[NSRCA-discussion] NATS Electronic Scoring

Sun Jul 30 10:57:45 AKDT 2017

Couple last notes and my initial personal retrospective on this:  I would
LOVE help.  I put out a call to the electronic-scribe-users mailing list
for just basic assistance to cover simple problems at sites where people
would be competing anyway a little over a month ago to almost no response.

Agreed on the bulletin board, it's definitely needed for flight orders,
results, etc.  I didn't set up the real-time display board because there
was no solid clamping surface and, quite frankly, it saves me 20 minutes
per site per day to not have to set up and tear-down the score display,
that's an hour per day saved for me!  I was at the site every day before
6am and left around 6 or 7pm each day to support the scoring.  With help
that would have been reduced dramatically.

I *should have* procured the laptops much sooner and used one each at a
local contest first.  Two things prevented that:
1.  We have fewer contests this year
2.  The need for the extra laptops didn't occur to me until late.  I knew I
would have the NSRCA's scoring laptop from AMA HQ there *and* that D5 was
bringing their laptop, combined with mine I had 3 laptops.  But over the
last several months I have made some significant improvements to the scribe
adapter software (actually a complete rewrite!)  AND the electronic scribe
running on the devices, improvements that are not compatible with the old
software and that I don't want to release into the wild until I'm certain I
have an automatic update process in place that works -- given that things
were in flux there, I didn't want to do anything incompatible on those
laptops until I'm ready for release if I could avoid it.  D5's laptop would
have been updated Thursday morning if I hadn't been able to resolve the
windows problem on my primary scoring laptop.

HOWEVER, I also consider the fact that we used the scribe successfully at
THREE sites for FOUR days with virtually no problems and *definitely* no
controversy about the scores a major and historic achievement for the
scribe.  On day 2 the system ran unattended other than for tear sheets to
be pulled off the printer and distributed, at all three sites with NO
glitches.  Similarly on Day 4 though only on 3 sites (including a move from
site 2 to center stage).  Next year we'll go for no glitches all days all
sites!  And with help, maybe we can all get a little more sleep ;-)

I'm also thinking about how to make setup faster, perhaps with a little
trailer that can be popped open, plugged into a generator and ready for
scoring...  Some of the work I did for the Nuclear Emergency Search Team
back in the late 80's came to mind over the past few days (you want to talk
about the need to rapidly setup complex equipment and networking FAST, that
was a definite case of it...)

At the Muncie site, there's a lockable trailer and live power at each site
-- that would have saved a lot of time, particularly on day 1, by saving me
from having to wait for a generator to arrive at the site to get things
moving.

I also need to investigate some officially weather-proof network equipment
so that I could leave most stuff pre-staged on site each night instead of
checking the weather prediction and making a call as to how much needs to
be torn down each day.  That said, by day 3 setup on each site was taking
me less than 25 minutes, down from an average of 1 hour on day 1 (slower on
site 1, faster on site 3).  And the move from site 2 to center stage on day
4 took me less time than it took Mike and crew to set up the scoring tent,
I think I could have been ready in under 15 minutes if center stage had
been ready to receive me.

Finally, *despite* a heat index of 105-110 degrees there was not a *single*
problem with scribe devices overheating!  Proof that keeping the device in
the shade is the key to success at  any contest, whether local or
National.  The only device-related problem was caused by a judge
accidentally turning off the switch on the controller side that enables the
controller to charge the iPod, so the iPod went into low battery mode in
the afternoon.  4 maneuvers were recorded on paper, the rest came off the
scribe as soon as it was recharged.

In short, I'm calling this historic NATS a victory with many lessons
learned that I need to write down and process solutions for.

