lads turned up. Having chatted to them and explained all about DF (they appeared to think the hiders should be sectioned), they hung round to watch the fun. They took a little bit of persuasion not to tell people where we were. In fact they directed anyone who asked into the quarry......

Well people started to arrive. This large array appeared give them some little difficulty, especially as the hiders were some way off the down (or up depending up on your point of view) cross feed. Several competitors appeared red faced and very tired at the feet of the hiders, looking like "what no?" men. Several competitors found the quarry a nice (?) little distraction -especially the cave half way up one wall. One competitor came down the hill, saw the operators and decided to swing on a tree branch and drop onto the ledge (that's actually how the operators got in) but it took nerve, the drop looked very long and very steep. Chris Plummer swung over the ledge took one look said "BL**DY HELL (Or Worse), -NOT LIKELY" and appeared several minutes (and competitors) later, as all seekers should be, at the feet of the hiders.

There was a lot of activity on the hill side that day, but the reason that some people looked really tired when they got in was very apparent when the operators left the site.... all the way down the hill through some very nasty undergrowth, directly underneath the cross feed wire was a well trodden track. People must have been very convinced that that was where we were to do that much damage to the undergrowth.