Welcome to the KING of HART now in it's sixth year and once again a round of the Five Maps Scatter Championship. The scheme and layout of the event has been compiled by regular competitors in the Five Maps series and broadly follows the same format as each of the previous King of Hart Scatters. We hope you will come and have a go, either as novices keen to expand your experience and expertise, or, equally as experts curious to find how others construct a quality event. We believe that the format is a little different from others in the series and will be both challenging and entertaining.

The theme for the event is based on a card game, this year using elements of the well known game "Memory" partly in celebration of the fact that the event stags on Remembrance Day. No specific prior knowledge of the game will be required to participate. Straightforward navigational instructions will be issued at the stag for the majority of the roadside codeboard locations and there will be four manned JOKERS (MCs). Identifying individual codeboards - large playing cards - will attract points, but bonus points will awarded for completing "blocks" of codeboards (full details will be provided in the Finals). Visiting the JOKERS (MCs), where three cards will be located, will attract further points.

A game of cards is normally played on a table (OS 175 & 174) containing many identified cards (codeboard locations). The JOKERS will be keeping an eye on proceedings throughout the game. As all participants will want to retire to bed at a sensible hour, competitors who have received instructions from the JOKERS and found the face cards along with having visited a number of codeboards will be welcomed at the finish as a prerequisite to announcement of the results.

This year's event has been designed to be even more straightforward than usual for absolute novices with a strategic challenge for the more experienced scatter experts. All competitor comments from previous events have been carefully analysed and taken account of wherever possible.

We hope that the above has wetted your appetite, so let's have those entries rolling in - before the closing date please! If they don't arrive, be prepared for some verbal hassle from the organisers: you have been warned!

Gwyn Jones & Bill Mexson.

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With the unfortunate cancellation of The Skeletal Scatter, The Hunter’s Night Trial, organised by Middlesex County Automobile Club, was promoted to the opening round of the 2000 Five Maps Scatter Championship.

Held during the weekend following a week of almost incessant rain, the event took place on an area of Bucks, Berks and Oxfordshire where the roads were very wet and, with the addition of a layer of fallen leaves covering the road, very slippery. Fortunately, none of the competing cars suffered any mishaps, and all reached the finish point in one piece.

The navigation for the event comprised ten five point clues, given by map reference: fifteen clues identified by ‘medium’ difficulty navigation at ten points each and a final ten with more tricky navigation, worth fifteen points each. For those visiting all ten of the map reference clues, there was also a forty-point bonus available. There were also three marshal controls that had to be visited within a specific time window, where an ‘in car’ problem had to be solved.

Only one of the thirty-six locations seemed to beat all of the entrants, this one being a herringbone spelling out the words ‘Hunters Night Trial’. Five entrants located the forty-point bonus.

In an effort to attract more entrants, these events are being geared towards making the events more novice friendly, whilst retaining a degree of difficulty to keep the experts amused. In this case, novices were awarded reduced points for declaring the map reference of code board locations (not the ones where the reference was given!) without actually visiting the place. To prevent competitors having to search everywhere when they arrive at the location, everyone was given a sheet stating what the code board had been affixed to (assuming that they were in the correct location).

At the end of an evening that surprisingly, considering the previous week, managed to stay rain free, the pairing of Gary Elswood and Andy Greenland of Middlesex County Automobile Club were declared winners. Dickie Smart/Gordon Parsons, Tom Ryan/Peter Cox and Ray and Cherise Gilkes being declared class winners in expert, semi expert and novice respectively.

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A Motor Car Assembly? With a fixed course to follow? What a good idea. Nothing required other than one or more starting points and a suitable finish. Drivers, start your engines. Hence the London to Brighton Emancipation Run, then the 18 day run through England and Scotland in 1900 which actually started from the interior of the Agricultural Hall Islington [it still stands] to follow a 1000 mile route. The pre-war Monte Carlo Rally, first run in 1911 to encourage trade within the Municipality during slack winter months enabled the Monegasques to coin the word `Rally' when seeking entrants for the first `Rallye Automobile ver,s Monte Carlo', at a 7 m.p.h. average speed. Then there were the pre 1939 Alpine Trials and the Liege-RomeLiege that actually did reach those cities. At none of those events was any `scattering' required. At motor club level, the set routes invariably comprised reliability events or mud plugging trials. There were also all those classic hill climbs. After the end of W.W.2 continental rallies recommenced in 1947. The R.A.C. obtained international status in 1951 for the premier rally event of Great Britain. Meanwhile in 1945, one make clubs were quickly outnumbered by the formation of clubs as geographical area groups who rightly thought that the combination of near neighbour members with different makes of car would rapidly lead to the birth of new ideas and perhaps new styles of touring competition.

Such was certainly the case with the Hants and Berks Motor Club, which pioneered in 1946 motoring competitions based upon the interpretation of the one inch to one mile Ordnance Survey map. During the last years of W. W.2 the maps of the `New Popular Edition' had been published with an overprint in the garish purple ink of the War Office Cassini Grid that soon came to be known as the `National Grid'. This metric referencing system sat uncomfortably next to inches, furlongs, fathoms, feet and miles, but became the preferred and precise way, especially later when printed in black, of locating with accuracy a particular point on the ground. This ease of control location eventually became used by the organisers of the R.A.C. Rally, who for a very few years in the 1950's located controls by map references - sadly without improving the weather or the international reputation of those particular events.

