[ARDF] Designing Championship Courses...

[Matthew Robbins]

Marvin,

    Does OEScore calculate the distances of all possible orders?  I
assumed it was just SI software to keep track of time and number of Ts
found.

Matthew

On 9/7/05, Marvin Johnston <marvin at rain.org> wrote:
> 
> Matthew Robbins wrote:
> >
> > 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.
> 
> The easy solution to that problem is to use OEScore rather than the
> standard OE orienteering (defined route) software. This is the software
> that we used at both the 2004 and 2005 US ARDF Championships.
> 
> 
> > 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.
> 
> One of the things I've learned in course setting is to try and design
> the course so it *is* possible for competitors to find the shortest
> course. The mistake I made on the 80M Mt Pinos course for the 2004 US
> ARDF Championships was to located the transmitters so that the first
> route choice decision (left or right about 200M down the start
> corridore) was based on guesswork.
>