Harvester 2011
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Re: Harvester 2011
We are currently trialling a GPS with the intention of issuing 30 units at the Scottish 6 Day. Slightly different system from the Harvester (we have signed up with TracTrac rather than the GPSSeuranta option) but there have been a few configuration and set up problems currently being solved by two very techie (but elderly) orienteers. One major problem for us is the events being out in the sticks and not the city limits. You need a GPRS (mobile phone signal) and though theoretically good in places it is not so good elsewhere in practice. You also need a good internet connection to pick up on and view the results. Not so easy when the assembly area is also away from buildings. We are hoping to solve this by magic boxes - one will plug in the back of a computer in a house near the assembly area, another box will receive signals remotely (a wireless bridge essentially). There's even more to it than this which is why I put out an earlier appeal for help. We need to see how the units perform when signal is lost and what they then send out. Cost of hire and units is high, but we now own 10 units in the SOA and there would be scope to extend this. We would be interested to hear from anyone who might like to get involved up in Oban (and indeed who used the system at the Harvester)
Fac et Spera. Views expressed are not necessarily those of the Scottish 6 Days Assistant Coordinator
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Freefall - addict
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Re: Harvester 2011
I thought it was brilliant. ShUOC did a great job.
If other clubs are to host this event in the future would they be judged based on providing a similar level of technology as ShUOC? Not all clubs would be able to do this.
Mark
If other clubs are to host this event in the future would they be judged based on providing a similar level of technology as ShUOC? Not all clubs would be able to do this.
Mark
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Re: Harvester 2011
Finally got Routegadget up.
With 131 possible courses planned and 69 different maps used, it was a bit of a headache to match the course names up in the results file and the planning file. Hopefully it's correct now.
I'll add my congratulations to ShUOC for a very well run Harvester. It was well worth staying up all night to watch the races unfold, with good use of GPS tracking and good feedback from radio controls using Michael Napier's system.
With 131 possible courses planned and 69 different maps used, it was a bit of a headache to match the course names up in the results file and the planning file. Hopefully it's correct now.

I'll add my congratulations to ShUOC for a very well run Harvester. It was well worth staying up all night to watch the races unfold, with good use of GPS tracking and good feedback from radio controls using Michael Napier's system.

