This article was first published in Hart MC's magazine in 1993 in an effort to drum up interest...

I decided to try one of these events (as a navigator) and expected to finish last by a considerable margin. PRAR Rennie (CoC for the prestigious Wessex MC Invitational Scatter) put me in touch with Tim Warburton from Windsor CC and we arrived one Saturday night for the `Don't Panic Scatter' (DPS) run by Windsor starting in an industrial estate west of Maidenhead (at 175/856_792.5). This was a round of the famous `Five Maps Scatter Championship' which uses the local OS sheets 174, 175, 185, 186 and 187 and each round is run by one club. This particular event was on 175 which I vaguely knew. No license is required (just club membership) and NES insurance is not needed since the `Blue Book' defines the vehicle to be of incidental importance compared with a road rally.

There is some basic scrutineering to check the car is road legal and most cars are standard `shopping cars'. That doesn't mean that the driver won't be `pressing on' by any means. Obviously, if you can cover the ground more quickly, you can visit more check-points in the time allowed; these events usually last for around five hours. The PR'ing problems are also negligible since there isn't a pre-defined route. The so-called `check-points' are still seen by the Route Liason Officer (RLO) however and any black-spots or quiet zones are noted. Since the route is not defined, the crews are free to choose which roads to use and `local knowledge' may come in handy to employ shortcuts and white roads which `go' for example. The checks must be at least 200 metres from any habitation to avoid irritating anyone.

How then does a Scatter Rally work ? Well, they all have the same basic format but may differ in execution. Scattered over the map are a number of check-points or route-checks in similar locations at which you mind find the more familiar code-board, passage or time-control. Each check is located on some man-made object such as a stile or footpath (FP) sign and is easy to find: you are told what the object is in advance. In order to locate these checks you have a sheet of clues, many of which resemble normal handouts that you would get during a 12-car. There will be basic map references, tulips, herringbones and straight-forward navigation that a competant 12-car navigator should be able to understand. Each clue starts in a different location and ends with something along the lines of "the check is located on FP sign on right in 100m" for example.

There are also the clues to test the real experts. If you've ever been stumped by a tricky handout on a 12-car then you haven't lived until you've tried some of the harder scatter clues. They are quite tricky indeed ! I now understand why these people are so good. The points awarded for finding the various checks are graded according to the difficulty of the clue. A simple map reference might be worth ten points, a tulip handout perhaps twenty points and a cryptic one maybe thirty points. There also might be a travelling marshall (TM) who each crew should visit at a particular time/place and the TM may only be at that location for ten minutes and then move on to another location. The TM may be worth fifty points and commonly will give you the clue of a final check which could be worth say sixty points.

Once you have plotted some of these checks the navigator tries to decide a route that will visit them as efficiently as possible and will also (probably) still be plotting the harder clues as the driver moves off from the start. Once the crew has reached a check-point location the driver may then have to get out with a torch to find the check. A Scatter is NOT a treasure hunt by any means and the people competing are as serious about it as those doing a `proper' road rally.

On this event we had quite a good evening and I struggled with the harder clues but after the event I sussed out some of the tricks used. A driver who can also think is a positive boon and he or she is not as much a `sack of potatoes' as on a normal rally. Many of the other crews also had extra people in the back of the car with maps etc. The workload would be divided so one person worked on the harder clues and another guided the driver to the check-point.

We eventually reached the finish location with roughly thirty seconds to spare (before penalties would be incurred). We finished up 1^st novice and 15^th overall out of 26 crews: we even beat some experts and semi-experts and Tim picked up his first driver novice award. This event was organised to a very high standard and it was a pleasure to take part.

I'm sure Hart members would enjoy this type of challenge but currently ( this was 1994 ed.) we are not an invited club (even though the events are local to us) as such and therefore never see any regs. I shall enter some more of these under the Hart banner and hopefully persuade the organisers to start inviting Hart. Please have a go as I'm sure you will sharpen your map reading and rallying skills by a large amount.

I'll be seeing you!, John Upham

webmaster@ukmotorsport.com