Mobile-O

[Julianna Grant]

Dear Nopesport readers

I wonder if I could interest some of you in something new and interesting that combines the use of the Internet with O. Some of the young Turks in Hungarian orienteering have invented a bit of fun called Mobile-O. It basically consists of competing in pairs, one member has the map and a mobile phone, the other is doing the running without a map but with another mobile phone. The general idea is that the one with the map does not go out into the terrain, but describes where to go and what to look for over the phone and the one doing the running is actually finding the controls based on the instructions. This has been going on for a few years now in Hungary and is tremendous fun.

Anyway, the latest version is to do this over the Internet, using Skype out or one of the VoIP phone companies like InternetCalls.com or VoipCheap.com. The organisers e-mail the map to the foreign competitor about an hour before the actual start time, so you can print it and have a go.

Later on in the summer there will be two events in which anybody could take part from England, one is a practice event and the other an actual competitive one. The practice event is on Thursday, 14th September at 4pm using the map of Budapest Castle District, the actual event is on Satuday, 23rd September in the afternoon, again in urban terrain, using the map of Szentendre, a small town North of Budapest. There are going to be several Hungarian orienteers who speak English and whose CV's will be on their web site later, who will need partners. Do let me know if you are interested and I can fill you in on any further details.

Julianna

[tim sleepless]

I read about Mobile-O on the website for the Pannon O days event... sounded interesting, and certainly a very good training technique for visualising and reading terrain.

[EddieH]

I think this sounds fantastic.
Wouldn't it be much more fun for disabled orienteers than Trail O?

[Adventure Racer]

Wouldn't it be much more fun for disabled orienteers than Trail O?

What a brilliant bit of lateral thinking!

[Tatty]

Sounds great. Now where is my mobile?

[kedge]

EddieH wrote

Wouldn't it be much more fun for disabled orienteers than Trail O?

Thanks EddieH. So you would prefer us out of sight rather than cluttering up the forest?

Seriously, there is room in orienteering for all sorts of variants and I'm sure that Mobile-O is great fun, as long as you can afford the phone bills

[mharky]

Well in the ones that have taken place so far, you don't they were sponsored by Nokia I believe.

If you can't get that, just uses army short wave radio.