Martin Ward, SYO (Chair) & SPOOK.
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Spookster - god
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Re: Harvester 2011
Arnold wrote:So everyone who attended thought it was brilliant, and rightly so.
But only few actually attended (about 400 in total). And that was for a central location with a whole load of great extra stuff attached. So why is that?
While this Harvester was brilliant it will continue to be difficult to find clubs willing to put in all the hard work for only 400 people, so if only we could increase that!
The event is TOO difficult/tough for the bulk of British orienteers. It is very difficult to feel part of a 'race' when so few teams are involved over such a long timescale. I wouldn't suggest that the A race is diluted.... that should remain for the very competitive orienteers.
However, I reckon there may be more of an audience for TD3/4, shorter courses, with shorter winning times, but still with the seven leg concept. Start the relay for this group at 4am, giving one or two nightish legs, and have leg winning times of 30-40 minutes. Make the race much more doable for many more people. Even though each individual may not race for very long the feeling of being part of a team will more than offset that.
If the Harvester continues in its current format without change, then it will die. It is not sustainable with, maybe, thirty teams, as has been the case in the recent past. If you make the courses shorter and faster you will increase the sense of 'fun' and that is what the average competitor wants to experience. Gaffling can still make easy TD3/4 exciting and increase the element of 'racing' back into the event.
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Re: Harvester 2011
Arnold wrote:But only few actually attended (about 400 in total). And that was for a central location with a whole load of great extra stuff attached. So why is that?
Don't want to run at night?
Courses too long/hard?
Wrong time of the year?
Don't like relays?
Probably needs a survey, but as our (stand-in) team co-ordinator, i did get some feedback, and it was pretty much a combination of all of these;
Several were unavailable due to holidays, competing abroad etc - almost a team's worth in fact (and a good one too!).
Several of our handicap teams commented on the leg lengths, and were left pretty shattered at the end. We had 1 A open team, 1 A handicap team, and 1 B handicap team. In hindsight, most of our A handicap runners would have preferred the B relay lengths, which would have also taken the weight off our longer B runners. Most of our A and B handicap runners ran for longer than they would in a level A individual event (and even some of our A open runners too!).
The night courses were very difficult. I know those here enjoyed them, but there was a lot of comment (not just from me!) about the thickness of the vegetation, the siting of controls, etc etc. I enjoyed most of the course, but a lot wouldn't have done if we had persuaded them to attend.
Relays will always be smaller - just take a look at the difference between the relays and individuals at the JK and British. When you have 5 and 7 lap teams, there's an even greater worry about 'letting down' the rest of the team.
As for night orienteering, the numbers who attend night events speak for themselves.
In other words, as it's currently formatted, it's a very specialist event, appealing to a pretty small niche market. That's not a problem, as long as one is prepared to accept the event for what it is. But if one wants more people to attend, then there will need to be some significant changes - with no guarantee that they will actually boost numbers and not so change the event that it loses its character.
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awk - god
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Re: Harvester 2011
Spookster wrote:Finally got Routegadget up.
With 131 possible courses planned and 69 different maps used, it was a bit of a headache to match the course names up in the results file and the planning file. Hopefully it's correct now.![]()
Hi S.
Quite possibly nothing to do with your good self, but any idea when the final team results will be posted on the 'results' page?
S.
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Re: Harvester 2011
Spookster wrote:Finally got Routegadget up.
As the one-man on the day results team (!), do you know if the urban race results are up anywhere Spookster, or where they are going to be put up? Thanks.
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Re: Harvester 2011
Strider wrote:Quite possibly nothing to do with your good self, but any idea when the final team results will be posted on the 'results' page?
You mean http://www.cix.co.uk/~neper/harv2011/classa.htm and http://www.cix.co.uk/~neper/harv2011/classb.htm (look left)?
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Re: Harvester 2011
The event is TOO difficult/tough for the bulk of British orienteers
Looking at the running times of all but the fastest runners, this definitely seemed to be the case. So you basically need to be in the 18-45 age group and/or very fit to make it enjoyable.
In France they have something called the Club Championships which is also a long relay but with the difference that certain legs are much shorter / easier and must be done by certain age ranges. Think other countries have this too.
So for example:
Leg 1 - 10k - anyone
Leg 2 - 3k orange - must be MW16 or younger
Leg 3 - 7k - women only
Leg 4 - 5k light green - must not be M20-40 or W18-50
etc.
The A relay has 10 runners, the B 7 and the C 5.
And as added incentive it operates on the football league system so that the relays are divisions and the top X clubs of each "division" get promoted up and the bottom Y get relegated down. So you have to qualify for the A Relay.
Would something like this be better than the Harvester? You can tweak the specifics but I'm talking about the principle.
(As an aside only the first runner of the A starts in the dark, all the rest is daylight - but this could of course be tweaked).
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Re: Harvester 2011
Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed my first Harvester and all the other events on offer. I did the middle distance and ultra sprint and then enjoyed an extra long run on the Harvester when the sleep deprivation kicked in and fused my brain.
I tried to sleep before and after my run without any success, but after a couple of coffees and bacon butty at HSBC the urban O began to appeal so I ran that as well (although I hope not too many people were watching as I shot off in totally the wrong direction from the start and had to make a U turn before passing the start again in the right direction!)
Apart from the orienteering other highlights were:
Climbing out of my tent to run my leg and discovering not pouring rain but moonlight and a trail of fairy lights.
Catching an owl and a fox unawares on my course.
The sight of orienteers running through the spectator control whatever time of night or day I looked over there. By the time I'd packed the tent at 9am it was becoming almost surreal. In fact I'm not entirely convinced there aren't still orienteers running an endless loop through the spectator control...

I tried to sleep before and after my run without any success, but after a couple of coffees and bacon butty at HSBC the urban O began to appeal so I ran that as well (although I hope not too many people were watching as I shot off in totally the wrong direction from the start and had to make a U turn before passing the start again in the right direction!)

Apart from the orienteering other highlights were:
Climbing out of my tent to run my leg and discovering not pouring rain but moonlight and a trail of fairy lights.
Catching an owl and a fox unawares on my course.
The sight of orienteers running through the spectator control whatever time of night or day I looked over there. By the time I'd packed the tent at 9am it was becoming almost surreal. In fact I'm not entirely convinced there aren't still orienteers running an endless loop through the spectator control...

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Miner - white
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Re: Harvester 2011
Yes many thanks to organiser Chris Smithard and the Sheffield University Team for a first-class event. Their commitment, understanding of the sport and indeed passion was very evident. I congratulate them on an excellent and really memorable event.
The attendance at the Harvester is a lot down to clubs. My own club sees participation in National events as being one of its objectives, and the Harvester is a priority. The club publicises the opportunity, gets teams together, discusses lifts and lights etc. But this is not the case for all clubs. I do not mean to criticise merely to observe. For example of the clubs who contested the CompassSport Cup and Trophy Finals in the same area of England last year only half were represented at the Harvester. We might conclude that for perhaps half of orienteering clubs the Harvester is not important to what they do.
So, as successful events depend on people attending, a mention here to smaller clubs who got teams round. From last years' CompassSport Trophy finalists: Lincolnshire and East Pennine on the A, Wimborne and Claro on the B, and standout attendance from Forth Valley, fielding four teams in all.
Forth Valley are exceptional of course! With both their men's and women's teams running well at the Harvester it looks like they could be second out of the 100 clubs in the UK this year when the scores are totalled.
(Behind South Yorkshire, using UK Relay League results and combining positions in Men's and Women's separate tables.)
The attendance at the Harvester is a lot down to clubs. My own club sees participation in National events as being one of its objectives, and the Harvester is a priority. The club publicises the opportunity, gets teams together, discusses lifts and lights etc. But this is not the case for all clubs. I do not mean to criticise merely to observe. For example of the clubs who contested the CompassSport Cup and Trophy Finals in the same area of England last year only half were represented at the Harvester. We might conclude that for perhaps half of orienteering clubs the Harvester is not important to what they do.
So, as successful events depend on people attending, a mention here to smaller clubs who got teams round. From last years' CompassSport Trophy finalists: Lincolnshire and East Pennine on the A, Wimborne and Claro on the B, and standout attendance from Forth Valley, fielding four teams in all.
Forth Valley are exceptional of course! With both their men's and women's teams running well at the Harvester it looks like they could be second out of the 100 clubs in the UK this year when the scores are totalled.
(Behind South Yorkshire, using UK Relay League results and combining positions in Men's and Women's separate tables.)
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Re: Harvester 2011
but at the end of the day a club is made up of individuals - is there anyway individuals can be rewarded for supporting the event such as UK Cup, Masters or FCC points?
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Re: Harvester 2011
Adventure Racer wrote:You mean http://www.cix.co.uk/~neper/harv2011/classa.htm and http://www.cix.co.uk/~neper/harv2011/classb.htm (look left)?
My, that was way too subtle for me...

