Race Management: Sailing race timing equipment

Print Page | Close Window

Sailing race timing equipment

Printed From: Yachts and Yachting Online
Category: General
Forum Name: Race Management
Forum Discription: For race officers and competiors to discuss the topic
URL: http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5620
Printed Date: 28 Jun 25 at 9:57am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 9.665y - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Sailing race timing equipment

Posted By: chrisg
Subject: Sailing race timing equipment
Date Posted: 16 Jun 09 at 11:08am

Hi everyone. Just a quick question. Do any of the clubs you sail at have electronic timing systems for finishing races or do you all rely on pencil and paper and the OD to take times/positions as boats cross the line?

Ive been searching online to find such a system and the one company I found and made contact with no longer produce their unit.

Replies:

Posted By: Noah
Date Posted: 16 Jun 09 at 1:02pm

FPSC developed a race start / finish application for PC around the time I left to go sail on the lumpy stuff. Hopefully 'Pondscum' will be along soon to give more details.

The boat and her finish time has to be recorded somehow in handicap racing (says he, stating the bl**ding obvious), and whether a pen & paper method is used en-route to collating series results depends on how comfortable members are with technology...

-------------
Nick
D-Zero 316

Posted By: endoscool
Date Posted: 16 Jun 09 at 1:50pm

I think that this might be what you are looking for: http://www.sailingtiming.com/ - http://www.sailingtiming.com/

Posted By: radixon
Date Posted: 16 Jun 09 at 6:27pm

I believe this has been discussed somewhere on here---

:goes off to find thread:

-------------

Posted By: pondscum
Date Posted: 16 Jun 09 at 10:45pm

http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2200 - http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?
TID=2200&KW=race+timing

The Frensham system is home grown and designed to work like
the 70's ammo box based electronic wonder. Written by Bob
castle and interfaced to the lights by none other than
Roger Gilbert. No automatic interface to Sailwave though

Posted By: marke
Date Posted: 17 Jun 09 at 9:20am

Starcross have a PC based system which works through a browser and does the race timing for multiple fleets and creates the results, posts them to a website and also updates the series results (also generates sailwave import files if that's what you prefer). Supports class racing, handicap racing and pursuit races

Online demo/practice system of not quite the latest version available at

http://www.starcrossyc.org.uk/SYC_RaceManager/index.php - http://www.starcrossyc.org.uk/SYC_RaceManager/index.php.

Works over the web for OOD practice - the real system works on a local PC in the OOD box and is much faster

Currently only works with IE (shame on me!). Written with php, mysql and javascript for the nerds amongst you.

Posted By: chrisg
Date Posted: 17 Jun 09 at 3:23pm

Thanks Marke. Thats just the sort of thing I was looking for. Can you tell me about real world usage please? We are having some problems at our club with OD's taking the timings for handicap boats, claiming its too difficult or too complicated and are looking to simplify OD duty as much as possible. Do all of your OD's use this system or do you have any who refuse to use it as it is too complicated or different to what they are used to?

Would it be possible for other clubs to use your software or is that out of the question?

-------------

Posted By: marke
Date Posted: 17 Jun 09 at 4:57pm

Chris

Its probably more sensible to conduct this conversation via email - so I can give you the highs and lows of this development. PM me you email and I'll send details.

In summary: yes there was a little resistance from some members; but this isn't too hard to get over. A bigger problem for us is that most OODs do one duty a year - its very hard to write software that is easy to use if you are only going to use it once a year. To be successful, and there are lots of big benefits from this approach, you need a small team of 'experts' who are willing to support the use of the software. [BTW - you don't need to be a sailing expert to use the software - if you are familiar with using a web application most people can pick it up with a15 minutes familiarisation - perfect for any non-sailing members of your club]

I have no objection to giving the software to other clubs - but the race configuration is customised for Starcross - 5 starts, 7 fleets, series races, trophy races, junior races etc. To modify this you would need to get into the code - its 'relatively' easy to do, but would need someone familiar with PHP. I intend to get round to developing the functions to allow these changes to be made without changing the code - but I'm unlikely to get to it this year (its pretty complicated). If you tell me the different types of racing you do, number of starts, fleet organisation etc. I could tell you what sort of effort would take .

If you are ever near Starcross on a race day - please pop-in and we can show you the system working with our automatic lights system.

mark.

Posted By: Helmsman
Date Posted: 19 Jun 09 at 10:45am

Timing finishes is quite difficult if there are several different races and multiple laps with boats from different races and laps crossing the finish line in quick succession. It is even more difficult if the boats are running before the wind and the sail numbers cannot be read immediately as the boats cross the line. My approach is to use a computer to record the finish time or lap time for each boat without attempting to segregate them by race or lap number and have several observers independently recording sail numbers and noting the corresponding finish time whenever possible. Matching boats to their finish or lap times and segregating them into separate races can then be done with the aid of the computer whenever there is a lull. Unfortunately people often segregate boats into their separate races as they finish and call out sail numbers in an uncoordinated way instead of keeping their own independent records, making it difficult to match boats to their respective finish or lap times. Ideally we need a dedicated team led by an experienced race officer but this is easier said than done. Does anyone else have these problems?

