Beginner needs help

[hkosonen]

Hi,

I am a new SW user. Our sailing club in Finland organizes many races for keelboats. The biggest is a ranked series of 12 races during the season from May to September (a total of 100 boats) and an ocean race at night over the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia with many rating systems (200 boats). We are thinking of changing the calculation and publishing of the results from Excel to a more robust platform.

I have studied SW actively during the last two weeks and recalulated some of our last seasons competitions using SW. My first impression: SW is excellant software.

There are some features what are not clear to me. I am sure that experienced users have solutions to my problems or practical solutions for missing (or unknown for me) features of SW.

1.I have created basic data for competitors (skipper name, sail number, boat type, boat name etc) using "Import competitors using CSV". I want later to complete the data of existing competitors (ratings, skippers' emails etc) using the same method, with a matching column, e.g. Sail number. The result is a new row on a spreadsheet, and not updating the already existing competitor row. How should I do that correctly?

2.I have read old SUG messages. SW does not support the calculation of starting times for a pursuit starting system. No problem. Calculation can be made in Excel and moved to Start time in SW using "Import results from CSV" (Finish time column cannot be omitted, 00:00:00 works?). My problem is rating and scoring. What should I select on the "Race scoring" tab so that the shortest elapsed time is a winner and he has the correct rank number 1 etc? In the "Rating system" tab I have chosen "None" (individual starting times include ratings). I have tried many "Race scoring" alternatives with no success. One of the selections may lead to all competitors receiving rank 1. What is a practical solution or trick to manage that?

3.I have understood that the rating method of SW is based on to one boat-specific correction factor (c = r *e). The commonly used ORC Club rating method needs two boat specific factors r1 and r2. What is a practical method to manage this rule (c = r1 * e – r2 * d)? A correct answer is not "Don't use it"
The practical solution could be: Start times, Finish times and Sail numbers from SW to Excel, calculation of Corrected times and "start specific rating values" (r = corrected time/elapsed time), writing results back to SW using sail numbers for matching. (This "start specific rating" guaranties that "Rescore" now correctly calculates corrected times for these ORC boats.) It seems to me that SWPH Excel (almost) does that, but I don't understood how I should define the link correctly for this purpose?
What is "Sailwave ID" in SWPH Excel sheet? I could not find this column in the SW spreadsheet.

Many thanks in advance
Heikki Kosonen

[MalcolmO]

Heikki,

A partial answer, hopefully others will also contribute:

1. SW only permits one row per competitor. Additional data would have to be accomodated in additional columns on the same row.

2. In a pursuit race, competitors can be scored simply by finishing order ( 1,2, 3, etc) There is no need for a calculation - that has been done by the staggered starting time.

regards,
Malcolm Osborne
Sedgefield South Africa

···

On 2013/04/08 15:41, hkosonen wrote:

Hi,

I am a new SW user. Our sailing club in Finland organizes many races for keelboats. The biggest is a ranked series of 12 races during the season from May to September (a total of 100 boats) and an ocean race at night over the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia with many rating systems (200 boats). We are thinking of changing the calculation and publishing of the results from Excel to a more robust platform.

I have studied SW actively during the last two weeks and recalulated some of our last seasons competitions using SW. My first impression: SW is excellant software.

There are some features what are not clear to me. I am sure that experienced users have solutions to my problems or practical solutions for missing (or unknown for me) features of SW.

1.I have created basic data for competitors (skipper name, sail number, boat type, boat name etc) using "Import competitors using CSV". I want later to complete the data of existing competitors (ratings, skippers' emails etc) using the same method, with a matching column, e.g. Sail number. The result is a new row on a spreadsheet, and not updating the already existing competitor row. How should I do that correctly?

2.I have read old SUG messages. SW does not support the calculation of starting times for a pursuit starting system. No problem. Calculation can be made in Excel and moved to Start time in SW using "Import results from CSV" (Finish time column cannot be omitted, 00:00:00 works?). My problem is rating and scoring. What should I select on the "Race scoring" tab so that the shortest elapsed time is a winner and he has the correct rank number 1 etc? In the "Rating system" tab I have chosen "None" (individual starting times include ratings). I have tried many "Race scoring" alternatives with no success. One of the selections may lead to all competitors receiving rank 1. What is a practical solution or trick to manage that?

