Rob provided us with some devilish “Precision-Xmas” courses, with a strong “Pre-O” or “Trail-O” element (but not on any trails…). Six of the controls on the long course were clusters of controls, and you had to pick the one that you thought was in the exact centre of the circle and fitted the control description most precisely.
A time penalty of 2 minutes was given for each incorrect punch at a clusters.
Control no 6 was vandalised 😦 so everyone’s splits from 5-6-7 have been deleted from the times. That’s why you’re all faster than you thought.
Here are finalised results. Well done to class winners Tim (and happy birthday on your 21st!), Ailsa and Stuart.
Balmedie Pre-Xmas-O Results Balmedie Orange Results
Very well done to everyone for making an excellent try at picking the correct flags. Overall the average success percentage was 57.6%, but top marks to Rachel for being 100% correct.
Special thanks to those who helped collect controls: Ian, Gareth, Helen R, Helen A and Stuart.
Here are some notes on the special control clusters, and enlargements of the control sites showing the locations of all the controls in the cluster:
Control Cluster Notes Site enlargements: Cluster AB Cluster CD Cluster EF
GRAMPIAN ORIENTEERS 
That was great fun and quite an eye opener, no wonder there is so much discussion about control placement and control description! Helen A’s ‘complete the course’ brain teaser at the AGM was a great warm up to the event too.
Well done Rachel – pity Gareth suggested the time penalty rather than elimination for wrong controls – or you would have won (though I suspect Rob would have come to the same conclusion when he saw how useless the rest of the field was …. Note that Gareth’s suggestion came before he set off – he obviously knew he would struggle!).
And there was me muttering darkly to myself Sunday night about having been ‘Rob’bed when in fact I’ve been Garethed!! My revenge may not be swift but it will be well-considered (like my orienteering style).