JK Relays

[Adventure Racer]

Big difference between "waving" and fast-punching correctly, as endorsed on here by somebody from Emit IIRC. With the latter you are touching the business end of the Brikke in the right place on the control, but not worrying about inserting the whole thing, or indeed which way up it is.

[Mr timE]

But on Sunday Marcus Pinker was initially disqualified for not registering a punch only to be reinstated because it was on his back up card -

Toni, I need to check this but I am fairly sure there was nobody reinstated on Sunday for having a back-up where it had not registered electronically, if they were then it was done without me knowing and I was suppose to be checking them all as Michael Napiers software does not have a screen display for it so I was using my etiming display. It may have been for some other reason. Strangely there was one person reinstated on Saturday, the first person I have ever done it for in 6 years of using the system in UK. He was originally dsq and did not have the back-up, but we later realised after the event that the control in question (42) had been the missing control and I had replaced it with a re-programmed control (67) where the punch was obviously in a different place. I will check up on Marcus.

[Supersaint]

Seeing as this is supposed to be a thread about the relays and not about the pro's/con's of emit, i'd like to say that Caerwent is one of the best areas for a relay i've ever run on. It was possible to go round at speed and not make mistakes, but you had to be concentrating 100%.

I'll admit that the map looked quite confusing, but if you slowed down to read the detail then it was all there - that's what makes the difference between the top guys, how quickly they can interprate the map.

Congratulations to EUOC and SYO on winning the Men's and Women's open relays, i thought it would be a close run thing between the students and WING OK, especially as 3 out of the 4 Norwegians hadn't run the day before.

This was the only day i ran properly and am glad that this was the one which i did, would definitely go back there again.

[IanD]

I thought the relays were great! Thanks to organiser, planner, helpers etc etc.

As always, one or two things could be improved, and I'll mention them not as a gripe but as a suggestion for future relays or other events on the area:

- the map envelopes were too well sealed, hard to open while running, resulting in maps being ripped during extraction

- the handover area got a bit crowded; with plenty of space available the line of tape along which ingoing and outgoing could touch should have been twice as long

- the first aid was hard to find (at least when totally exhausted and dripping blood), and none of the officials seemed to know where they were.

- mapping the railway lines in grey didn't work for me, couldn't find them on the map. This led to me climbing an eight-foot fence at one point!

On the positive side, I particularly appreciated the mementos (and presents!) being for second and third places as well as for the winners.

[Roger]

Main problem many seemed to have was the railway lines being grey, both old and young seemed to find them difficult to pick out.

I ran four years ago on the previous version of the map, which had black railway lines. It also had all the concrete roads mapped as black. Because fences (and the edges of old railway platforms, mapped as black crags) often follow the railways, the profusion of black features made a bit of a mess -- and was very hard to read on the run. At 'relay' speed (and control frequency and pressure) it would have been even worse.

Keeping the high fences and the platform-edge 'crags' (which of course had to be black in the quarries etc) as black, turning the roads brown and the railways grey was an excellent decision: as on a sprint map, the features that could be the most obstructive were most prominent. And of course using grey for the building pass-throughs is a direct and appropriate borrowing from the sprint-map standards. Avoiding the 'comb' symbol for the high earthbanks helped, too. Well done Hugh Drummond and Bruce Bryant.

Maybe next time we'll get to run in the complex of 53 embankmented buildings arrayed in six tiers on the hillside? This was just off the north of yesterday's map and presumably just out of range.

[Oldman]

Providing you are prepared to not have a back up punch; if you touch the square end of the emit brick on the round end of the control site unit (the bit where the red flashing light is) the emit brick displays the control code which means it has registered your visit. It does this before it goes into the scrolling routine.
This allows you to punch reasonably quickly and be confident that the emit brick has registered your visit to the control site. This is also a mental back up to make you check your control code as you go into the control site.

Peter

Any punching system that is this complicated is not acceptable: how can you ever remember whether to touch the curved bit to the square bit or vice versa?

At 5 controls over the weekend I got no flash and no scrolling bars after I'd left and had to return to be sure I'd punched OK. Yuk!

[Oldman]

Wasn't sure why railways were grey - is this a new standard I'm not aware of? At first I thought perhaps grey railways were different in some way to the black ones then I worked out there weren't any black ones.

I suspect it was for legibility - there was so much detail around the railways near the start/finish that it may have made it harder to read.

It did confuse me to start with as the grey was barely visible at speed.

