
Races
Each race consists of the following data categories
- Finishing time for each yacht:
Time or status like DNS, DNF, etc.
This data is registered in the Race or
Race Realtime Input dialog, respectively - whatever
the users prefers.
- Time of starts:
Global start of the race (1st start),
time offsets for each class to define starting groups.
- Protocol data:
Some more protocol data to satisfy all the informations requested by the ISAF
rules.
- Course specification:
Additional parameters for the given scoring types, e.g course length, windspeed
etc.
Especially used for IMS, ORC-Club and Catstick scoring types!
- The GPS-dialog available as a supplematary tool
Time of Starts and Protocol
The time of starts split in two portions:
The time of the 1st start of the race is called global start
time of the race. The starting time for the following starts are time-offsets
to the global start time.
You can review and enter all the start times here. It is explained in the race
settings dialog. Please read the instructions there.
For the calculation of elapsed times the offset time of each group
is added to the global time of the 1st start. The group starting at
the time of the 1st start consequently receives an offset time equal 00:00:00.
The protocol comprises some more race
dependend information which is requested by the ISAF rules of sailing.
Some data is calculated automatically from the finishing times (e.g. time of
first and last yacht) and listed for your information.
Some more data (e.g. course length) is provided as input field; please note:
this course length is entered just for general information on the printout and
is not used for any succeding calculation. It must not be mixed up and is not
connected with the course specification data.
"Race" Dialog
This dialog is one of two options to register the finishing times of the yachts:
- automatic registration with PC-time:
The switch autom.PC-time must be selected. .
Now you can register the actual PC-time by double click on a yacht as the
yacht's finishing time. You can get the same result by just selecting the
yacht and pressing the Enter-key.
- entering the time by keyboard:
The finishing times can be entered manually via the keyboard. In this case
you have to enter the yacht's identification (sailing nr.) and the finishing
time. This way you can enter times which were registered elsewhere.
Finally you can change the times by this way later on.
- Assign a scoring status like DNS, DNF, DSQ
To assign a status to a yacht, you should first select the yacht und then
click on the status button. This is possible even after registering a finishing
time (e. g.: DSQ after a protest).
The yacht's finishing time is used to determine the yacht's elapsed time to finally
find the ranking of the yacht as follows
<yacht's elapsed time> = <yacht's finishing time> - <global
races starting time> - <group's
individual time offset>.
The yachts finishing time may be the time of the day, or in case of night or
long-distance (switch off the "one
day race" option!) races the time and date of the point of finishing.
Yacht's Scoring Status
All scoring options like disqualification, redress, etc. described in the ISAF's
rules of sailing are called "status".
A scoring status might be set in addition to the finishing time.
In general, if there is a status set, the finishing time is not required nor
taken into account,
except for the status ZFP, SCP, RDG.
These particular status need a regular finishing time to find the original ranking,
which is then corrected to find the final ranking.
"Race Real Time Input"
Dialog
This dialog is the alternative option to register the finishing times of the
yachts. It provides advanced functionalities to allow to register the finishing
times in real time, i.e. at the finishing line.
Pressing <enter> will register the system time in the actual row of the
grid.
In the status column the key <space> or <shift>+<space> switches
the status back and forth, respectively.
You can either register the time for given regular yacht entries,
or
you register the finishers manually by typing in their identification (e.g.
sailno, etc) by hand, and register the time by pressing <enter>.
In this sense you can also type in multiple IDs in advance and add the times
to them as the pass the finishing line, or vice versa.
Such type of manual input needs to be assigned to the regular yachts anytime
later, before the result is to be calculated: The assignment options are displayed
on the right hand side of the dialog.
Particular scoring options, e.g. with RDG, etc. are displayed also on the right
hand side of the dialog, but only for those results that belong to regular yachts.
Furthermore by double-clicking on a regular yacht, a dialog with the details
of scoring will show up.
The dialog will provide the best usability if you maximize it. In the center
of the dialog you find a splitter bar, which allows to adjust the portion between
left and right hand side.
Course Specifications
Each scoring type that requires additional parameters needs a "Course
Specification".
Depending on the scoring type the additional parameters might be only the overall
course length, e.g. for a time-on-distance scoring method.
IMS and ORC-Club provide much more scoring options thus offering a much greater
choice of scoring options to the user.
In every course specification dialog you will need to select the class and
the race first for which the course specification shall be entered.
The dialogs itself are interactive and will automatically adjust their input
fields to match the requirements of the scoring type and the particular choices
as they are entered on the dialog.
IMS Course Specification
The course specification is defined by a combination of the following options:
- Handicap
Select the type of handicap to be used.
