Laser 28 - Excellent example of this great design Hamble le rice |
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Laser 140101 Tynemouth |
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Rossiter Pintail Mortagne sur Gironde, near Bordeaux |
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List classes of boat for sale |
race management software |
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davidyacht ![]() Really should get out more ![]() Joined: 29 Mar 05 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1345 |
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We used the Starcross system for a couple of years, but have now reverted back to clocks, paper and Sailwave.
Race Manager will probably work best if you are prepared to run races the same way as Starcross, i.e. Have electronic signing on as you walk out of the changing room, race multiple laps and have race teams that are not scared of computers and who have invested the time in learning the system. Anyone looked at Hoot?
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Happily living in the past
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piglet ![]() Really should get out more ![]() Joined: 04 Jan 07 Online Status: Offline Posts: 514 |
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Anyone here from Starcross?
Where can we get one?
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chrisg ![]() Really should get out more ![]() ![]() Joined: 23 Mar 07 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 893 |
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"Marke" your thread has arrived....
Have a look at the "RaceManager" system Starcross use. Fully automated. From electronic sign on, through starting the race with automated lights to posting results on their website within seconds of the race finishing. Brilliant. Their program does ask you to click on a list of competitors but cleverly it works out approx who should be coming over the line next on a handicap basis so the list is ordered as you should roughly see the boats (within reason), rather than just being alphabetical. They have a practice version on the internet for their OD's to swat up on before their duty here: |
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Oli ![]() Really should get out more ![]() Joined: 23 Mar 05 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1020 |
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cheap broadcast tracking available via motionx app, just need willing competitors to strap their iphones to the mast.
choose a channel to boradcast on and set to broadcast every 10 seconds (does require data), anyone can watch that knows the channel via motionx website, if competitors are closer than a few seconds checking back on the individual devices can sort any disputes after the race.. ive had an idea for while now of using google hangouts, a couple of computers and people on ribs to get an americas cup type broadcast for our trophy races, were lucky the whole river is 3g/4g. not sure it would be a major success ratings wise but more for an internal broadcast to the projector so that spectators get an idea of whats occurring. it would be a fun experiment that just needs volunteers.
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James Bell ![]() Posting king ![]() Joined: 17 Mar 04 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 115 |
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I wrote some DOS results software a long time ago, that had a handy feature to assist with recording finishing times on paper (which can still be found here).
It had a 'time sheet' screen whereby pressing the space bar would record the last ten times on screen (and keep scrolling up every time you hit the space bar). That way if three boats came across the line within seconds of each other, you could press the space bar quickly 3 times, then have enough time to copy the finishing times correctly onto paper (you can usually remember the order of boats in your head, but not times). At some time I will probably write a modern Windows version. I wouldn't discount the importance of writing thing down on paper though even if you can do things directly in software, that way you always have a backup copy if something goes wrong (like a sudden power cut, etc). There's nothing more irritating than having completed a race and someone loses or hasn't correctly recorded the times! Edited by James Bell - 13 Sep 16 at 5:44pm |
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IOS Sailing Community - www.iossc.org.uk
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Brass ![]() Really should get out more ![]() Joined: 24 Mar 08 Location: Australia Online Status: Offline Posts: 1151 |
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Worth a try. AIUI there voice to text apps for Samsung phones that are very good. You'd need some clever editing to cleanse the raw product. I think it's very dependent on the size of fleets and the experience and class knowledge of the finishing team. If you've got club fleets of 20 or so, where the finishing recorder is familiar with the boats, then point and click with all sail numbers on one screen will probably work. For bigger fleets where all the sail numbers won't fit on the screen,or get cramped up, this doesn't work so well. And very few software packages deal well with transposed, mistaken, or unregistered sail numbers.
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Presuming Ed ![]() Really should get out more ![]() Joined: 26 Feb 05 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 641 |
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Wonder if you could do it with a voice recognition system?
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GML ![]() Groupie ![]() Joined: 24 Jul 11 Online Status: Offline Posts: 94 |
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The ideal solution in the long term is of course likely to be sufficiently accurate (and cheap) boat tracking, but unless you have the money of an event like the America's Cup this isn't viable today. (Even the Olympics doesn't use trackers that are accurate enough to reliably separate boats at the finish).
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JimC ![]() Really should get out more ![]() ![]() Joined: 17 May 04 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 6662 |
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This has been my experience as well. We always seem to end up with at least one bunch of 4 or 5 boats finishing within two or three seconds. I've never ever managed to get the click on every finisher within a second of when they finished, and when I've had a reserve system in case the automation screws up then I've ended up with chaos on both. I also had a very salutary experience the first time we did Barts Bash, when I had the video to review for a large number of finishers. I think it took me about 90 minutes to review and correct about 15 minutes of video of finishes, and the number of errors I found was distinctly disturbing. No point in saving 5 minutes transcribing paper to PC if you then end up spending 10 minutes reviewing video for close finishes you didn't get. |
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GML ![]() Groupie ![]() Joined: 24 Jul 11 Online Status: Offline Posts: 94 |
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It is easy enough to record finish times automatically. The problem is recording which boat is which as they finish (i.e. sail numbers). I've tried doing this using a keypad, but in a busy finish I found it impossible to keep up. Using something like Apple Pencil might work better, but I don't have one to try. Alternatively you can have a list of boats on the screen and tap each one as it finishes, but that only works if you don't have too many boats, and it is still difficult to keep up during a busy finish. If you still want to go down this route then take a look at the following:
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