Judge Training /Contest Scoring

[David Lockhart]

Whether flashcards, fingers, scoring paddles (with or without clothespins), verbal communication, writing on a piece of paper, or an electronic assistant are used - I think an issue that still remains is that no one will be proficient with a system they have not practiced with.  It is a very rare judge that is capable of communicating a score to a scribe or documenting a score by other means without missing a single second of the flight - especially with no practice to develop proficiency.  Just watch the judges at the next contest - no matter what system is being used.

Judging is a very complex task requiring -
- substantial knowledge of the basic elements of all maneuvers and the specific downgrades for some specific maneuvers and the application for that knowledge needs to be real time,
- documenting the score without missing any of the flight,
- knowing the schedule and the elements of the maneuvers being flown so that wrong maneuvers don't get scored (scored zero, actually) and maneuvers with elements missing are appropriately downgraded (including zero if needed).

For the first item, judging seminars help by forcing use to read the rules and study maneuvers and downgrades.  For the second item, I can't remember the last time I saw a seasoned judge or flier practice judging with a scribe (outside of warmup flights at NATS/TS) - same the times a seasoned pattern guy sits down with a pattern newbie to work them through the judging process.  For the third item, I spend a lot of time coaching/critiquing flights every year - I think it helps with judging as I usually know every schedule by heart by mid-season.  But none of these are the same as real practice judging or contest judging.

We all put in many practice flights to improve our flying every year.  And we spend substantial time flying in contests.  Only a fraction of the time we spend flying in contests do we spend judging (3 rounds average at each of maybe an average of 5 contests?) - and how many of us practice judging outside of a contest (including the scoring/documentation system)?    I've been regularly judging at contests for almost 20 years - and that experience helps, but in a given year, I might spend about 5-10% of my time on judging and the rest is flying (I do fly a lot).  I tend to think my flying would not look too good if I only burnt 10% of the fuel.

Regards,

Dave Lockhart
DaveL322 at comcast.net

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Patternrules at aol.com 
  To: discussion at nsrca.org 
  Sent: Friday, April 16, 2004 9:30 AM
  Subject: Re: Judge Training /Contest Scoring


   Tony & Dean maybe your closer than you think, really if you think about it you only need a 2 button system as AMA uses 1/2 point increments say the right button every time you push it deducts 1/2 point the left button would be as an "enter" which would then go to the next maneuver, could even be programed to input the contestant # by the same method say push enter button 3 times for a new contestant, for FAI the program would detect that the pilot # is FAI and would use 1 point increments. 


  Steve Maxwell
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