3.I have understood that the rating method of SW is based on to one boat-specific correction factor (c = r *e). The commonly used ORC Club rating method needs two boat specific factors r1 and r2. What is a practical method to manage this rule (c = r1 * e -- r2 * d)? A correct answer is not "Don't use it"
The practical solution could be: Start times, Finish times and Sail numbers from SW to Excel, calculation of Corrected times and "start specific rating values" (r = corrected time/elapsed time), writing results back to SW using sail numbers for matching. (This "start specific rating" guaranties that "Rescore" now correctly calculates corrected times for these ORC boats.) It seems to me that SWPH Excel (almost) does that, but I don't understood how I should define the link correctly for this purpose?
What is "Sailwave ID" in SWPH Excel sheet? I could not find this column in the SW spreadsheet.

Many thanks in advance
Heikki Kosonen

[Rob_Morton]

Heikki,

I am using SW for our dingy handicap starts (pursuit races).

We have some boats starting at zero, and others starting at 32, that is 32 minutes after the first boat started.

I have made the rating for a boat, their handicap in minutes.

I use elapsed time from when that boat started and use the scoring formula of (c=60*r+e) to document times. It seems to work. The only problem is trying to guess the handicaps, so all boats finish close to each other, and that is very difficult as the different boats perform relatively differently in different conditions.

I cannot help with your question 1 or 3.

Regards,

Rob

Rob Morton

Pambula NSW Australia

···

From: sailwave@yahoogroups.com [mailto:sailwave@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Malcolm Osborne
Sent: Tuesday, 9 April 2013 1:05
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [sailwave] Beginner needs help

Heikki,

A partial answer, hopefully others will also contribute:

1. SW only permits one row per competitor. Additional data would have to be accomodated in additional columns on the same row.

2. In a pursuit race, competitors can be scored simply by finishing order ( 1,2, 3, etc) There is no need for a calculation - that has been done by the staggered starting time.

regards,

Malcolm Osborne

Sedgefield South Africa

On 2013/04/08 15:41, hkosonen wrote:

Hi,

I am a new SW user. Our sailing club in Finland organizes many races for keelboats. The biggest is a ranked series of 12 races during the season from May to September (a total of 100 boats) and an ocean race at night over the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia with many rating systems (200 boats). We are thinking of changing the calculation and publishing of the results from Excel to a more robust platform.

I have studied SW actively during the last two weeks and recalulated some of our last seasons competitions using SW. My first impression: SW is excellant software.

There are some features what are not clear to me. I am sure that experienced users have solutions to my problems or practical solutions for missing (or unknown for me) features of SW.

1.I have created basic data for competitors (skipper name, sail number, boat type, boat name etc) using “Import competitors using CSV”. I want later to complete the data of existing competitors (ratings, skippers’ emails etc) using the same method, with a matching column, e.g. Sail number. The result is a new row on a spreadsheet, and not updating the already existing competitor row. How should I do that correctly?

2.I have read old SUG messages. SW does not support the calculation of starting times for a pursuit starting system. No problem. Calculation can be made in Excel and moved to Start time in SW using “Import results from CSV” (Finish time column cannot be omitted, 00:00:00 works?). My problem is rating and scoring. What should I select on the “Race scoring” tab so that the shortest elapsed time is a winner and he has the correct rank number 1 etc? In the “Rating system” tab I have chosen “None” (individual starting times include ratings). I have tried many “Race scoring” alternatives with no success. One of the selections may lead to all competitors receiving rank 1. What is a practical solution or trick to manage that?

3.I have understood that the rating method of SW is based on to one boat-specific correction factor (c = r *e). The commonly used ORC Club rating method needs two boat specific factors r1 and r2. What is a practical method to manage this rule (c = r1 * e – r2 * d)? A correct answer is not “Don’t use it”
The practical solution could be: Start times, Finish times and Sail numbers from SW to Excel, calculation of Corrected times and “start specific rating values” (r = corrected time/elapsed time), writing results back to SW using sail numbers for matching. (This “start specific rating” guaranties that “Rescore” now correctly calculates corrected times for these ORC boats.) It seems to me that SWPH Excel (almost) does that, but I don’t understood how I should define the link correctly for this purpose?
What is “Sailwave ID” in SWPH Excel sheet? I could not find this column in the SW spreadsheet.