You can choose between
precalculated (7-number) handicap sets
(e.g. "Circular Random", all of which you directly read on the certificate
sheet),
or
"Variable Course" handicaps, which are are calculated to
exactly match to your course
(the course needs to be defined leg by leg for the "Variable Course"!)
or
simplified (1-, 2-number) handicaps
("Simple Offshore", "Simple Inshore",
this simplified handicaps yield a calculation similar to the ORC-Club
scoring type).
- Calculation Method
You can choose between:
time on distance performance curve (PCS),
this is also known as "implied wind systems" (IW).
The calculation finds for each yacht the windspeed which the yacht has had,
if she was sailed optimally.
The yacht with the virtually highest windspeed is the winner.
A scratch boat is finally used to transform the individual windspeeds back
into corrected times.
Consequently, this calculation method avoids the requirement of a fixed windspeed
for which the handicap should be picked out.)
CorrectedTime = ElapsedTime - (TAF - TAFscratchBoat) * CourseLength
or
time on distance fix windspeed
(this requires the input of a fixed windspeed,
in case of a seven-number handicap this is either 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, or
20 kts, which defines the column out of which the handicap is to be picked
out.)
CorrectedTime = ElapsedTime - (TAF - TAFscratchBoat) * CourseLength
or
time on time
This way requires also the input of a fixed windspeed, however the courselength
is not required since the handicap is transfomed to a time-on-time multiplicator;
anyhow, if this method is combined with the Variable Course, then the course
still needs to be defined, to calculate the handicap itself.
CorrectedTime = ElapsedTime * 600 / TAF
- The fields windspeed, scratch boat, course length will
appear interactively as they are required by the choices above.
The windspeed needs to match any column defined in the certificate,
i.e. it must be 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, or 20 kts.
Please note that the selection of the scratch boat does not
influence the order of the rankings. It is used to transform the calculated
windspeed to a corrected time.
There are two options, standard or real scratch boat; the first assumes the
handicaps of the scratch boat to be [650, 510, 426, 370, 330, 300, 258], while
the real scratch boat is the yacht with the fastest GP handicap that is found
in the complete yachts list.
The course length must be entered in nautical miles. In case
of a Variable Course the courselength will be defined implicitely by the sum
over all legs.
- The Variable Course requires a course definition leg by leg.
Each leg consists of
length in nautical miles
leg direction (degrees, 0° = towards north)
wind direction (degrees, 0° = wind from north)
current wind direction (optional)
current wind speed (optional, kts)
As a help, you can alternatively define the position of the tons of the course
by their GPS coordinates, and have the legs data calculated by pressing the
button <calculate legs>,
or the other way around, for a given sequence of legs you can find the GPS
coordinates of the tons by pressing the button <calculate GPS>.
If you want to use the GPS function independendly of IMS courses, please call
the "GPS calculation" dialog from the race menu.
Dansk Handicap (DH) Course Specification
In the dialog DH Course-Specification the type of scoring is selected for each
class and each race individually.
Dansk Handicap offers you two scoring options:
- time on distance or
- time on time.
If time on distance is selected you will have to enter the
courselength (naut. miles) additionally. It is defined implicitely
by the sum over all legs.
For details of computing see Dansk Handicap Calculation.
ORC-Club course specification
The type of scoring is selected in the dialog ORC-Club Course-Specification
for each class and each race individually. ORC-Club offers three scoring options:
- time on time or
- time on distance or
- time on distance - performance line (PLS)
(2-number handicap system, comparable to a simplified IMS-implied-wind
algorithm).
If any time on distance is selected you will have to enter the
courselength (naut. miles) additionally. It is defined implicitely
by the sum over all legs.
For details of computing see ORC-Club Calculation.
Catstick course specification
The evaluation is based on 3 windspeed ranges: LW = less than 3,5 m/s, MW =
between 3,5 and 8 m/s, SW = more than 8 m/s. In the dialog Catstick Spezification
you have to enter all the times when the windspeed changed from one range to
another; e.g. from LW to MW. There is one line for each moment of change. E.
g.: MW 14:22 , LW 14:41 , SW 15:08 , MW 15:25 etc.
GPS Menu
The GPS menu is an utility to calculate leg length and directions in a set
of GPS positions or vice versa.
GPS coordinates are entered bei a pair of numbers, latitude N|S dd°mm.mmm',
longitude E|W ddd°mm.mmm'.
It allows
- to scale the course by a factor to adjust the course length,
- to rotate the course, e.g. to align a leg with the actual wind direction
- to save or load course data, e.g. to prepare a particular type of course
and to have it immediatelly available on the water.
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