Peter+

On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 11:27 AM, Peter Vogel <vogel.peter at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Curt for the kind words and gentle feedback...
>
> The laptops I was using were all laptops bought (by me) to support
> scoring, particularly for this endeavor, the missing reader software was,
> quite frankly, my error in setting up the laptops, it obviously won't
> happen again next time because we'll be using the same dedicated laptops.
>
> I agree that it is *crazy* to NOT have a laptop to dedicate to your
> scoring system.  I did not want to include a laptop in the system I supply
> for a couple of reasons:
> 1.  Many people may have a spare laptop to dedicate to the system and
> would prefer to use one they are familiar with than one I pick.
> 2.  I DO NOT want to get into the business of supporting windows laptops!
> I (largely) know the source of the problems that can happen with my
> software on windows and can support that, but if I supply the laptop
> suddenly people will start expecting me to support other stuff there (it's
> happened before).
>
> So the scoring kit is and shall remain a "bring your own laptop"
> arrangement -- I will happily jump on a remote control session with anyone
> setting up a scoring laptop to do the configuration.  In the heat of
> prepping for NATS scoring on two laptops I just forgot that one small
> detail which was resolved before noon on the first day on both site 1 and
> site 3 (site 2 worked as that laptop had reader installed as it is my
> primary scoring laptop).
>
> The day 3 problem had *nothing* to do with the laptops, it had everything
> to do with windows, which I strongly feel is the "weakest link" in our
> scoring chain.  Windows had a registry glitch which, quite literally,
> *deleted* all traces of MasterScoring from the laptop and denied permission
> to re-install it.  This may *partially* be due to the fact that
> MasterScoring is signed with a self-signed code signing certificate (saves
> money) but was also clearly caused by windows losing track of my userID
> being an administrator.  A reboot of the laptop with "windows reset"
> enabled fixed the problem and that laptop was ready to score within 15
> minutes of me informing the site director of the problem.  We could have
> been using the scribe on site 3 the morning of day 3 after the first pilot
> flew, but the pilots made the choice to stick with paper to keep things on
> a level playing field for everyone and I respect that decision by the
> pilots and HUGELY thank Tim's Wife and Anne (sorry, forgot last name, I'm
> horrible with names) for helping out with the manual score entry.
>
> I'll endeavor to have one backup laptop ready for next NATS.
>
> Peter+
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 10:41 AM, Curt Oberg <obergc at cox.net> wrote:
>
>> First of all, I want everyone to know that I am a devout believer in the
>> Electronic Scoring system, to the extent that I have donated money to
>> purchase a system for D3 and also donated money to purchase a dedicated
>> laptop to be used with our D3 system.   I have seen it in use at all of our
>> D3 contests for the last 2 years and I believe that it results in superior
>> judging, a huge reduction in manpower needed to manually run scoresheets
>> back and forth, manually enter scores, and importantly, the capability of
>> having instant feedback as to individual contestant standings as the
>> contest progresses.  No question in my mind that Peter was the busiest
>> person at the NAT's, from well before the day started for most of us until
>> end of day.  There is also no question in my mind that we should NOT expect
>> a single individual (Peter Vogel) to set up, operate, and monitor 3
>> separate scoring systems at 3 widely separated sites like we had at
>> Blytheville because the end product will suffer.  There MUST be a dedicated
>> individual at each site to set up and monitor it's operation during the
>> contest because issues are likely to come up.  If that individual is also
>> competing, I believe that he or she should be excused from Judging for
>> obvious reasons.  I can promise you that there is a lot more than meets the
>> eye in getting the system set up and running and then at the end of the
>> day, it all has to be done over again to pack it all away, to  be repeated
>> each day of the contest.  It's way to much to expect any individual to do,
>> and BTW, Peter was also trying to compete in Intermediate Class at the same
>> time.  Too much to expect, even for Superman.
>>
>>
>>
>> The systems did not come with a laptop when originally purchased and in
>> D3, we believed that it would be pure folly to use a different laptop at
>> every contest so we purchased a dedicated laptop for our system.  I firmly
>> believe that every system should have a dedicated laptop to prevent issues
>> like we had with our site 3 system during the NAT's.  On day one at site 3,
>> we were not getting the auto printed individual score sheets because of the
>> absence of a required software program on the laptop.  That shouldn't
>> happen if you had dedicated laptops that were set up and checked out before
>> the contest start.  On day 3, another laptop problem occurred that
>> significantly delayed getting the system set up for the Advanced flyers at
>> site 3.  However, we were also short a judge for line A so flying at both
>> lines couldn't begin anyway.  The decision was made to start flying on line
>> B using paper scoring.  Even though Peter had the system up and running by
>> the time we had all our judges for line A, since the judges had started on