Thanks
S.
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Re: Harvester 2011
Results for the Dore event are available here
There is a rough set of full results available here
With regards to the GPS, it was a completely new experience for us, but I found that once you'd played about with it for a bit it was relatively simple to use. Would be even simpler at an individual event where you dont need to reprogramme the unit info between legs. It was all made possible by the guys at GPS seurenta who answered any questions we had. They were still emailing me during the race at 4am from Finland! I've also spoken to them since and have some general feedback:
[*]The units we used were connecting to the mobile phone network but using Finnish sim cards, in future it would probably be better to use British ones and then the connection would be better as they wouldnt be roaming.
[*]With it being a night relay most people were already carrying battery packs and so put the trackers in with these, meaning they may not have been angled correctly for optimum signal.
[*]There also seemed to be a bit of a 'signal black spot' on the map and some of the units struggled to regain signal after this, probably as a result of a combination of the above circumstances.
A couple of the units ran out of battery at certain points on the final leg, they should have been recharged between legs but there was a lot going on and this didnt always happen!
Overall I think the system is very good and with a few tweaks it would work extremely well. The Harvesters was a difficult event to test it on due to the length of time and the number of times the units changed hands. I think the replay of the [url=http://www.tulospalvelu.fi/gps/2011harvesterA1/]first leg on the A relay[url] shows just had good it can be though. I would loved to have been able to track everyone on every leg. From what I could see everyone seemed to enjoy the spectacle, and watching everyone run from watching the start into the tent to watch the GPS was great to see.
If anyone has any questions regarding the GPS I'd be happy to answer them on here or via PM.
There is a rough set of full results available here
Paul T wrote:Really enjoyed the event - consistent map, considerately hung flags and well planned courses.
On-line tracking definitely added to the whole experience. When they have recovered, it would be interesting have some feedback from the organisers about what was involved in getting it all together, how much work it takes and roughly what the costs were. It would be great to see it at other big events, but only if the costs and effort are reasonable.
With regards to the GPS, it was a completely new experience for us, but I found that once you'd played about with it for a bit it was relatively simple to use. Would be even simpler at an individual event where you dont need to reprogramme the unit info between legs. It was all made possible by the guys at GPS seurenta who answered any questions we had. They were still emailing me during the race at 4am from Finland! I've also spoken to them since and have some general feedback:
[*]The units we used were connecting to the mobile phone network but using Finnish sim cards, in future it would probably be better to use British ones and then the connection would be better as they wouldnt be roaming.
[*]With it being a night relay most people were already carrying battery packs and so put the trackers in with these, meaning they may not have been angled correctly for optimum signal.
[*]There also seemed to be a bit of a 'signal black spot' on the map and some of the units struggled to regain signal after this, probably as a result of a combination of the above circumstances.
A couple of the units ran out of battery at certain points on the final leg, they should have been recharged between legs but there was a lot going on and this didnt always happen!
Overall I think the system is very good and with a few tweaks it would work extremely well. The Harvesters was a difficult event to test it on due to the length of time and the number of times the units changed hands. I think the replay of the [url=http://www.tulospalvelu.fi/gps/2011harvesterA1/]first leg on the A relay[url] shows just had good it can be though. I would loved to have been able to track everyone on every leg. From what I could see everyone seemed to enjoy the spectacle, and watching everyone run from watching the start into the tent to watch the GPS was great to see.
If anyone has any questions regarding the GPS I'd be happy to answer them on here or via PM.
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Re: Harvester 2011
afterthought wrote: So, as successful events depend on people attending, a mention here to smaller clubs who got teams round. From last years' CompassSport Trophy finalists: Lincolnshire and East Pennine on the A...
Please, that should be 'Lincoln' (we leave the county title to the other mob in the north..) This also makes it look even more impressive when we have only a population of a small city to call on for our two teams in the A and B this year!

S.
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