I think grey is non-standard as others are saying and was entirely invisible at race speed, meaning that you came across railways unexpectedly. What was the Map Adviser doing? Why was this non-standard aspect not prepublicised if it was a conscious decision to be that way?

However, it was good fun and thanks to all the volunteers!

[mharky]

Why was this non-standard aspect not prepublicised if it was a conscious decision to be that way?

It was; every car was given a sheet of details which clearly stated all the non-standard symbols. If you didn't read it, then that is your problem.

[distracted]

Agree about the difficulty of seeing the grey, but can also see the reasoning behind using it. I don't know whether the map would have been more legible if at a larger scale (1:7500?) or drawn using the sprint standard? Just an idea...

Also noticed that the sprint/relay maps were printed differently to the "individual" day maps - it seemed to be that the offset printed maps used for Days 2 & 3 were more legible, and printed on different paper to the laser printed sprint/relay. Maybe the increased readability was just because the sprint/relay maps weren't almost all white...

Back to the relay itself - I (as were many I suspect) wasn't expecting the courses to be anything like they actually were given the maps of the area that had been put up in assembly on previous days. Certainly an area that could/should be used more, as individual planners would certainly have their own take on things.

[Adventure Racer]

It was; every car was given a sheet of details which clearly stated all the non-standard symbols. If you didn't read it, then that is your problem.

Not every car - I certainly didn't get one arriving latish (being a last leg runner on JK Trophy there wasn't any rush!)

Sorry to get back on to Emit, but Oldman's statement can't go unchallenged - it's not a complicated punching system at all. If you want to be sure then simply lay the card in the obvious shaped slot the obvious way round. If you want to punch fast, then all you have to know is that the flat bit is the business end - as long as you put this in the same place as it would go if laying it flat then all is OK, which isn't exactly hard to remember. If you got no flash or scrolling bars, then I can only assume you didn't manage this - I did all mine with no backup all weekend (a total of ~75 punches) without having to go back once, and I'm hardly the most dextrous of people.

[awk]

Any punching system that is this complicated is not acceptable: how can you ever remember whether to touch the curved bit to the square bit or vice versa? At 5 controls over the weekend I got no flash and no scrolling bars after I'd left and had to return to be sure I'd punched OK. Yuk!

Whether you like it or not, Emit is here and is an accepted international punching system. It was also advertised well in advance. It therefore behoves the competitor to get to know how it works, just as it behoves us to do things like understand map symbols and pictorial descriptions.

If you (like me) come from a part of the world where it's not used locally, then you needed to have taken advantage of Emit's presence at the event, where they were very patiently explaining how this reasonably simple system works.

On the railway symbol issue - we picked up the leaflet from relay registration where it was prominently displayed. I think the fact that one or two people slipped through the system shows how difficult it is for organisers of an event like this to ensure that everybody receives notification of any late developments after the programme is sent out. They certainly did their best.

[andy]

i really liked the map, the 'sprint like' quality made it easy to see at speed what was crossable and what was not. Railway lines were not prominent therefore you needn't worry about crossing them.

either way it still wouldn't have stopped me getting confused as to which railway line I was on after leaving the spectator control!

[Oldman]

Why was this non-standard aspect not prepublicised if it was a conscious decision to be that way?

It was; every car was given a sheet of details which clearly stated all the non-standard symbols. If you didn't read it, then that is your problem.

Well, we certainly were not given such a sheet, so perhaps we were unfortunately the exception.

[Oldman]

It therefore behoves the competitor to get to know how it works, just as it behoves us to do things like understand map symbols and pictorial descriptions.

On the railway symbol issue - we picked up the leaflet from relay registration where it was prominently displayed. I think the fact that one or two people slipped through the system shows how difficult it is for organisers of an event like this to ensure that everybody receives notification of any late developments after the programme is sent out. They certainly did their best.

I was actually familiar with EMIT already but did take the opportunity to ensure again I understood how to use it. However, despite registering my card in the correct place, I had about 5 occasions where there was no flash and no scrolling bars as I departed the control. I also noticed that on every day, my download seemed to take the operator about 4 or 5 goes to make it work: perhaps I had a duff card?

I didn't go to the registration tent (why should I?), but agree that the organisers will undoubtedly have tried their best. And as I said, I enjoyed the event despite EMIT's inherent weaknesses.

[FatBoy]

If you didn't read it, then that is your problem.

I confess I didn't read it fully so guilty as charged. The grey didn't bother me though and I'm not complaining about it, just curious as to the decision.