Control Loading

[Duncan]

I think there are two separate questions here.

Firstly, what is an acceptable number of competitors through a control full stop, from a fairness perspective, to reduce the risk of giving away the control location, following, etc. Graeme makes some good points, and it varies based on terrain, visibility, speed of runners, etc.

Secondly, what is an acceptable number of competitors punching a single control unit (e.g. SI box), or how many SI boxes do you need per control. Might be irrelevant if the answer to the first question is few enough competitors that a single control unit is enough. But if you have all your courses going to a common control in the middle of forest fight, and you've deemed that ok for the first question (although perhaps not sensible for other reasons!), then this second question is relevant. The BOF guideline I quoted is only trying to answer this second question, it isn't trying to answer the first.

[King Penguin]

I was thinking in terms of the first question, trying to avoid the risk of too much unfairness in finding the control site.
I agree that if a high answer is considered acceptable to this first question it may be necessary to mitigate the second by doubling-up on control units. This also applies for reasons of fairness in other circumstances where total throughput may not be an issue e.g. control 1 on a relay.

[jac]

Firstly, what is an acceptable number of competitors through a control full stop, from a fairness perspective, to reduce the risk of giving away the control location, following, etc. Graeme makes some good points, and it varies based on terrain, visibility, speed of runners, etc.

Secondly, what is an acceptable number of competitors punching a single control unit (e.g. SI box), or how many SI boxes do you need per control. ... The BOF guideline I quoted is only trying to answer this second question, it isn't trying to answer the first.

If you are the Planner, you should at an early stage ask your Controller about his preferred answers to both of these questions. This will help avoid the scenario where the Controller reveals at some late stage that his permitted maximum loading is much smaller than your assumed maximum, requiring extra controls and / or replanning to redistribute the loading.

[graeme]

what is an acceptable number of competitors through a control full stop, from a fairness perspective

Few or many. A compromise solution is likely to be the most unfair one.

If essentially everyone has to find it by independent navigation, that's fair.
If essentially everyone is helped to find it by using other competitors, that's fair.

The only unfairness is in an intermediate loading where some people have to find it by themselves, others get help. If your course has consistent difficulty, this unfairness can average out over many controls

[Gnitworp]

Having to find the feature before the control, without the presence of another competitor at, or moving away from the control, helps fairness. Not aways possible to achieve of course, but try hard.

[SJC]

The only unfairness is in an intermediate loading where some people have to find it by themselves, others get help.

This assumes an even spread of competitors across the entire start interval - something that rarely happens. At most events start times seem to be bunched in the middle - often at one minute intervals - with gaps of many minutes between starters in the early and late start blocks.

[DJM]

Some back of the envelope sums might be of interest:-

Suppose there are 3000 competitors and that the average course they run has 16 controls. That means that there will be 3000x16 = 48000 punches during the event.

Now, suppose there are 100 control sites being used. On average, each site will have 48000/100 = 480 punches.

if the start span is 4 hours (or 240 minutes), then each site will be punched 480/240 = twice per minute on average.

In practice, competitors will not all take the same time on their course, so the "punching span" will be more than 4 hours and the overall rate of punching will be below 2/min.

Don't know if this helps ...

[awk]

So at Kilnsey pace, that should be 100m+ then.

Not quite sure what you mean here.

Simply that Kilnsey is for most competitors a good deal quicker than 10 m/km pace.

And if you think that replacing "detailed navigation to controls" with route choice and picking the right group to follow isn't fun orienteering, there are 15000 competitors at Jukola who would disagree.

I'll leave you to decide what a competitor needs to do! Whichever way, I hope you enjoy it (getting nervous now!).

[King Penguin]

Some back of the envelope sums might be of interest:-
.........
Don't know if this helps ...

Thanks, but in practice I don't think averages are appropriate.
At any event a number of controls are only likely to get used on White and Yellow, so only by a small number of competitors. Similarly, some far-flung controls may only be on Black, again with few competitors. Therefore many controls will have a higher-than-average punching rate, and it is the acceptable loading on these which needs to be considered.

JAC - I certainly will seek the Controller's opinion - when there is one !
Fortunately, plenty of time yet.....