[ARDF] Report from IARU R1 Ad-Hoc Committee

[Kenneth E. Harker]

> On Nov 7, 2018, at 11:43 AM, Jay Hennigan <jay at west.net> wrote:
> 
> On 11/6/18 1:17 PM, Kenneth E. Harker wrote:
> 
>> 27.3 All transmissions shall be monitored to the competitors at the start line and and recorded by the organiser.
>> (This is an additional free of charge and a very effective control of the work of transmitters. As we see in many cases the referees don’t  quickly react  on a missing tranmission.
> 
> We've experienced something similar to this at Mt. Pinos and possibly other venues where the transmitters failed to operate properly. K0OV turned on an 80m portable receiver while organizers were dispatched to repair the problem. It did give information in terms of relative signal strength to the competitors.
> 
> World championships tend to be well enough staffed to allow a monitor at each transmitter as well as spare equipment to remedy any issues. If there isn't an on-site monitor at each transmitter actively looking at field strength (to detect antenna issues), early detection mid-competition of a problem won't allow things to get fixed much faster.

In recent World Championships, they have been trying to keep jury personnel from being too obviously close to the transmitter locations so as to avoid giving the locations away.  In the Classics in Korea there were some in hidden locations with eyeballs on the control point, and in other cases they might be hanging out near a road junction 200 m away or something.  In the Sprint competition in Korea, several controls were in locations where a juror being present would have made the location quite obvious.  This unfortunately included the one transmitter that fell down.  Even so, there were jurors in the field < 200 meters from that location.

> I'm opposed to allowing the competitors to listen in prior to the start. Requiring that the organizers monitor effectively (including field strength) continuously should solve this

I wonder if maybe having a member of the Jury assigned to monitoring the transmitter health (not just relying on the organizers) is the right way to go.


>> 29.3 …..The finish corridor shall be well runnable outside at least along one side of it.
>> (Certainly not as in Korea 2018)
> 
> This was an issue in Serbia where several competitors came down a road and needed to climb a hill to punch the finish beacon. There wasn't a good path adjacent to the corridor and several competitors ran up the finish corridor and were disqualified. I support this change. It should be clear that competitors may cross the finish corridor in order to run alongside if there is only one runnable side. Alternatively remove the rule prohibiting running backwards through the corridor and make it wide enough to do so.

I would be greatly surprised if a proposal to allow two-way or cross traffic in the finish corridor would be accepted.  It was discussed most vigorously in Korea as a safety issue, since many runners are going full-speed through the corridor.  There were several competitors in Korea disqualified for running the wrong way through the corridor so it’s clearly a recurring problem.

>> 
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