Delaware Valley Orienteering Association

I just uploaded 4 courses (beginner, intermediate, advanced 1, and advanced 2) to the GPS punching at UsynligO.

Orienteering in itself is a very safe activity during a pandemic. However the trip to Hickory Run could have potential complications. Please practice all social distancing guidelines in traveling to Hickory Run. I would also recommend no one from over two hours away traveling for these courses. Carbon county was recently moved to the yellow phase. Let's make sure we all can get there and beat this virus!

thank you. I did the Adv.2 course at HR. It was great.

The audible signal was right on at several controls. At some I had to do little circling around the feature. In average it was about 10 meters off. 20 m at most. Tending to the west. Not bad, guessing that the original map probably wasn't georeferenced. For instance, number 8 control was right on, but going from #12 to 13 passing by, I picked up the signal when I was about 50 m to the south.

This is the way to go. I don't mean only for this corona situation. If we have problem with volunteerism, this could be our last best option. At least it would work for the advanced courses.

Petr

GPS punching works extremely well for all of the maps I've made with lidar, but that's likely because everything is drawn according to real-world location rather than legibility for runners.

And yes, I agree, for local meets and club trainings, GPS punching seems like the way to go to ramp up our level of activity while not overburdening volunteers. For national meets and national championships, I hope we never leave behind the precision of flags and e-punching. I'll keep testing stuff out to see how I can improve the experience!

But this is also why I prefer using O-range on my watch. I believe Usynligo is also developing similar software for watches.

I think Petr is right in that it's best for advanced courses. The advanced courses tend to be the ones that require the lion's share of the work to set up. There also seems to be a bit of hesitation on the part of course designers to make a truly physically challenging advanced course at a local meet because of the amount of extra work it would create.

If it means I could run a course at a local meet that actually challenges my physical and technical limits, then I might start really attending local meets. As it stands right now, most of DVOA's local meets are far too much travel for what they can bring to my training. And I don't want event directors and course designers to undertake titantic efforts of putting out and picking up those controls to make me happy. 

So, I'm not saying that we should make a revolutionary shift to all GPS punching, but perhaps the most diehard orienteers who want a 14k long would be happy with a GPS punching course. And it would mean minimal extra work for a course designer.

Moving forward, I will be happy to set up long-term GPS courses that anyone can download at any time on any map. It could be like a permanent course that we change every X months.

The comment about possibility of using this for local advanced courses has to do with my observation of decline in events participation. A trend we haven't been able to reverse. Specially seeing the big crowds in parks now. At Spring Pond parking wasn't overfilled, but at the office cars parked where normally they wouldn't allow. I guess there was 200 cars at the falls. How to tap to this interest? 

I'm looking forward to trying your courses at Hickory Run.  I've already experimented with a QR course and enjoyed it.  I am coming at this from a recreational orienteer's point of view, just looking to get out there and have some O fun and exercise.  There are more than a few technophobes in DVOA, but believe me, I've downloaded two different apps for orienteering and it is easy. 

Kathyu

Dave and I did the intermediate course.  At the start we met a couple similar age as us just finishing the permanent beginner course and about to start the other permanent course.  Gave them the DVOA pep talk.  They live right near South Mountain.  But I digress...I carried my phone and the impulse to "cheat" and use the direction and distance to control features was overwhelming and I got to several controls before Dave.  Also if you set the sensitivity to too large a range you actually get the happy tune before you see the feature.  

Seriously, for self-education, you need to stash the phone where you can hear it but not use the cool features unless you get seriously lost.

And finally, your phone will have a usable copy of the map and a compass so you can be almost empty handed.  Good or bad?  your call.

I'll give it a try this week! 

I can carry the phone in a small hip pack, in front or behind me. Or a lightwight backpack. It can be put in a zip lock bag or a light drysack in case of wet/damp weather. It should be fine unless you go 100% submarine.

I'd love to see DVOA do some events with this or QR codes. Not all though, at least for now. I get that not everyone has a smartphone. It's at least one reason to keep e-punch going. 

Pre-registering/pre-paying, QR or GPS also should help to keep volunteer needs down.

Use of the usynligo system may be fine under the current circumstances, and for training purposes in the future, but I would not reccommend that the club hold any actual regular events without flags in the woods.  Unless someone coughs on an e-punch box, there seems to be minimal likelihood of virus transmission from the punching method we have used in recent years. Requiring preregistration, advanced payment and electronic waivers, (waivers should add a reference to covid-19), would help social distancing before starting, and maps being sanitized at the start, and results only posted online would keep the sport pretty safe.

Smartphone O' may be the future of the sport, but premature adoption of the changes involved may cause the loss of some of the current club membership.

I know that at some NREs, results are put on a webpage, which is viewable via a limited wifi signal.  No idea how much work it is to set that up, though...