World of O News
There is an interesting discussion going on over at Attackpoint regarding the future of punching in orienteering.
[As you might have noticed, you now get to see the latest messages in several of the most important orienteering forums here at World of O (just scroll down to the day before yesterday) – and based on my server logs, quite a few of you are already following the forums this way.]
Before you head over there to join the discussion about e-punching, here is a short summary about the starting point for the discussion:
- The starter of the discussion, “Jagge”, has a problem with both e-punching systems available today: SI and EMIT. The point here is not a discussion about how complicated/fast it is to punch, but rather about how to get a failsafe problem with a 100% backup solution.
- SI 1: In some cases, competitors have been DQ’ed even if they were at the control and had the SI stick inside the control unit for a time which should normally be long enough (see Tiomila video below).
- SI 2: In other cases, runners have used extra time to make sure they had a punch, and lost many seconds due to this (a case of a lost victory in a PWT race is given in the discussion)
- EMIT: With the display units, people tend to check at the unit if they have a valid punch – and if not, they go back to punch again, and loose time in the same way as described for the SI unit. The good thing about the EMIT system is that you have a paper-backup, so you don’t actually have to run back if you know that your first punch was good enough to get the mechanical backup…
The perfect system should therefore be
- No instant feedback: No way to check if you have got a valid punch while you are running – thus all should use the same time for punching.
- Mechanical backup: A 100% mechanical backup solution, so that there is no risk for people being DQ’ed when they were at the control and punched according to the rules (Note that “punch according to the rules” for SI is that you get the correct feedback).
A last point: The future is wireless! EMIT is working on a wireless punching solution, and probably SI is as well(?). What about backup in this case?
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