Many thanks in advance
Heikki Kosonen

[Art_Engel2]

Malcolm,

1. I think you might have misunderstood what Heikki was asking. I
believe we recently ran into exactly the same problem. SW set up
initially. After a race we realized that we had forgotten to include one
column so we attempted to import the additional data as a new column for
existing competitors. SW ignored the existing competitors (even though
sail numbers were the same) and put the additional info as new
competitors (new rows in SW).

I believe Heikki's question was: Is there a way to update the info for
competitors by adding new columns for each competitor?

The workaround we used was to delete all the competitors and all the
results and then re-import the competitors from CSV using ALL the
correct columns this time. Then we re-imported the finish results from
CSV. It didn't take that long because we had originally imported finish
times from CSV and it was just a matter of editing the competitors CSV
file in Excel before reimporting. If you manually input results you
probably could export and then re-import.

2. Just last week someone suggested the method Heikki used for pursuit
races. Choosing "None" should work, according to that person.

However, having just tested this out - it doesn't work. Choosing "None"
for scoring uses ELAPSED times when what you want is to score using
FINISH times. I don't think that is an option. The only way to do this
would be to leave the starting time blank, put all the boats into one
class and then enter finish times, which SW will think are elapsed
times. The problem with that is the published results then show your
finish times with the title "Elapsed" and shows a Starting Time of
"00:00:00" for all the boats, which obviously isn't correct.

When SW was originally designed I believe it was based on at TCF-type
scoring system so races are ALWAYS scored using elapsed times. Other
systems (such as PHRF in the US) can use finish times just as easily as
elapsed times but using finish times to score wasn't contemplated so
isn't an option. When the person wrote last week to say that SW could do
pursuit-type races I made a note because my club does one of these each
year and I wanted to switch over to SW. Now, however, I think we (and
you) are going to have to stick with another solution for the immediate
future.

Jon & Colin - Pursuit races could perhaps be handled roughly with two
changes. 1 -- Make printing ELAPSED times an option rather than
mandatory. That would solve the printing of results in the columns. [For
a pursuit race one would print the FINISH times rather than the ELAPSED
times.] 2 -- Then, allow the starting time to be repressed when
publishing. In fact, I think it would be helpful if each individual item
in the "caption" for a race table could be suppressed. A workaround
might be to include each individual item in its own class. Then one
could hide individual items using CSS, although obviously it would be
better if the info simply wasn't in the HTML file at all.

3. You can use an A and B when you create your own custom formula. Could
you do a custom formula with r1 as A and r2 as B? I believe the ORC
system is similar to the IMS performance line scoring system, which is
also the same as the US Americap II and ORR performance line scoring.

SOME IMPROVEMENTS
I note that the majority of the "Scoring Systems" in SW are the same
formula of "c=e*r." The only difference is the Name. Personally, I'd be
inclined to combine all of those into one and make the name
user-defined. Then, I should think you would definitely want more than
one "custom" system since I can think of at least two that we commonly
use (and we could have both in the same event). Plus, the custom systems
ought to have a user-defined name so the competitor can know which one
is being used. Finally, the "Rating system" is displayed on Series
results, which merely summarizes race results. It is the race results
where the racing system is relevant. So, the "Rating system" probably
should be moved to be part of the racecaption line rather than the
summarycaption line.

Art

···

On 4/8/2013 8:05 AM, Malcolm Osborne wrote:

Heikki,

A partial answer, hopefully others will also contribute:

1. SW only permits one row per competitor. Additional data would have to
be accomodated in additional columns on the same row.

2. In a pursuit race, competitors can be scored simply by finishing
order ( 1,2, 3, etc) There is no need for a calculation - that has been
done by the staggered starting time.

regards,
Malcolm Osborne
Sedgefield South Africa

On 2013/04/08 15:41, hkosonen wrote:

Hi,

I am a new SW user. Our sailing club in Finland organizes many races
for keelboats. The biggest is a ranked series of 12 races during the
season from May to September (a total of 100 boats) and an ocean race
at night over the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia
with many rating systems (200 boats). We are thinking of changing the
calculation and publishing of the results from Excel to a more robust
platform.

I have studied SW actively during the last two weeks and recalulated
some of our last seasons competitions using SW. My first impression:
SW is excellant software.

