This is a Regularity Section. The instructions below tell you where to mark a Timing Point.

AR

TC1 @ St Nichloas Church in Tolleshunt D'Arcy.

On the Schoolfrenz Table Top Rally, Gavin Rogers set us an interesting challenge, with pigeons released from different locations, at ten minute intervals, flying back to their loft. Our task then was to plot the route that we took when releasing the pigeons. This time your task is the same, however these pigeons are a little more awkward to track ...

You set off in the Thalamorph truck from St Nicholas Church at Midday, travelling at 30 miles per hour and releasing a pigeon every two miles, without stopping. As per the regulations, you do not use any section of road or junction more than once.

A coach also sets off from the church at Noon, departing NNE, travelling at the same speed as the truck. Every four minutes, the coach drops off a pigeon owner, who remains at that location until his feathered friend reaches him. The coach drives only on B roads (the B1022, 1023 and 1026) and does not leave the area covered by our map, it does not turn around or reverse and continues until it has dropped off the last pigeon owner.

Once released from the truck, each pigeon flies in a straight line (not wind-affected) to its owner. Each owner records the arrival time of his bird to the previous whole second, along with its approach direction in degrees (e.g. if the pigeon approached from the East, the direction recorded is 90, a SW approach would be 225, etc.). These results are listed in the attached table.

TC2 is at the release point of the last pigeon.

Mark a Timing Point at the location of the truck at the arrival time of the pigeon which flies the furthest.

The route should be plotted using Autop(i)lot. You may need to switch AP off and plot manually on some sections.


You may find some of the following helpful:

The owners are dropped off in the same order as the pigeons are released, i.e. pigeon 1 flies to owner 1, pigeon 2 to owner 2, etc.

In the interests of Health and Safety, the coach stops to drop off each owner then speeds up, to maintain the 30 mph average.

The truck does not use any white roads between releasing pigeons 7 to 11 and pigeons 13 to 21.

Knowing the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow (African or European) will not help you in your quest.

Only four birds are released while the truck is on a white road.

The truck and the coach pass each other (on the same road) only once, at approximately 39.3 miles.

No Whippets were harmed in the making of this Route Card.
 

You can blame Mr Rogers as well as me for this one. After tackling the 'pigeon' route card on Gavin's event, it struck me that the difficulty level could be taken to the extreme by having the pigeons' destination as a moving target. Well, I had to reel it in a little from that, but the idea was there. I am convinced that this card is do-able given enough time, unfortunately that was a luxury that none of you had as the deadline for submissions drew near. Again, I won't tell you too much in case you are mad enough to have another crack at it. To solve it you need to plot the route that the coach drives, to give the destination locations of the birds. Then, using the bearings given, you can draw a line fro each destination, the points where this line crosses roads give you a list of possible release locations. By measuring to from the start or the previous release point using AP, you should be able to eliminate most of the points and then work your way through by trial and error, the time consuming part. You may have noticed that the map area was familiar, it is the same area as the practice card, RC0. This was deliberate, so that you could go onto RC0 using the Re-do facility to help you either plot the route of the coach or just help with distances, etc. The arrival times list was a red herring, as all the birds fly at different speeds and you couldn't be expected to work them out or the distances flown, the Monty Python's Holy Grail reference in the hints may (!) have told you this. This was done to mis-lead you about the furthest flying pigeon that you needed to identify to mark the timing point. For reference, there was no pattern to which bird flew at what speed, but the speeds are all multiples of 5 mph with the fastest being 130. Well done again to Nigel Parish and also Monica Dowson, the only two to submit good attempts at this card.