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Results: January 11, 2009
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Our January 11 event held in the area southwest of Buckeye had several “firsts” for our club; our first time on a new map area; the first time allowing the use of a GPS receiver on an orienteering course; and our first dual event that involved geocaching.
The weather was perfect, and we had a good turnout from both the orienteers (36 participants) and geocachers (31 participants). The geocaching was treated as a separate event from the orienteering—although the focus of the geocaching seminar was in interpretation of topographic maps for route finding, as well as going back and forth between the map and GPS coordinates.
The geocaching event consisted of the training seminar followed by a “mult-cache”, which is a series of steps or puzzles that eventually lead to a cache. In this case, the challenge wasn’t in finding the controls, but in deciding which-of-many controls were the right ones successfully complete the course. To do this, participants had to choose the correct map feature to go to, based on the control description and interpreting the map. The geocachers had mixed results in negotiating the multi-cache course. Those who stayed for the entire training seminar had good success with the multi-cache. Some others, however, seemed to have difficulty for a variety of reasons—some were not familiar with their GPS units, and some didn’t finish out the seminar and might have missed out on the instructions for following the course properly. The good news is that those who completed the course enjoyed themselves, and said that they learned a lot from the navigation seminar. Who knows—maybe some will return for future orienteering events…
This new map area is more open with less vegetation that most of our other areas, making for faster navigation. In some cases (especially when re-using controls from the geocaching course) this made the Score-O controls visible from a long way away, so speed was an important factor for performing well on this course. Ludwig Hill and Ron Birks both completed the course with perfect scores of 910, with Ludwig edging out Ron by less than two and ½ minutes! The third place finisher with 900 points was Bobby Alexander, with 900 points and a time of 1:56:20. Ron and Bobby were covering some parts of the course at about the same time, and Ron offers t his perspective of comparing a GPS-aided orienteer against our traditional methods:
“During the Score-O event, GPS navigators were able to use their skills to find their way through the same course as the orienteers. This gave us a great example of a head-to-head comparison of GPS navigation vs. straight map and compass navigation used by orienteers. I personally spent much of the day seeing Bobby Alexander (a very good GPS navigator) find the controls more efficiently than I was finding them. The main advantage that I could see with the GPS navigation was the minimal amount of searching once we arrived in the control circle. While I spent time wandering around looking for several of the controls, Bobby was pretty much spot on. We both used the map and compass to navigate to the controls, but the GPS seemed to minimize the wandering around. In the end, the only advantage I had was speed - I was running as fast as I could. When the route between controls was flat, I was able to speed up and cover ground more quickly. I have no doubt that if the speed between the GPS navigator and the orienteer were equivalent, the GPS navigator would have the advantage.”
We may occasionally try allowing GPS receivers during future events, but we will probably try to apply a reasonable handicap to the GPS users to offset the typical navigation errors and uncertainties encountered by orienteers using map & compass.
Event Volunteers:| Course Setter: | Glenn Haselfeld |
| Meet Director: | Rick Eastman |
| Bag Hangers: | Dianne Haselfeld, Glenn Haselfeld |
| Water Station Setup: | Glenn Haselfeld |
| Equipment Hauling: | Dave and Windy Marks |
| Setup/Tear-down: | Dave Marks, Windy Marks, Glenn Haselfeld, Dianne Haselfeld, Rick Eastman |
| Registration Table: | Dianne Haselfeld |
| Timing Table: | Rick Eastman, Glenn Haselfeld |
| Beginners Clinic: | Glenn Haselfeld |
| Control Retrieval: | Glenn Haselfeld, Ludwig Hill, Max Suter, Ron Birks, Rick Eastman |
| Tabulating Results: | Glenn Haselfeld |
Categories:
M - Male
F - Female
TM - Male Team
TF - Female Team
TX - Mixed Team
January 11, 2009 |
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| Total Points Possible: | 910 | ||||||||
| TotalNumber of Controls: | 31 | ||||||||
| Total Participants: | 27 | ||||||||
| Overall Place |
Competitor | Total Points |
Penalty Points * |
Number of Controls |
Time | Category | Rank | Grand Prix Points |
Team Members |
| 1 | Ludwig Hill | 910 | 0 | 31 | 1:39:27 | M | 1 | 10 | |
| 2 | Ron Birks | 910 | 0 | 31 | 1:41:50 | M | 2 | 9 | |
| 3 | Bobby Alexander | 900 | 0 | 30 | 1:56:20 | # | # | # | |
| 4 | Max Suter | 890 | 0 | 30 | 1:57:17 | M | 3 | 8 | |
| 5 | Tim Stefek | 830 | 0 | 27 | 1:54:14 | M | 4 | 7 | |
| 6 | Windy Marks | 770 * | 10 | 21 | 2:00:04 | F | 1 | 10 | |
| 7 | Dave Marks | 760 * | 30 | 24 | 2:02:53 | M | 5 | 6 | |
| 8 | Erik Ringnes | 720 | 0 | 26 | 1:59:20 | M | 6 | 5 | |
| 9 | Brian Karasek | 670 | 0 | 18 | 1:55:05 | M | 7 | 4 | |
| 10 | Bob Badgett | 630 | 0 | 21 | 1:56:49 | M | 8 | 3 | |
| 11 | Paul McDonald | 560 | 0 | 16 | 1:58:08 | M | 9 | 2 | |
| 12 | James McDonald | 500 * | 10 | 22 | 2:00:17 | M | 10 | 1 | |
| 13 | S&S | 450 | 0 | 22 | 1:58:00 | TF | 1 | Sandy Stephens, Sherry Gusse | |
| 14 | Damian Green | 440 | 0 | 17 | 1:57:56 | M | 11 | 0 | |
| 15 | Wendy Badgett | 400 | 0 | 20 | 1:58:00 | F | 2 | 9 | |
| 16 | Tina Stefek | 390 | 0 | 20 | 1:58:00 | F | 3 | 8 | |
| 17 | Teton | 250 | 0 | 12 | 1:54:17 | TX | 1 | Lori Zito, Pam Norris, Tammy Hartman, Carter Hartman | |
| 18 | Cobras | 240 | 0 | 11 | 1:53:00 | TX | 2 | Lisa Kline, Jordan Kline | |
| 19 | Doug McCulley | 190 | 0 | 13 | 1:54:39 | M | 12 | 0 | |
| 20 | Sharon Fairchild | 80 | 0 | 6 | 1:54:00 | F | 4 | 7 | |
| 21 | Mary Hartwig & Lisa Hammel | DNF | 0 | 0 | Did not return Scorecard | TF | Mary Hartwig, Lisa Hammel | ||
* Ten points were deducted for each full minute over the cutoff time of 1:00 PM.
The penalty points are already included in the POINTS column.
# The competitor participated in this event using a combination of GPS and map reading skills.
As the Grand Prix tracks orienteering rankings, the participant is not eligible for category
ranking or Grand Prix points.
January 11, 2009 |
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| Overall Place |
Competitor | Time | Category | Rank | Team Members | ||||
| 1 | Rick Eastman | 0:35:00 | M | 1 | |||||
| 2 | Troop 3 | 2:36:00 | TX | 1 | Linda Gillham, Joel Loredo, Cristian Ramos, Jorge Avila, Paul Stithem, Andrew Stithem, Matthew Stithem |
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