There are some features what are not clear to me. I am sure that
experienced users have solutions to my problems or practical solutions
for missing (or unknown for me) features of SW.

1.I have created basic data for competitors (skipper name, sail
number, boat type, boat name etc) using "Import competitors using
CSV". I want later to complete the data of existing competitors
(ratings, skippers' emails etc) using the same method, with a matching
column, e.g. Sail number. The result is a new row on a spreadsheet,
and not updating the already existing competitor row. How should I do
that correctly?

2.I have read old SUG messages. SW does not support the calculation of
starting times for a pursuit starting system. No problem. Calculation
can be made in Excel and moved to Start time in SW using "Import
results from CSV" (Finish time column cannot be omitted, 00:00:00
works?). My problem is rating and scoring. What should I select on the
"Race scoring" tab so that the shortest elapsed time is a winner and
he has the correct rank number 1 etc? In the "Rating system" tab I
have chosen "None" (individual starting times include ratings). I have
tried many "Race scoring" alternatives with no success. One of the
selections may lead to all competitors receiving rank 1. What is a
practical solution or trick to manage that?

3.I have understood that the rating method of SW is based on to one
boat-specific correction factor (c = r *e). The commonly used ORC Club
rating method needs two boat specific factors r1 and r2. What is a
practical method to manage this rule (c = r1 * e -- r2 * d)? A correct
answer is not "Don't use it"
The practical solution could be: Start times, Finish times and Sail
numbers from SW to Excel, calculation of Corrected times and "start
specific rating values" (r = corrected time/elapsed time), writing
results back to SW using sail numbers for matching. (This "start
specific rating" guaranties that "Rescore" now correctly calculates
corrected times for these ORC boats.) It seems to me that SWPH Excel
(almost) does that, but I don't understood how I should define the
link correctly for this purpose?
What is "Sailwave ID" in SWPH Excel sheet? I could not find this
column in the SW spreadsheet.

Many thanks in advance
Heikki Kosonen

[Art_Engel2]

Rob,

I just wrote Heikki to say I couldn't figure this out!!

So -- you put all boats into one class, define the same start time for
all boats in the class and use [c=(60*r)+e] as a custom rating system,
where r is the "start delay" in minutes and so 60*r is the "start delay"
in seconds. Presumably, your "start time" is the start time for the
first boat and that boat has an r of zero.

If I understand, you use Elapsed times as input to SW. So, presumably
you enter Finish times into a spreadsheet that then calculates the
Elapsed times and you then enter the calculated Elapsed times into SW.
So, when you print out results your "Corrected times" are in fact
showing the Finish times.

Hmmm. I think its kind of six-of-one vs half-dozen-of-the-other. While I
think I would prefer to have Finish times called "Corrected" rather than
"Elapsed," I don't like the extra step of having the RC convert recorded
Finish times into Elapsed times. Presumably, you make that easy by
having Excel output a CSV that can be imported to SW. However, if you
were to manually enter the resulting Elapsed times into SW that would
make one more step where input errors might occur. Plus, importing
doesn't always seem to go as smoothly as it should.

Still, I'm back to considering whether to use SW for the one "inverted
start" race we do each year. I think we might use the "Corrected =
Finish" method as opposed to the "Elapsed = Finish" method. That way
Elapsed times could be shown automatically and the only thing would be
to edit the column heading from "Corrected" to "Finish."

Art

···

On 4/8/2013 1:56 PM, Rob Morton wrote:

Heikki,

I am using SW for our dingy handicap starts (pursuit races).

We have some boats starting at zero, and others starting at 32, that is 32
minutes after the first boat started.

I have made the rating for a boat, their handicap in minutes.

I use elapsed time from when that boat started and use the scoring formula
of (c=60*r+e) to document times. It seems to work. The only problem is
trying to guess the handicaps, so all boats finish close to each other, and
that is very difficult as the different boats perform relatively differently
in different conditions.

I cannot help with your question 1 or 3.

Regards,

Rob

Rob Morton

Pambula NSW Australia

From: sailwave@yahoogroups.com [mailto:sailwave@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Malcolm Osborne
Sent: Tuesday, 9 April 2013 1:05
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [sailwave] Beginner needs help

Heikki,

A partial answer, hopefully others will also contribute:

1. SW only permits one row per competitor. Additional data would have to be
accomodated in additional columns on the same row.