-------------
Mad Scientist

Posted By: chrisg
Date Posted: 19 Jun 09 at 11:18am

Yes, helmsan, we are finding that sometimes taking the race times is a problem at Draycote. We reached a point where it all seemed to be running well but I think we became a bit lazy and assumed people knew to do it. It now seems that if the OD's arent reminded personally before the races it is becoming slightly hit and miss as to whether times are actually taken.

Our current OOD advice is that only fast handicap fleet need their times taken as there is quite a strong fleet ethos at the club, i.e. every other boat racing is part of a fleet race so only needs its position scoring. However, some have said that this approach, while it reduces the apparent workload on the OD (in reality it only means they dont have to look at a clock for some boats when finishing them), it also adds confusion since some people are not sure exactly which boats need to have times recorded.

While the current system we have works for 95% of the time, and for the first time we are now able to produce what some see as useful results for handicap racing, we are actively trying to find a way around the problem. Hopefully this solution will kill two birds with one stone and will mean that OOD duty is simplified (always a good thing and should hopefully encourage more to turn up), and all race times are taken giving us useful and accurate results for everyone racing, not just the fleets.

We would be interested to hear how any other clubs ensure that accurate times are taken for handicap racing. Do you time all boats or differentiate in to fleets? Do you use computer systems or the good old fashioned pencil and paper - what works best for you? We have heard from Starcross and Medway above, how does OOD duty work where you sail?

-------------

Posted By: marke
Date Posted: 19 Jun 09 at 1:58pm

helmsman

I don't think there is a good solution for recording finishes if you can't see the sail numbers. I know some of the big boat races are using RFID and transponder technology - but I don't see this filtering down to toppers in the near future ;-). Personally I would like to do away with sail numbers and use bow numbers - that would make writing race management software a lot easier!.

Recording a number of boats finishing in close order is a problem with any system - paper or computer. A computer system can help in reducing what has to be recorded and takes away the need for the OOD to decide whether a time has to be recorded or which race/fleet/start a particular boat is in. in our system the OOD simply clicks the boat on a list when they cross the line each lap - the system records the time, performs the corrected time calculation and updates the current race positions in each race. This list approach works pretty well up to about 50 boats and then screen scrolling can become a bit of a problem - we use fleet grouping and some predictive ordering to reduce the amount of screen scrolling - but there inevitably a few occasions (five boats finishing simultaneously for example) when you can click all five boats at the correct time.

The approach I use to deal with mass finishes when doing my OOD duty with our computer system is to recognise when a close finish is coming up and then focus on clicking (timing) the first finisher correctly and then use paper to jot down the finishing order of the boats in the scrum with approximate gaps from the first boat (e.g. Finn 231 +2 secs, RS200 +1sec etc.). Then once the bunch has gone through I can revert to the normal timing approach using the computer - when I have a little gap in the finishers I can then quickly add the times to the boats I noted down using the first of the bunch as a reference. This works really well as long as you think ahead and see the bunch coming.

Posted By: SprayEasyTimer
Date Posted: 23 Jun 09 at 4:58pm

Spray EasyTimer is a very intuitive graphical program for timing the race. You simply click on pictures of the boats on the screen when they cross the line after each lap and at the finish. The results can be imported into Sailwave immediately after the race, giving you very quick results. The "AutoArrange" function is very helpful in predicting the order of boats.

Version 1 can be found at http://SprayEasyTimer.webs.com - http://SprayEasyTimer.webs.com

Version 2 is currently nearing completion and is aimed at bigger competitions with lots of boats crossing the line at once. You can find boats by typing in sail numbers (or just the last few digits of the sail number) and make a short list of boats about to finish. You can also finish boats "anonymously" until such time that you can select their sail number.

Please see http://SprayEasyTimer.webs.com - http://SprayEasyTimer.webs.com for more information.

Simon

Spray EasyTimer.

Posted By: jeffers
Date Posted: 23 Jun 09 at 6:55pm

At Hunts we have been trying for years to replace our ageing 'block box' that was built by a club member some 15 or so years ago.

The problem we have is that we do not have a fixed start line so we need a portable solution that is easy to use (and a laptop really is not a solution).

The current unit interfaces to some car type air horns to give the audible alert and the flags are done manually.

Finishing is as simple as recording every boat and time (regardless of the fleet it started with) then ignoring those boats that are fleet racing. The only issue is when we run fast and slow handicap the OOD needs to remember to add 3 minutes to the fast fleet elapsed time (we use 6-3-go as that is what the box supports and we find if we use 5-4-1-go we have boats from the first fleets off coming back through the line.

For opens we use 5-4-1-go doing the 4 and 1 manually with the flags (we always use experienced OODs for open events).

It works quite well, fleet captains are responsible for picking their results up and collating them as they see fit, we do encourage posting on the club website but in reality only the club "all-in" events go there becasue we have a nominated person doing those as no fleet captain is responsible.

For a club of our size where all duties are done by the members (we have no piad staff) it does work quite well with the more experienced members supporting the less experienced members.

-------------
Paul
----------------------
D-Zero GBR 74

Posted By: chrisg
Date Posted: 24 Jun 09 at 11:58am

Thanks for all the replies guys!

-------------