Not Emit, Not SI, But.......

[marcus_weatherburn]

Old school style: clip punching. No beeping for other competitiors to hear and be lead into the control by, can clip in any direction as long as in the numbered box (unlike EMIT), do not need to wait for a light to flash; as soon as you clip you can get to the next control, dont need to worry about which way you approach the control from.

Dont know about anyone else but I think we have found our new answer.

[Guest88]

I saw this advert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAJnCjQbE7A&feature=related

which gave me the idea that you don't need Emit, SI, pin punches, clothes, shoes to orienteer. Only a Visa card (and maybe a map might help).

All the control sites would be cash machines - need to do a balance inquiry on receipt transaction on each. Ok some of the moaners on here would no doubt be fussing about the slow punching times, but it would save on putting out and collecting controls. Is this the new minimal orienteering? Maybe we can get sponsorship from Visa?

[EddieH]

That would only work for Long O in a city

[Tatty]

Pin pinching would be good if there was some better way of checking the cards. At the November Classic with over 1200 competitors this takes a lot of man/woman hours
No more getting the results up on the net the same night. How long would it take to get all the info sorted. A good idea, but not going to fulfill present orienteers expectations of speed of results. I've spent too many hours in a freezing cold tent, sometimes in the snow, checking control cards. We just don't have the manpower anymore

[NeilC]

A few years ago the November classic made competitors carry both an SI card AND a pin punch card around their course. Perhaps this is the way forward - give competitors a choice of EMIT/SI/pin punch at each control. Most of us have ten fingers so even with a thumb compass there would still be spare capacity. If the EMIT control is the "wrong way round" then use SI. I'm sure that planners and download teams wouldn't mind too much!

[EddieH]

Brilliant Neil Why had no-one else thought of that?

[Mrs H]

You're all forgetting that John Doe things or whatever it's called they use down in the Quantocks (Joe Lee?))

[Copepod]

The KIMM used Joe Lee system for many years, and kept it after changing name to OMM, but will use SI for the first time in 2008. Apparently, the limitation has been the storage capacity of cards, to avoid the need to download at overnight campsites. They didn't use SI in 2005, when Martin Stone's other half planned some of the courses. Not sure if it was coincidence that Martin was away at a race overseas at the time!

[Roger]

I used the Joe Lee system for one KIMM. You needed to make electrical contact and, unsurprisingly, it seemed to struggle if there was mud about. Looking at results from various years, there also seemed to be a lot of control-unit failures.

OMM 2007 used SI. The SI cards were attached with tamper-proof wristbands, which were cut off at the finish. Worked fine... except that changing the card-carrier for day 2 wasn't an option. Now all we need to do is to attach partners to one another with a tamper-proof link... but that's another thread.

[Nimby]

I once suggested that the mapper should stick a weatherproof barcode label on every feature in the forest while surveying.

Runners would just need to carry a lightweight barcode scanner and you'd only need to hang kites. Actually you could just have a barcode or RFID chip on the kite. ...

[Spookster]

Runners would just need to carry a lightweight barcode scanner and you'd only need to hang kites. Actually you could just have a barcode or RFID chip on the kite. ...

Nice idea, but the barcode scanner would also need a number pad, so that when the barcode was unable to be scanned, competitors could form an orderly queue at the control in order to then carefully type in the 10-digit number instead (just like they have to do in supermarkets... ).