2. In a pursuit race, competitors can be scored simply by finishing order (
1,2, 3, etc) There is no need for a calculation - that has been done by the
staggered starting time.

regards,
Malcolm Osborne
Sedgefield South Africa

On 2013/04/08 15:41, hkosonen wrote:

Hi,

I am a new SW user. Our sailing club in Finland organizes many races for
keelboats. The biggest is a ranked series of 12 races during the season from
May to September (a total of 100 boats) and an ocean race at night over the
Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia with many rating systems
(200 boats). We are thinking of changing the calculation and publishing of
the results from Excel to a more robust platform.

I have studied SW actively during the last two weeks and recalulated some of
our last seasons competitions using SW. My first impression: SW is excellant
software.

There are some features what are not clear to me. I am sure that experienced
users have solutions to my problems or practical solutions for missing (or
unknown for me) features of SW.

1.I have created basic data for competitors (skipper name, sail number, boat
type, boat name etc) using "Import competitors using CSV". I want later to
complete the data of existing competitors (ratings, skippers' emails etc)
using the same method, with a matching column, e.g. Sail number. The result
is a new row on a spreadsheet, and not updating the already existing
competitor row. How should I do that correctly?

2.I have read old SUG messages. SW does not support the calculation of
starting times for a pursuit starting system. No problem. Calculation can be
made in Excel and moved to Start time in SW using "Import results from CSV"
(Finish time column cannot be omitted, 00:00:00 works?). My problem is
rating and scoring. What should I select on the "Race scoring" tab so that
the shortest elapsed time is a winner and he has the correct rank number 1
etc? In the "Rating system" tab I have chosen "None" (individual starting
times include ratings). I have tried many "Race scoring" alternatives with
no success. One of the selections may lead to all competitors receiving rank
1. What is a practical solution or trick to manage that?

3.I have understood that the rating method of SW is based on to one
boat-specific correction factor (c = r *e). The commonly used ORC Club
rating method needs two boat specific factors r1 and r2. What is a practical
method to manage this rule (c = r1 * e - r2 * d)? A correct answer is not
"Don't use it"
The practical solution could be: Start times, Finish times and Sail numbers
from SW to Excel, calculation of Corrected times and "start specific rating
values" (r = corrected time/elapsed time), writing results back to SW using
sail numbers for matching. (This "start specific rating" guaranties that
"Rescore" now correctly calculates corrected times for these ORC boats.) It
seems to me that SWPH Excel (almost) does that, but I don't understood how I
should define the link correctly for this purpose?
What is "Sailwave ID" in SWPH Excel sheet? I could not find this column in
the SW spreadsheet.

Many thanks in advance
Heikki Kosonen

[Sailwave]

Heikki,

1. Agree here and it is something I found myself in the past (and had forgotten) but was reminded of last week when I wanted to do a similar thing. I personally have exported the competitor info into excel (You can do this with the Export to Clipboard and paste into Excel or you can use the SWCList program[see posting a few days ago] to create a .csv file and open it with Excel) merge the new info in Excel and import it into Sailwave. But agree this won’t work if you have results already entered. I’ve made a note to add it to my todo list.

2. Pursuit races. Huw and I were discussing this last week and it is another item that I have added to the the todo list to make it easier but it is possible as it is. I think there have been several possibilities already posted. One I can add is the use of the NHC external mode - you can use this to populate a spread sheet with the competitors and calculate the start times - a sample spreadsheet can be downloaded from HERE you can modify the template to use your own rules for rounding to what ever you use in your club - Round to the nearest Minute or 30 seconds for starts is common.

I suggest you store the template in a subdirectory of your personal template folder named pursuit something like C:\Users\Public\Documents\Sailwave\Templates\Pursuit The File should be named SWNHC3.xls and then set your Global Options - Folders - My Template files to point to the location e.g. C:\Users\Public\Documents\Sailwave\Templates\Pursuit This way you can still keep the standard SWNHC3.xls in your normal Templates folder.

You can enter the Target race time into the spreadsheet and the required finish time.

This sample takes the mean of the boats in the series to calculate the times so some will finish earlier and some later. Its just an idea that some may wish to develop further.

