The region in the SSA-OLC is the SSA Region of the take-off site. This
is the way it is done in all other OLC countries, and since this is an
international contest, we need to be consistent with this in the US as
well. It only makes sense, since pilots must claim flights in the
country where they are made, so what SSA Region would foreign pilots
use?
The only possible exception would be where a club's membership is based
in one region, but their home airport happens to be just over the line,
technically in another region. As long as the majority of the pilots
flying from this airport agree with the region shift, we could consider
declaring that that airport is in the adjoining region. If you want
this to apply to your airport, send an email request to olc at ssa
dot org.
The OLC flight statistics can be broken down by SSA Region. For
example, if you click on "Champion" in the OLC-Classic line of the web
page header, you see results for all regions, but if you select a
region from the drop-down box, you will see the rankings for that
region only. This allows people to set up local rivalries, that
equalize the weather conditions somewhat. So it makes no sense for
someone flying in the Desert Southwest to claim flights in Region 1
(New England) just because they receive mail or vote there.
Unfortunately, if you do select Region 1, you will see the results are
polluted by a number of pilots who did not bother to select the correct
region on their claim.
There is no need to talk of disqualification for now. It is just as
easy for the admin to change the region as it is to remove the flight.
So for now, we can just make the corrections if people are interested
in regional statistics, and they are seeing flights that should not be
there. Send email requests to olc at ssa dot org for this as well
(but let's prioritize this to just address the top few places only).
There is no need to burden the OLC Team with partner check requests, we
can administer US pilots locally.
Although there is no specific mention of takeoff region in the OLC
rules, just to make it explicit, the English version of the OLC web
claim form now shows "Take-off Region" next to the drop down menu.
Unfortunately flight analysis software will not show this in the
built-in menu.
The intention was to make this automatic, but because there were
problems with the airfield selection by the server early in the season,
this function was disabled by OLC. So there is no automatic check on
takeoff site right now. Also the current airfield database does not
have all the correct regions entered for every airfield. We are working
on improving this for 2007, but cannot promise anything yet (the OLC is
an all volunteer effort).
The SSA regions are based on state boundaries, and the state
abbreviations are included in the drop down selections to make
selecting the correct region easier. There are four states that are
divided as follows:
- CA is divided by the 36th parallel into Region 11 (north) and Region
12 (south)
- New York is divided by the 42nd parallel into Region 2 (south) and
Region 3 (north)
- Pennsylvania is divided by the 78th meridian into Region 2 (east) and
Region 3 (west)
- Missouri is divided by the 92nd meridian into Region 7 (east) and
Region 10 (west)
So please select the correct region of your takeoff site in your claims
so people can get correct regional results from the OLC.
Doug Haluza
SSA-OLC Admin
Jack wrote:
Several SSA OLC competitors in the recent Region 6 South contest at
Caesar Creek OH appear to have entered their flights in their respective
home regions (other than Region 6), even though no point on the flight
tracks lies outside of Region 6. There are other instances where pilots
have listed their flights in a different region than both the region in
which the flight was flown and their home club region. Usually this is
an adjacent region, indicating perhaps too little care with the
pull-down menu choices.
One may correct an entry made no more than four weeks ago. Instructions
he
http://tinyurl.com/r2lcb
Objections ("complaints" or "partner-checks") to uncorrected entries can
be lodged he
http://tinyurl.com/qqqsv
Anonymous complaints will not be processed.
Jack