[ARDF] Designing Championship Courses...

[Matthew Robbins]

Here in Cincinnati, our small events are always either "Find all 5"
or, for beginners, "Find 1, 2, or 3 specific transmitters" (depending
on how off-trail the placements are).  I've set a few hard courses
with no easy transmitters (and had to apologize for it).

I've tried to design a nine-category course, and immediately ran into
difficulty, mostly because I'm used to some software for regular
orienteering course setting.  You can manually enter a category, say
W19: 1,3,4,5, but you have to enter each possible order if you want to
look at them all.  Then, you have to page through to look at and
compare each order.

Furthermore, for M21 there are 120 possible orders.  

Interestingly, there are 120 possible orders for "any four"
transmitters, but only 24 for each of the 4-transmitter age
categories, where you have to skip a specific transmitter.

There are, I think, 10 possible 3-transmitter courses.  The rules for
W50 and M60 say, "... category shall not be scored for two
transmitters defined by the siting referee."

Instead of suffering through a course-setting program to try to
analyze all those possible orders, I wrote an excel spreadsheet that
calculates the distance from every possible order of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, or
0 transmitters, then sorts the information into tables.  It uses only
the x,y position of each transmitter, and completely ignores terrain,
vegetation, climb, impassable features, etc.  **It uses only the
straight line distance between transmitters.**

As Bruce has pointed out, straight line distance between transmitters
is not the whole story, and I acknowledge that.  But it has been fun
to look at various courses with it, and see how they measure up. 
Below are tables of courses with the 5 shortest orders for each
category, except for the 3T courses.  The 3T courses show the shortest
10 3T orders---It's used to pick which 3T courses are shortest.

Here is Day 1 Brno 80m---remember only M19/W19/M21/W21 are used:
(3T-14 means skip 1 and 4)

	Brno 2004 Day 1 80m				
Course	Order	Distance	    % of M21min	% of cat min
M21	23145	9165		100	100
M21	21435	9574		104	104
M21	24135	9695		106	106
M21	23415	9705		106	106
M21	14325	9721		106	106
M19	2145	9004		98	100
M19	2415	9665		105	107
M19	1425	9681		106	108
M19	4125	10125		110	112
M19	2514	10141		111	113
M40	4531	8224		90	100
M40	4521	9104		99	111
M40	5421	9148		100	111
M40	2541	9188		100	112
M40	3541	9308		102	113
D21	2135	8599		94	100
D21	2315	8730		95	102
D21	1325	8745		95	102
D21	3125	9169		100	107
D21	2531	10075		110	117
M50/D19	1435	8424		92	100
M50/D19	3145	8438		92	100
M50/D19	1345	8939		98	106
M50/D19	3415	8979		98	107
M50/D19	4135	8989		98	107
D35	2345	7894		86	100
D35	2435	8424		92	107
D35	2534	8900		97	113
D35	3425	8994		98	114
D35	4325	9015		98	114
3T-14	235	6404		70	100
3T-15	234	6954		76	109
3T-14	325	6974		76	109
3T-12	345	7168		78	112
3T-24	135	7449		81	116
3T-25	314	7497		82	117
3T-12	435	7718		84	121
3T-23	145	7854		86	123
3T-13	245	7854		86	123
3T-14	253	7964		87	124

Straight through Distance, Start to Finish	4603	meters


Here is the Day 2 80m course.  Here only M40/M50/M60 and W35/W50 are used:

	Brno 2004 Day 2 80m				
Course	Order	Distance	     % of M21min	% of cat min
M21	53142	7761		100	100
M21	51324	7830		101	101
M21	51342	7983		103	103
M21	15324	8257		106	106
M21	15342	8410		108	108
M19	5142	5684		73	100
M19	5124	6401		82	113
M19	1542	6981		90	123
M19	1524	7531		97	132
M19	5412	8117		105	143
M40	4531	7558		97	100
M40	4521	7711		99	102
M40	5421	7734		100	102
M40	2541	8451		109	112
M40	3541	8626		111	114
D21	5132	6304		81	100
D21	1532	6731		87	107
D21	5312	6952		90	110
D21	3512	7624		98	121
D21	1352	8082		104	128
M50/D19	5314	6806		88	100
M50/D19	5134	7027		91	103
M50/D19	1534	7455		96	110
M50/D19	3514	7478		96	110
M50/D19	1354	8102		104	119
D35	5324	6956		90	100
D35	5342	7109		92	102
D35	3542	8428		109	121
D35	5432	8893		115	128
D35	3524	8979		116	129
3T-23	514	4729		61	100
3T-34	512	4875		63	103
3T-35	142	5412		70	114
M60	532	5430		70	115 (Skip 14)
W50	542	5679		73	120 (Skip 13)
3T-34	152	6005		77	127
3T-23	154	6025		78	127
3T-45	132	6032		78	128
3T-35	124	6129		79	130
3T-12	534	6153		79	130

Straight through Distance, Start to Finish	4229	meters


Here is this year's Albuquerque 80m course:

	ABQ 2005 80m				
Course	Order	Distance	     % of M21min	% of cat min
M21	54213	5699		100	100
M21	31245	5988		105	105
M21	35421	6122		107	107
M21	52413	6137		108	108
M21	31254	6184		109	109
M19	5421	4630		81	100
M19	5241	5068		89	109
M19	5214	5100		89	110
M19	4521	5213		91	113
M19	5412	5262		92	114
M40	4531	5300		93	100
M40	4521	5398		95	102
M40	5421	5482		96	103
M40	2541	5900		104	111
M40	3541	5922		104	112
D21	5213	5502		97	100
D21	3125	5791		102	105
D21	3521	5925		104	108
D21	1253	6365		112	116
D21	5123	6497		114	118
M50/D19	5413	4911		86	100
M50/D19	3145	5201		91	106
M50/D19	3541	5334		94	109
M50/D19	3154	5589		98	114
M50/D19	4513	5687		100	116
D35	5243	5025		88	100
D35	5423	5176		91	103
D35	3524	5266		92	105
D35	3425	5314		93	106
D35	4253	5364		94	107
3T-13	524	3774		66	100
3T-12	543	3799		67	101
3T-23	541	3842		67	102
3T-13	542	3935		69	104
3T-12	354	4040		71	107
3T-12	345	4088		72	108
3T-12	453	4138		73	110
3T-13	425	4161		73	110
3T-35	421	4329		76	115
3T-13	245	4346		76	115

3T-14        523          4979  (W50/M60)
3T-14        352          5231
3T-14        325          5268

Worst Possible Order M21:
                15432	9372	164% of M21 min


Straight through Distance, Start to Finish	824	meters

Often, as Bruce (?) has also mentioned, the "shortest" order isn't an
order anyone would actually pick.  I think a lot of ARDF is using
rules of thumb to decide what to do next.  You have to be careful with
the output and consider more than just the straightlines and some
crazy shortest order.

There is an adage in the software world that says you need to write
the program twice---That is, you need to plan to throw away your first
attempt.  That is so true for this spreadsheet.  I started out without
a clear idea where I was going, and I just kept sticking more thing
on.  I really need to start over to make it more understandable, and
cleaner.

If you're interested in playing with it, let me know.  I'm sure there
are still some bugs in there I haven't found.  It requires VisualBasic
(?) Macros, so some computers are locked-down too tight for it.

Matthew
AA9YH
Cincinnati, Ohio