3. Sailwave ID is used by SWPH and SWHelper to store the unique ID (Handle for the programmers) of the competitor so even if the spreadsheet gets sorted or the Sail number changes it knows which competitor to apply the data to when it writes back data to Sailwave.

Jon

···

Jon Eskdale
Sailwave

03333 443377

07976 709777

On 8 April 2013 23:11, Art Engel artengel123@earthlink.net wrote:

Rob,

I just wrote Heikki to say I couldn’t figure this out!!

So – you put all boats into one class, define the same start time for
all boats in the class and use [c=(60r)+e] as a custom rating system,
where r is the “start delay” in minutes and so 60r is the “start delay”
in seconds. Presumably, your “start time” is the start time for the
first boat and that boat has an r of zero.

If I understand, you use Elapsed times as input to SW. So, presumably
you enter Finish times into a spreadsheet that then calculates the
Elapsed times and you then enter the calculated Elapsed times into SW.
So, when you print out results your “Corrected times” are in fact
showing the Finish times.

Hmmm. I think its kind of six-of-one vs half-dozen-of-the-other. While I
think I would prefer to have Finish times called “Corrected” rather than
“Elapsed,” I don’t like the extra step of having the RC convert recorded
Finish times into Elapsed times. Presumably, you make that easy by
having Excel output a CSV that can be imported to SW. However, if you
were to manually enter the resulting Elapsed times into SW that would
make one more step where input errors might occur. Plus, importing
doesn’t always seem to go as smoothly as it should.

Still, I’m back to considering whether to use SW for the one “inverted
start” race we do each year. I think we might use the “Corrected =
Finish” method as opposed to the “Elapsed = Finish” method. That way
Elapsed times could be shown automatically and the only thing would be
to edit the column heading from “Corrected” to “Finish.”

Art

On 4/8/2013 1:56 PM, Rob Morton wrote:

Heikki,

I am using SW for our dingy handicap starts (pursuit races).

We have some boats starting at zero, and others starting at 32, that is 32

minutes after the first boat started.

I have made the rating for a boat, their handicap in minutes.

I use elapsed time from when that boat started and use the scoring formula

of (c=60*r+e) to document times. It seems to work. The only problem is

trying to guess the handicaps, so all boats finish close to each other, and

that is very difficult as the different boats perform relatively differently

in different conditions.

I cannot help with your question 1 or 3.

Regards,

Rob

Rob Morton

Pambula NSW Australia

From: sailwave@yahoogroups.com [mailto:sailwave@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf

Of Malcolm Osborne

Sent: Tuesday, 9 April 2013 1:05

To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [sailwave] Beginner needs help

Heikki,

A partial answer, hopefully others will also contribute:

1. SW only permits one row per competitor. Additional data would have to be

accomodated in additional columns on the same row.

2. In a pursuit race, competitors can be scored simply by finishing order (

1,2, 3, etc) There is no need for a calculation - that has been done by the

staggered starting time.

regards,

Malcolm Osborne

Sedgefield South Africa

On 2013/04/08 15:41, hkosonen wrote:

Hi,

I am a new SW user. Our sailing club in Finland organizes many races for

keelboats. The biggest is a ranked series of 12 races during the season from

May to September (a total of 100 boats) and an ocean race at night over the

Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia with many rating systems

(200 boats). We are thinking of changing the calculation and publishing of

the results from Excel to a more robust platform.

I have studied SW actively during the last two weeks and recalulated some of

our last seasons competitions using SW. My first impression: SW is excellant

software.

There are some features what are not clear to me. I am sure that experienced

users have solutions to my problems or practical solutions for missing (or

unknown for me) features of SW.

1.I have created basic data for competitors (skipper name, sail number, boat

type, boat name etc) using “Import competitors using CSV”. I want later to

complete the data of existing competitors (ratings, skippers’ emails etc)

using the same method, with a matching column, e.g. Sail number. The result

is a new row on a spreadsheet, and not updating the already existing

competitor row. How should I do that correctly?