>> line B with "paper scoresheets", the decision was made to use paper scoring
>> for the rest of the day for all Advanced flyers.  When you watched the
>> judges scoring on paper, it clearly showed the benefit of using the
>> electronic system.  When using the electronic scribe, the judges rarely
>> take their eyes off the plane while with paper scoring, the judges take
>> their eyes off the plane at the end of every maneuver to write down the
>> score and read what the next maneuver should be.  I know that some judges (Ron
>> Van Putte) has a system where he doesn't take his eyes off the plane and
>> he just writes the score down in a column on a blank sheep of paper and
>> then he transcribes the numbers onto the scoresheet at the end of the
>> flight but none of the judges that I observed were doing that.  I think
>> that you could practice your snap rolls in between maneuvers and half the
>> judges wouldn't even notice., :).
>>
>>
>>
>> My hat's off to Peter for the extraordinary effort and job that he did at
>> the Blytheville NAT's but in the future, we HAVE to get some assistance and
>> help for Peter. I also believe that we should have a small bulletin board
>> or clip board at each site that has a printout of the standings at the end
>> of each day, I shouldn't have to wait until I've returned home from the
>> NAT's to see who won.
>>
>>
>>
>> Curt Oberg
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> *From:* NSRCA-discussion [mailto:nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org]
>> *On Behalf Of *Peter Vogel via NSRCA-discussion
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 26, 2017 9:21 PM
>> *To:* Jon Lowe; General pattern discussion
>> *Subject:* Re: [NSRCA-discussion] NATS Electronic Scoring
>>
>>
>>
>> Since Masters and FAI are running across two sites and the judges are
>> moving each day instead of the pilots, and there is a scoring computer at
>> each site, the scores from site 1 need to be combined with the scores from
>> site 2 to get the complete picture.
>>
>>
>>
>> I've published the results to www.patternscoring.com but there's
>> something minor wrong in one of the published data files that's causing my
>> code to fail to display the menu of contests.
>>
>>
>>
>> Masters results are here: http://patternscoring.co
>> m/7ec5dcab-06e9-415a-aff7-e1afa1a85c59  I'll also get PDFs to Derek.
>>
>>
>>
>> I'm working on FAI and the others as we speak.  Please recognize that at
>> this point I've been up for 17 hours and I'm looking at having to get up
>> again in about 7 so please have some patience...
>>
>>
>>
>> Peter+
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 6:34 PM, Jon Lowe via NSRCA-discussion <
>> nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org> wrote:
>>
>> According to Joe Walker, he doesn't have standings either. Something
>> about "synchronizing computers", that the electronic system requires.
>>
>> Jon
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> On Wednesday, July 26, 2017 Ronald Van Putte via NSRCA-discussion <
>> nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org> wrote:
>>
>> Me either.
>>
>>
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 26, 2017, at 7:49 PM, Jon Lowe via NSRCA-discussion <
>> nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Nor for me...
>>
>> Jon
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> On Wednesday, July 26, 2017 John Gayer via NSRCA-discussion <
>> nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org> wrote:
>>
>> The links aren't working for me.
>>
>> On 7/23/2017 9:19 AM, rixsweeney--- via NSRCA-discussi
>>
>> on wrote:
>>
>> Great, thanks
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for
>> Windows 10
>>
>>
>>
>> *From: *Peter Vogel <vogel.peter at gmail.com>
>> *Sent: *Sunday, July 23, 2017 11:18 AM
>> *To: *rixsweeney at gmail.com; nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
>> *Subject: *Re: [NSRCA-discussion] NATS Electronic Scoring
>>
>>
>>
>> Yes it will be used and yes, we'll make sure the links are on the web
>>
>>
>>
>> Get Outlook for iOS <https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
>>
>> *From:* NSRCA-discussion <nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org>
>> <nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org> on behalf of rixsweeney---
>> via NSRCA-discussion <nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org>
>> <nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, July 23, 2017 10:17:20 AM
>> *To:* nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
>> *Subject:* [NSRCA-discussion] NATS Electronic Scoring
>>
>>
>>
>> Is the Electronic scoring being used at the Nats this year? If so, will
>> there be a link to it from the NSRCA site?
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for
>> Windows 10
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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>>
>> --
>>
>> Director, Fixed Wing Flight Training
>>
>> Santa Clara County Model Aircraft Skypark
>>
>> Associate Vice President, Academy of Model Aeronautics District X
>>
>> Treasurer, National Society of Radio Control Aerobatics (NSRCA)
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Director, Fixed Wing Flight Training
> Santa Clara County Model Aircraft Skypark
> Associate Vice President, Academy of Model Aeronautics District X
> Treasurer, National Society of Radio Control Aerobatics (NSRCA)
>
>

-- 
Director, Fixed Wing Flight Training
Santa Clara County Model Aircraft Skypark
Associate Vice President, Academy of Model Aeronautics District X
Treasurer, National Society of Radio Control Aerobatics (NSRCA)
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