Control circles centred on the feature

[graeme]

verbal descriptions

You mean as in "it's over here"? or "Back there behind the tree"?
We still get plenty of that!

What I was getting at is Xeroxing had to be in black and white. Written descriptions might not be such a bad idea, in urban and sprint I seem to use my compass primarily for orienting the control descriptions.

[andypat]

But I accept that if an urban map suggests that a control may be inaccessible from certain directions, the description must supply the missing information - provided the map makes that clear.

But if you think about it all controls in Urban are inaccessible from certain directions. That's what makes it different. They might be inaccessible due to houses, or gardens, or a 6 ft wall. I think thats what some (lets call them purist to avoid an ageist comment) orienteers are forgetting about urban.

And at the risk of repeating the point this comment does not apply to sprint (which can happen in non-ruban settings and has a very short EWT and therefore less time to think and correct errors.

So for urban I expect controls to be dificult to find. If I run round a corner expecting to find the control only to see it dangling from a bridge 20m above me - I curse but congratulate the planner on a great leg! Urban is about expecting the unexpected. At my next urban event I may include a leg where the control is on the near side of an uncrossable fence to see how many automatically head round the other side.....

[SJC]

At my next urban event I may include a leg where the control is on the near side of an uncrossable fence to see how many automatically head round the other side.....

As long as the control circle clearly shows it to be on the near side then fine.
If the control circle leaves anything to doubt, then expect complaints from competitors, regardless of what the control description says.

[Gross]

. At my next urban event I may include a leg where the control is on the near side of an uncrossable fence to see how many automatically head round the other side.....

And the entry will be full of Scouts who will be really happy having had a nice treasure hunt! What a load of cr*p

[andypat]

At my next urban event I may include a leg where the control is on the near side of an uncrossable fence to see how many automatically head round the other side.....

As long as the control circle clearly shows it to be on the near side then fine.
If the control circle leaves anything to doubt, then expect complaints from competitors, regardless of what the control description says.

SJC - get a sense of humour! As noted earlier the ISSOM standard is for the circle to be centred on the feature - you can complain if you like....

And the entry will be full of Scouts who will be really happy having had a nice treasure hunt! What a load of cr*p

Typical GOM attitude I'm afraid Gross. You're entitled to your opinion but I dont expect to see you at many Urban events anyhow....

By the way I advertised our last Nopesport Urban League event (Erskine) to the local Scouts (offering them £2 entry) and none came

Anyhow - enough of this irrelevant banter - I'm off to get packed for Oban 2011!

[pigweed]

I once took part in a training event where the planner had deliberately put the circle so that although the feature was in the circle, it was not in the centre of the circle, therefore we had to read, understand and use the description list.

[70plus]

I once took part in a training event where the planner had deliberately put the circle so that although the feature was in the circle, it was not in the centre of the circle, therefore we had to read, understand and use the description list.

So exactly what 'training' were you doing? Off-centre circles were common on hand-overprinted courses because of map drift, and controllers had to weed out any maps which they thought had drifted too far. But those days are long gone - about 10 years? - there should be no need to train for that now.

[graeme]

So for urban I expect controls to be difficult to find.

No, they shouldn't be hard to find.
Actually, I'm not sure you think that either. In your example, the control on the bridge 20m above you isn't hard to find - it required thought to get to. Which is good.
This is very different from a control stuffed round the back of a bush, which is hard to find.

If the planner tricked me down a dead end to the wrong level of the bridge, that's good course setting. If lost time because I happen not to know that the IOF default location for bridge is "on top" that's just a joke. (which is fine in its place, like 7,8,9 here ...
http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/~gja/halloween_slimegreen.pdf )

Let me know when you're coming through next and I'll make you a special "challenge" course with the circles on the centre of the features .

[epocian]

I do not agree with the concept that reading the control description is a crucial aspect of sprint/urban orienteering. Ideally the location of the control should be obvious from the map. .

You might have been struggling here if you hadn't read the control descriptions

holmfirth 1.jpg (198.69 KiB) Viewed 4535 times

control 1.jpg (5.56 KiB) Viewed 4534 times

[EddieH]

Interestingly I can remember a British Relay champs at Mulgrave Woods many decades ago when there was a control "bridge underneath" where reading the descriptions made a massive differenc to the route choice and indeed the penalty for going to the top was unusually massive there being no easy way to drop off. I can remember no complaints, merely a number of people reckoning they had been welland truly caught out.

I can also remember the first time I had "Crag top". it was in a tough Scottish forest, and only ever having been to crag feet I had considerable trouble in finding the control - Lesson learned - always check the descriptions (and indeed when I pick up the loose list I always scan through for anything unusual such as this, or any unusually large or small dimensions).

It never occurred to me for one second, and still does not, that the offending crag top was unfair in any way. For those of you that think that descriptions are an irrelevance, one major point is to tell you exactly where it is. For example if a control is building inside corner then it does not matter if it is behind a bush as the point is precise, however if the control is reentrant, then it most certainly does matter if the control is hidden behind a bush.

To the main point of this thread, in ISSOM orienteering most descriptions are in practice unimportant and don't need looking at, but for every control by an uncrossable feature it is essential to have a look at the description - that's just the way it is.

[graeme]

You might have been struggling here if you hadn't read the control descriptions

And if they'd "correctly" centred the control on the centre of the bridge, as some people misinterpret ISSOM, you'd be struggling even more because you wouldn't know which side of the river to go to.

I'm not sure which "crag top" Eddie was referring to. I recall we had one on Touch. It may not have been unfair, but it was a bad control site because what happened was large groups of people assembled at the bottom, until someone found the flag for them (i.e. for most people the determining factor was not their navigation, but when they happened to arrive at the wrong spot). And after that the whole character of the race was changed because everyone was running in a pack.

[andypat]

So for urban I expect controls to be difficult to find.

No, they shouldn't be hard to find.
Actually, I'm not sure you think that either. In your example, the control on the bridge 20m above you isn't hard to find - it required thought to get to. Which is good.
This is very different from a control stuffed round the back of a bush, which is hard to find.
Let me know when you're coming through next and I'll make you a special "challenge" course with the circles on the centre of the features .

Graeme - as usual you have managed to put it better than me - thats what i meant!

I remember Terry O'Brien using crag top as a site in the Glasgow Parks Champs a few years back. More than one of us passed the actual control on the way to the (control-less) 5m crag foot!

[70plus]

I can also remember the first time I had "Crag top". it was in a tough Scottish forest, ...

Was that the crag you famously fell off, Eddie? I also recall a 'crag,top' from an event near Cardiff in the mid-70s, and thought at the time that it was a bit dodgy. The crag was several metres high - must get that old map out ...

[Adrian]

If the control circle leaves anything to doubt, then expect complaints from competitors, regardless of what the control description says.

Such complaints will be ignored.

[roadrunner]

I've never felt there was anything wrong with having control circles centred on point/line features in urban events, although I've certainly navigated to the wrong side a time or two, but having looked at the examples of offset circles in CompassSport, I think it's a worthwhile improvement. I suppose the main difference from "normal" orienteering is that, if a control is described as "knoll North side" and you approach from a different direction, the penalty is small, so you'd probably navigate to the circle and then read the description - whereas in an urban event, which side of a feature the control is on could completely change the leg.