2.I have read old SUG messages. SW does not support the calculation of

starting times for a pursuit starting system. No problem. Calculation can be

made in Excel and moved to Start time in SW using “Import results from CSV”

(Finish time column cannot be omitted, 00:00:00 works?). My problem is

rating and scoring. What should I select on the “Race scoring” tab so that

the shortest elapsed time is a winner and he has the correct rank number 1

etc? In the “Rating system” tab I have chosen “None” (individual starting

times include ratings). I have tried many “Race scoring” alternatives with

no success. One of the selections may lead to all competitors receiving rank

1. What is a practical solution or trick to manage that?

3.I have understood that the rating method of SW is based on to one

boat-specific correction factor (c = r *e). The commonly used ORC Club

rating method needs two boat specific factors r1 and r2. What is a practical

method to manage this rule (c = r1 * e - r2 * d)? A correct answer is not

“Don’t use it”

The practical solution could be: Start times, Finish times and Sail numbers

from SW to Excel, calculation of Corrected times and "start specific rating

values" (r = corrected time/elapsed time), writing results back to SW using

sail numbers for matching. (This “start specific rating” guaranties that

“Rescore” now correctly calculates corrected times for these ORC boats.) It

seems to me that SWPH Excel (almost) does that, but I don’t understood how I

should define the link correctly for this purpose?

What is “Sailwave ID” in SWPH Excel sheet? I could not find this column in

the SW spreadsheet.

Many thanks in advance

Heikki Kosonen

[Sailwave]

Hi Art,

Re SOME IMPROVEMENTS

I was thinking exactly the same recently.

Jon

···

Jon Eskdale
Sailwave

03333 443377

07976 709777

On 8 April 2013 22:35, Art Engel artengel123@earthlink.net wrote:

Malcolm,

1. I think you might have misunderstood what Heikki was asking. I
   believe we recently ran into exactly the same problem. SW set up
   initially. After a race we realized that we had forgotten to include one
   column so we attempted to import the additional data as a new column for
   existing competitors. SW ignored the existing competitors (even though
   sail numbers were the same) and put the additional info as new
   competitors (new rows in SW).

I believe Heikki’s question was: Is there a way to update the info for
competitors by adding new columns for each competitor?

The workaround we used was to delete all the competitors and all the
results and then re-import the competitors from CSV using ALL the
correct columns this time. Then we re-imported the finish results from
CSV. It didn’t take that long because we had originally imported finish
times from CSV and it was just a matter of editing the competitors CSV
file in Excel before reimporting. If you manually input results you
probably could export and then re-import.

2. Just last week someone suggested the method Heikki used for pursuit
   races. Choosing “None” should work, according to that person.

However, having just tested this out - it doesn’t work. Choosing “None”
for scoring uses ELAPSED times when what you want is to score using
FINISH times. I don’t think that is an option. The only way to do this
would be to leave the starting time blank, put all the boats into one
class and then enter finish times, which SW will think are elapsed
times. The problem with that is the published results then show your
finish times with the title “Elapsed” and shows a Starting Time of
“00:00:00” for all the boats, which obviously isn’t correct.

When SW was originally designed I believe it was based on at TCF-type
scoring system so races are ALWAYS scored using elapsed times. Other
systems (such as PHRF in the US) can use finish times just as easily as
elapsed times but using finish times to score wasn’t contemplated so
isn’t an option. When the person wrote last week to say that SW could do
pursuit-type races I made a note because my club does one of these each
year and I wanted to switch over to SW. Now, however, I think we (and
you) are going to have to stick with another solution for the immediate
future.

Jon & Colin - Pursuit races could perhaps be handled roughly with two
changes. 1 – Make printing ELAPSED times an option rather than
mandatory. That would solve the printing of results in the columns. [For
a pursuit race one would print the FINISH times rather than the ELAPSED
times.] 2 – Then, allow the starting time to be repressed when
publishing. In fact, I think it would be helpful if each individual item
in the “caption” for a race table could be suppressed. A workaround
might be to include each individual item in its own class. Then one
could hide individual items using CSS, although obviously it would be
better if the info simply wasn’t in the HTML file at all.

3. You can use an A and B when you create your own custom formula. Could
   you do a custom formula with r1 as A and r2 as B? I believe the ORC
   system is similar to the IMS performance line scoring system, which is
   also the same as the US Americap II and ORR performance line scoring.

