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

John Gayer jgghome at comcast.net
Thu Dec 8 14:40:59 AKST 2011 

Robert,
You need to come back to Albuquerque for a contest this year.
For the past couple of years we have been having our pattern contests at 
the RMFM field west of town, The field is next to a casino and the 
reception is fine. You are correct about the reception at Maloof.

Peter,
I still don't see how you are going to overcome the GIGO factor when 
judges forget the enter key or hit it twice after the accumulated 
downgrades and they /will/ do this. Many judges will have difficulty in 
correcting the scores in the scratchpad even if they can figure out what 
they did wrong. After multiple delays trying to fix a few of those 
issues and having some reflights, reversion to the old system will be 
rapid. And that is if the system itself works perfectly, no bugs, no 
dropped data, no missing scoresheets.

If you want to apply your software expertise to the scoring system, how 
about working with Gene on the post-contest scoring summary analysis 
part of PACSS. The system from District 8 is very good in this regard. 
Also a maneuver by maneuver breakdown of scoring where you can see which 
maneuvers to work on and how they stack up against the competition.  It 
would be really good to have a national scoring system that is used by 
everyone and the first step would be to consolidate the various system 
capabilities.

John


On 12/8/2011 4:08 PM, Robert L. Beaubien wrote:
>
> 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
>
> -
>
> "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 
> <mailto: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 <tel:574-304-5781>
>
> 56632 Boss Blvd. Elkhart, Indiana 46516
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:*Phil S. <chuenkan at comcast.net <mailto:chuenkan at comcast.net>>
>
>
> *To:* General pattern discussion <nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org 
> <mailto: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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