Contest scoring question

[Gary Adams]

Glider racing pilots (and fans) a question on contest scoring:

Remote vs On site.

Advantage vs. disadvantage?

Planning for a regional next year and looking for input from outside the "After we fly, beer in hand" opinions.

Gary Adams 'GB'

[Giaco]

On Friday, July 1, 2016 at 9:22:38 AM UTC-4, Gary Adams wrote:
> Glider racing pilots (and fans) a question on contest scoring:
>
> Remote vs On site.
>
> Advantage vs. disadvantage?
>
> Planning for a regional next year and looking for input from outside the "After we fly, beer in hand" opinions.
>
> Gary Adams 'GB'

As a first-time scorer at Region 1, I'm having a awesome time learning the processes and nuances. There are certainly some gotcha's, but mostly they all seem to be associated with loggers messing up as opposed to winscore not doing something it's supposed to.

As we try to bring more people into XC racing, it helps to be able to have a discussion with someone (with beer in hand) over why penalties came out the way they did, and what they can do better on the next day. Reach-back capabilities are very important, but on-site is probably faster for preliminary results and helping to ensure all records are in when the contestants sign in after a flight.

Glad to see you guys are bringing back R6 after the hiatus... I was quite upset when i saw you didn't have it this year....
Giacomo

[SoaringXCellence]

Having scored the Region 8 contest for two years now I can certainly see how a remote scoring would work.

Having said that, it certainly is much easier to deal with questions and unclear scores if you're onsite. You can show the pilot the process that Winscore used to select the start and assign start/finish penalties, etc.

Besides, I want to be there to fly too!

MB

[[email protected]]

On Friday, July 1, 2016 at 9:22:38 AM UTC-4, Gary Adams wrote:
> Glider racing pilots (and fans) a question on contest scoring:
>
> Remote vs On site.
>
> Advantage vs. disadvantage?
>
> Planning for a regional next year and looking for input from outside the "After we fly, beer in hand" opinions.
>
> Gary Adams 'GB'

It is very important to have "robust" on-airport internet service. The problem arises after pilot arrival; the airport wifi becomes swamped with logs being sent to the contest scorer. It is even worse if pilots send their scores to an on-airport scorer's table where the logs are later uploaded to the remote scorer. Dedicated scoring wifi is a must. Perry struggled with this in April and John Good worked many hours trying to help. Being a consummate IT professional, John is an excellent "how-to" resource.

[MNLou]

Remote scoring has worked very well for the last 2 years at Region 7 in Albert Lea.

Lou

[Tony[_5_]]

On Tuesday, July 5, 2016 at 7:30:04 PM UTC-5, MNLou wrote:
> Remote scoring has worked very well for the last 2 years at Region 7 in Albert Lea.
>
> Lou

It really depends on the scorer.

If you're talking about Tom Pressley or John Godfrey, no sweat.

Some others, especially people new to WinScore, require pilot supervision.

I've had great experiences with scorers that were remote and poorer experiences with scorers on site

[Bruce Hoult]

On Wednesday, July 6, 2016 at 8:10:35 AM UTC+12, wrote:
> On Friday, July 1, 2016 at 9:22:38 AM UTC-4, Gary Adams wrote:
> > Glider racing pilots (and fans) a question on contest scoring:
> >
> > Remote vs On site.
> >
> > Advantage vs. disadvantage?
> >
> > Planning for a regional next year and looking for input from outside the "After we fly, beer in hand" opinions.
> >
> > Gary Adams 'GB'
>
> It is very important to have "robust" on-airport internet service. The problem arises after pilot arrival; the airport wifi becomes swamped with logs being sent to the contest scorer. It is even worse if pilots send their scores to an on-airport scorer's table where the logs are later uploaded to the remote scorer. Dedicated scoring wifi is a must. Perry struggled with this in April and John Good worked many hours trying to help. Being a consummate IT professional, John is an excellent "how-to" resource.

Times are changing, but there are still plenty of gliding fields without decent 3G coverage, let alone fixed broadband internet!

When I was one of the scorers at the 1995 Worlds in Omarama [1], I got the daily scores and contest director's report out by UUCP [2] dial-up on a long distance call to a computer in Wellington, 300 miles and Cook Strait away.. I also provided competitors and crews with individual temporary email accounts [3] on my PowerBook 100 laptop and let them read and type their email on it.

The amount of data was small enough, and UUCP efficient enough, that even with the slow modems then (2400 bps) the daily call was I think longer than 1 minute, but just barely.

[1] http://gei.aerobaticsweb.org/WORLD_95/soaring_world.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP
[3] looking like