[NSRCA-dist8] Contest Scoring Ideas

[Raymond C. Gauthier]

Gordon,

The idea has merit, but it also has increased possibilities for error.  I
personally (at best a mediocre judge) would prefer to continue to write on a
score sheet even if I occasionally have to glance at it to be sure I'm
writing in the correct place.

In a perfect world there would be some one-handed device which could
"clicked" the proper number of times to score each maneuver and would then
print out a mini-scorecard at the end to assure the proper number of
maneuvers were scored and for scoring turn-in.  Problem is ... I have idea
what that device might be.  Could be a good business opportunity for some
specialty RC electronics company - it would be easy to design and probably
pretty cheap to build.  What do you think?

Ray Gauthier 

-----Original Message-----
From: Gordon Anderson [mailto:GAA at owt.com] 
Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2009 4:08 PM
To: AK, ID, MT, OR, WA, WY
Subject: [NSRCA-dist8] Contest Scoring Ideas

All,

OK, its pretty quite on this list and I have a couple of ideas about 
running the 2009 contest scoring that I would like to discuss. The deal 
is we mostly do not use scribes due to lack of people etc. This means a 
lot of judges look away from the plane to write the scores on the score 
sheet. The preferred method that some, but not all, judges use is to 
write the scores on a piece of scratch paper and then at the end of the 
flight they transcribe the data to the score sheet. The negative part of 
this process is the delay during transcription and the paper you waste 
in the process. There is always a chance of error during this 
transcription because the judge is always in a hurry. The nice thing is 
your eyes never leave the plane and you miss nothing.

So to make this work a little better how about we just get ride of the 
score sheets all together. We can cut 8 1/2" by 11" plain blank paper 
into three 11" long strips and the judge just puts the scores on the 
strip of paper along with the pilots name and the judges name or number. 
The score keeper can just enter the numbers into the scoring program and 
staple the strip of paper to the score sheet that is printed out after 
the scores are entered. This would remove the requirement to print score 
sheets and make the process run a little faster. The only thing the 
judge would need to do is count up his scores at the end of a flight to 
make sure he has the right number of scores, this would serve as a quick 
cross check. This process would completely remove the need to look down 
because there is nothing but a blank strip of paper to look at. Some 
judges like to see the list of maneuvers that are to be flown before the 
flight so we could deal with this by just posting an enlarged call card 
just behind the pilots that the judges can see, this would allow them to 
review the list between flights.

Please share your thoughts on this idea...

Also, I think it would be real cool to develop an iPhone scoring 
application, lets call it iScore. We could run the entire contest from a 
couple of iPhones and upload all the results to a web site and make it 
all publicly available. This would enable anyone to log on and see the 
status at any time, we could make a paperless process except for the 
strips of paper the judges write the raw scores on....

--Gordon