[NSRCA-discussion] Quick question re: cellular data service at the fields where you compete

Thu Dec 8 14:08:49 AKST 2011

The only field I have had questionable coverage at is Maloof Field in
Albuquerque, NM.  Sprint was weak, and using 1x data when I was there.
That was at least 2 years ago.  I have been to most of the fields in
southern California and in Arizona and all have had good coverage.

- Robert Beaubien

- D7 Webmaster

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"No trees were harmed in the sending of this message, however a large
number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced."

From: nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org
[mailto:nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org] On Behalf Of Peter
Vogel
Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 4:04 PM
To: Marty King; General pattern discussion
Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] Quick question re: cellular data service
at the fields where you compete

I guess most of you don't know me, so it's probably worth an
introduction :-)  I've been writing software professionally for the past
25 years and have spent the last 10 building cloud-based services for
small businesses and helping 3rd party developers interact with our
cloud services.  On the pattern side, I've flown RC for almost as long
as I've been writing code, and always told myself I'd get a pattern
plane "when I can afford it" -- well, now that my daughter is older and
I've got 25 years under my career belt, I can afford it and bought a 62"
Osiris to test the waters, fell in love instantly and had the confidence
to start competing in Sportsman this year -- now I have 2 Osirii and 1
Vanquish with another one on the way for my backup.  So I'm pretty new
to competing + judging, not new to watching competitions (I guess I'm
one of those weirdos who likes to watch paint dry :-)

Completely agree on the keystroke, wouldn't even want to have a typical
number pad with everything too close together.  I like the deduction
clicker, but would provide a preference-based interface to also use a
simple touch interface. It would *definitely* keep scores in local
device memory until the judge had reviewed the whole scoresheet and
decided to "send" the scoresheet.  I would never do a keystroke to the
cloud based interface, it would be too slow and unreliable as marty
notes.  

This all started in my head when I noted how scoring/timing was done at
my daughter's swim meets vs. the manual pain of entering scores into
PACSS, etc.  I also want to be able to offer some cool services for the
pilots to analyze their data over time, long after they've forgotten who
the judges were for round X of event Y.  I can look at the raw scores
for the competitions I've been a part of and I *think* I've been
improving over the past several months, but that's not clear from the
scores because the judges have been very different.  I expect over the
next year I'll be in front of the same people more times and I'll be
able to start seeing a trend + or -, etc.

Reading about the Nats + Worlds drove it home for me even more, we can
do better by leveraging technology (when it's available) and this is a
way for me to contribute to the pattern community the way Gene has with
PACSS, etc.

I've also spent the last 10 years at a company that is almost obsessive
in their attention to the customer, the user of the software, so I know
I won't get it completely right the first time and I'll have to get
input from y'all -- my "customers" for this in order to make this a
truly workable system, that's already started with some of the feedback
I've heard in this thread :-)

Which brings me back to the question at hand: how many fields have you
been to in the last 2 years where data service was NOT available for
your smartphone (if you have one)?

Peter+

On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Marty King <mking46516 at yahoo.com> wrote:

Spending the past 23 years in IT and doing scoring at the both the
district level and Nats I have to chime in.

I have found, that since I use both a tablet and Iphone for all my
communication these days, you can not be 100% sure of a consistent
keystroke on a touch screen.  And if you miss just one well placed
digit, it distracts you and sets off a lot of unwanted fumbling. Unless
the device wrote to a file that could be checked by the judge for
correctness prior to being sent over the wireless, there would be a lot
of issues. As a point of history we moved off of Scantron sheets at the
Nats so we could do several things. One big one was to try and put the
judges eyes back on the airplane. Second was to lower the expectation of
what scribes, if used, had to do (we were using outside scribes) Then
third was to have three eyes checking the data, the judges to make sure
the score sheet was filled in completely, the data entry person to input
and a data verification person to check the data. 

I think the wireless aspect (especially a secure 2.4 or 5.8) may have
some merit, especially if used at the Nats, we could send and import a
judges complete score sheet per pilot. A scratch pad would still be used
for the raw scoring, but as now, it could be transferred instead to a
wireless device instead of a score sheet and sent to the Host scoring PC
or server.  This would alleviate the second check of the data at
scoring, as no data would actually be keypunched. You also would not
need runners and scoring would take place even more timely than it
already does now. If any questions would arise (as they do at the Nats)
we could go back to the judges scoring pad on site for final
verification. Right now we simply pull the score sheet and handle the
issue. 

We had similar issues with ones writing directly on the Scantron score
sheets, not watching the plane, loosing their place.... Before we
changed to hand written score sheets in 2005, I went through the 2003 &
2004 Scantron sheets and there were a LOT of errors and NO's on them. 

If the cell system was perfect ( can you hear me now.....) and it isn't
by a long shot in many areas of the county, sending individual
keystrokes would be a challenge.  

One other system some of you may be aware of is in the field of
Education. There are classroom systems out that allow students using
handheld clickers (think of a small TV remote) to enter answers in real
time. The data is collected and displayed, how many right, how many
wrong etc. This is based on both Bluetooth and 2.4 ghz at the present
time and prices for systems range from 500.00 up to 2495.00.  The
problem still is hitting the correct keys consistently. When testing the
first systems in 2005 we had students that said they answered correctly,
but the software said otherwise. Either they lied or maybe press the
wrong button. There was no way to check, as the clickers do not hold a
file, they were real time.

Real time data entry is fast. However, in competition consistency and
accuracy is a must, but it is hard to achieve both in real time. You
need a way to double check and verify. I know competitors want true and
accurate scores. Otherwise, there is no reason to fly in front of
judges.

Just a few thoughts,

Marty

D4

NSRCA 2551

AMA 9945 CD LM

Marty King

574-304-5781

56632 Boss Blvd. Elkhart, Indiana 46516

________________________________

From: Phil S. <chuenkan at comcast.net>

To: General pattern discussion <nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org> 

Sent: Thursday, December 8, 2011 3:02 PM

Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] Quick question re: cellular data service
at the fields where you compete

Jim is correct -- I spent the last 10 years of my career studying driver
distraction (for the FHWA) in a driving simulator.  I have said for a
LONG time, that eyes-on-road and hands-on-wheel (with the "hands-free
methods) does NOT mean mind on-driving-task.  I have used the van Putte
method, and it WORKS.  People can NOT multitask, any more than a
single-core CPU can, and while one task is swapped out, it task will
suffer, no matter how short the swap-time is.

On 12/8/2011 12:32 PM, J N Hiller wrote: 

Hear we go again!

Keeping 'eyes on airplane' is of little benefit when the brain's
concentration or thought is elsewhere. The distraction incurred trying
to operate a remote devise will likely outweigh the benefits, at least
for many of us willing to admit it. I find writing numbers in a line
along the edge of a clipboard to be the least distracting.

Jim

-- 
Phil Spelt, KCRC President
AMA 1294 Scientific Leader Member
SPA 177 Board Member
(865) 435-1476v, (865) 604-0541c

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