The Hants and Berks competitions, with the annual night trial [complete with scatterbrained histrionics by control marshals] took prominence in the calendar. The regulations stated that points would be defined by `six figure grid references or other means'. The scope thus afforded to route plotters seems to be undiminished today! This same competition was to become, many years later, the `Experts' event, then the `Holland Birkett Experts' after the originator, who had been inspired in 1946 to organise a club night long map reading event. This brainwave came to him when motoring back to his veterinary surgery [his own Practice] by way of the `white' track junction 696502 at Five Lanes End, Hants. Determined to make motoring competition as fair as possible for all competitors [see for example his enduring Silverstone `Eight Clubs' Meeting]. Birkett had the idea of a night navigation trial `massed' start as could formerly be seen at the Le Mans 24 hour race but with the competitors leaving the start in wheel spoke pattern both to minimise bunching and to lessen the chance of giving away the position of a control to the remainder of the entry. This `scatter' concept was fine as long as a start could be found at the approximate centre of the competition area. Entries were large, often exceeding 100 in number. The writer recalls a massed start from the [ballroom] of the Hog's Back Hotel, not too far from the middle of one inch sheet 169, involving a sprint to the overflow car park on the opposite side of the busy A 31. It will be appreciated that in visiting each control on the rim of the `wheel' competitors were likely to be following the same route. Half the entry might be motoring clockwise with the other half circulating anti clockwise. The winner of these events was as likely to be driving a family small saloon e.g. Ford Popular or Austin 7, as a powerful sports car. The concept of a central control followed by a `wheel spoke' departure lasted for several years. However many events had a peripheral start which necessitated a drive for all to a central time control. The ultimate `central control' concept was one winter's night on the one inch map of Oxford, sheet 158, when the description was just `Central Control'. While most of the entry scanned their route cards again and again for further clues, even reading the regulations, only one competitor immediately motored to the precise centre of the map, where the grid lines crossed improbably in the middle of an orchard reached by a track from A 4130. The reference was 480900. Here the marshal was found under an apple tree asking where the rest of the entry had lost themselves. `Moving' controls were tried in a series of attempts to spread out the competitors. There were launches cruising on the Thames, illuminated code letters on cars crossing the map and even [unsuccessfully] a code letter displayed in the window of a slow train.

In the 1950's the number of motor clubs, and motoring events, grew as quickly as rust on a floor pan. The night trial format had many copiers, so many in fact that it was possible to choose in which part of the south of England your night's sleep would be lost on every Saturday night. At the same time more townsfolk moved to the perceived peace of the country. Major road events of the `plot and bash' type were also held and often attracted large numbers including not at all disguised `works' entries from crews keen to sharpen their driving and navigation skills for use in international events. Complaints of night time disturbance began to be received by organisers and some disgruntled folk wrote to all the authorities that they could identify. Most of these letters found their way eventually to the competitions department at the R.A.C., Belgrave Square S.W. The approachable one-chap-and-a-girl, with whom club road events could hitherto be discussed informally were superseded by a large department. The political storm clouds were gathering. Parking meters were actually installed in the Square itself and even the pavement flower seller could feel the threat of change. The swinging sixties might have arrived yet ominous lists of rally black spots came to be issued so that club road events were suddenly under close supervision and regulation in order to placate a growing but vociferous `ban the rallies' lobby. In west London it became impossible to plan rallies on either the London S.W. or London N.W. maps. One of the very last of the night rallies to be held in this area actually finished for breakfast at the then brand new and underused Terminal 2 building at Heathrow Airport. The very end of the era came partly as a result of two annual rallies organised by the London Motor Club. The set route overnight `London Rally' was a prestigious event and regularly attracted entries of 250. The list of stewards for 1958 included such well known international drivers as Sheila Van Damm, Nancy Mitchell and Godfrey Imhof A daylight event known as the `Little London' became even more popular and at the end of the decade, was sending no less than 400 cars through the lanes on each occasion. The end had come. A meeting of Parliament debated whether to impose a total ban on all motoring road events. Lord Chesham was instructed to report.

A damage limitation exercise by the R.A.C. encouraged the concept of half night events with a limited entry. All Clubs exercised their formidable combined brain power and tried to get their events classified as `touring assemblies' so taking them out of the worst of the draconian event regulations that were imposed. The complete ban on club road events was averted - but only just. The `scatter' concept had come to stay.

The regulations today reflect the history outlined above. The compromise of `only visit `x' number of controls out of a total number of `y' enables a Club to say that there is no fixed route. A limited number of competitors reduces the risk of nuisance and public complaint. Hats off then to today's organiser for competing against all form filling odds - and eventually winning - to mount a club event for you. These organisers merit your wholehearted thanks and support, with which they might, just might, run another event for you next year. Whatever the map scale, 1/2500 or 1/50000, enjoy your events and get Scattering.

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Next Edition due out end of December 2000.