WSP Training

On a bitterly cold morning, 60 enthusiastic and not so enthusiastic young people from Waterford City took part in some basic training at Kennedy park. The first part covered the concepts of distance (pacing exercise) and direction (3 butterfly loops). The second part was an actual competition. Thanks to Paul Allen, Laura Cox, Shirley Fan and Louis O'Carroll for helping run the event.
Three groups failed to punch the start properly so no result came up on the computer...sorry to Niamh, Lisa and Niamh, Paul, Daryl and David, and Emma and Catherine.
Course A ....1. Craig, Hassan and Dean; 2. Steven and Josh
Course B ....1. Agnes and Claudia; 2. Niamh and Siobhan
Course C ....1. Rachel and Abigail
Course D ....1. Mark and Florian
Course E ....1. David, Bubbles and David
Course F ....1. Cian and Oran; 2. Shannon and Jade

Beautiful day out at Colligan

Over 60 competitors of all ages took part in the event at Colligan wood today.
Full results can be found at the IOA website. Thank you to Con (controls in), Angela (Registration) and Laura (photos and download) for helping run the event.
A couple of thoughts from the Planner: many of those on the Red course found difficulty distinguishing between a ride and a small track on the map. A ride is a firebreak between lines of trees. Sometimes they can have single trees growing in them. Sometimes there are additional extraction rides from recent forest activities that are not mapped. Check out the explanation of map symbols here.
Another problem was the Pit (control 221). In fact it was accurately mapped but confusion arose over additional extraction rides. The boulder on the opposite side of the path was incorrectly mapped and should have been 30 metres to the west.

Colligan woods 28/03/10

The next club event takes place at Colligan woods, Dungarvan on Sunday 28th March. Start times from 11 to 1. The event will be signposted from the N72 (Waterford to Cappoquin road) at the Master McGraths statue (Clonmel road). Take the second left to the woods.
Ring 087-2229677 if you have a query.

Planners Report

The results from the Munster League event held at Goirtin Wood are posted on the results section of the IOA website.

Below, I will explain some issues that arose on the day from our collective experiences. I am sure that others have been through similar problems. We thank everyone who took part for their patience, understanding and their advice. The vast majority appeared to enjoy the day.

We had two technical issues on the day.

1. the Download station worked intermittently and then gave up the ghost, despite being surrounded by several technophobes. For no apparent reason it worked fine today and I was able to upload the remaining SI cards.
2. Synchronisation: we had problems with the batteries on 4 of our stations so I sent them off on holiday to Sportident. However, I forgot to synchronise them with the rest of the set when they returned. They were one hour different. It means that the completion time is correct but there are some strange splits.

On the mapping side, most of the courses were reasonably successful. There were however several issues that arose.

1. Mapping issues: this was a team mapping exercise between 4 club members. Only one was an experienced mapper. This caused problems when it came to putting the updates on the new OCAD map. One of the critical updates would not open. This meant that one mapper used an older version of the basemap to add their updates. This particularly was a problem around the pit (203). The vegetation changes I added on the opposite side of the road failed to make the final version of the map. One strip of white forest or possibly open ground with scattered trees became open ground. Another similar strip of white forest didnt quite make it on the final version.
2. Control choice:: there was one poor choice of controls used. Control 231, the crag, was put out by myself without checking any features around the tagged site. I readily admit this was an error as the tagged site was surrounded by larger crags both to the east and the west.This caused a lot of wasted time in the area. I was unable to remove it from the results. I had originally intended to use an excellent depression on the other side of the road. I should have stuck to it!
3. Control Misplacement: I noted when collecting controls that control 223 had migrated from the easternmost to the westernmost gully. The OCAD symbol for a gully is rather too thick to be used on 1:15,000 scale maps. They tend to merge into each other. It is also possible they were shown a little too far to the east of the map relative to the open ground to the north. Thanks to Paul for pointing this one out.
4. Control location: Is it valid to put a control in a pit when it is in runnable forest and close to a road? I know that there are rules that state otherwise but it would have been seen from the road and not pose any sort of challenge. It was only used on the more technical courses.
5. Map scale: The person producing the maps had major difficulties with OCAD on his computer and was unable to change the scale on the map. This meant that all courses except the yellow had to contend with the original 1:15,000 scale. This proved difficult with poorer eyesight. As someone who has such a difficulty myself, I empathise with those who were put out by the unfamiliar scale. It is only the elites who complain about not being enough 1:15,000 maps!
   

Andrew Cox
(Planner)

Waterford Secondary Schools

Pictures and link to results on the IOSG blog
Thanks to Jana Cox for her help on Download and to Ian McHardy for bringing in controls.