SOME IMPROVEMENTS
I note that the majority of the “Scoring Systems” in SW are the same
formula of “c=e*r.” The only difference is the Name. Personally, I’d be
inclined to combine all of those into one and make the name
user-defined. Then, I should think you would definitely want more than
one “custom” system since I can think of at least two that we commonly
use (and we could have both in the same event). Plus, the custom systems
ought to have a user-defined name so the competitor can know which one
is being used. Finally, the “Rating system” is displayed on Series
results, which merely summarizes race results. It is the race results
where the racing system is relevant. So, the “Rating system” probably
should be moved to be part of the racecaption line rather than the
summarycaption line.

Art

On 4/8/2013 8:05 AM, Malcolm Osborne wrote:

Heikki,

A partial answer, hopefully others will also contribute:

1. SW only permits one row per competitor. Additional data would have to

be accomodated in additional columns on the same row.

2. In a pursuit race, competitors can be scored simply by finishing

order ( 1,2, 3, etc) There is no need for a calculation - that has been

done by the staggered starting time.

regards,

Malcolm Osborne

Sedgefield South Africa

On 2013/04/08 15:41, hkosonen wrote:

Hi,

I am a new SW user. Our sailing club in Finland organizes many races

for keelboats. The biggest is a ranked series of 12 races during the

season from May to September (a total of 100 boats) and an ocean race

at night over the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia

with many rating systems (200 boats). We are thinking of changing the

calculation and publishing of the results from Excel to a more robust

platform.

I have studied SW actively during the last two weeks and recalulated

some of our last seasons competitions using SW. My first impression:

SW is excellant software.

There are some features what are not clear to me. I am sure that

experienced users have solutions to my problems or practical solutions

for missing (or unknown for me) features of SW.

1.I have created basic data for competitors (skipper name, sail

number, boat type, boat name etc) using "Import competitors using

CSV". I want later to complete the data of existing competitors

(ratings, skippers’ emails etc) using the same method, with a matching

column, e.g. Sail number. The result is a new row on a spreadsheet,

and not updating the already existing competitor row. How should I do

that correctly?

2.I have read old SUG messages. SW does not support the calculation of

starting times for a pursuit starting system. No problem. Calculation

can be made in Excel and moved to Start time in SW using "Import

results from CSV" (Finish time column cannot be omitted, 00:00:00

works?). My problem is rating and scoring. What should I select on the

“Race scoring” tab so that the shortest elapsed time is a winner and

he has the correct rank number 1 etc? In the “Rating system” tab I

have chosen “None” (individual starting times include ratings). I have

tried many “Race scoring” alternatives with no success. One of the

selections may lead to all competitors receiving rank 1. What is a

practical solution or trick to manage that?

3.I have understood that the rating method of SW is based on to one

boat-specific correction factor (c = r *e). The commonly used ORC Club

rating method needs two boat specific factors r1 and r2. What is a

practical method to manage this rule (c = r1 * e – r2 * d)? A correct
answer is not “Don’t use it”

The practical solution could be: Start times, Finish times and Sail

numbers from SW to Excel, calculation of Corrected times and "start

specific rating values" (r = corrected time/elapsed time), writing

results back to SW using sail numbers for matching. (This "start

specific rating" guaranties that “Rescore” now correctly calculates

corrected times for these ORC boats.) It seems to me that SWPH Excel

(almost) does that, but I don’t understood how I should define the

link correctly for this purpose?

What is “Sailwave ID” in SWPH Excel sheet? I could not find this

column in the SW spreadsheet.

Many thanks in advance

Heikki Kosonen

[Rob_Morton]

Art,

I use the formula (c=60*r+e).

The start time for the competitors vary, depending on their handicap, so as is what happens, the starts are staggered.

The start times noted in SW are the times that each boat started.

The corrected time is equal to the finish time, the elapsed time is just that, the time it took for that boat to sail the course.

I do not import from excel

I use the sail number wizard to input the results, using the start time – finish time system

I hope that makes sense.

Rob Morton

Pambula NSW Australia

···

From: sailwave@yahoogroups.com [mailto:sailwave@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Art Engel
Sent: Tuesday, 9 April 2013 8:12
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [sailwave] Beginner needs help

Rob,

I just wrote Heikki to say I couldn’t figure this out!!

So – you put all boats into one class, define the same start time for
all boats in the class and use [c=(60r)+e] as a custom rating system,
where r is the “start delay” in minutes and so 60r is the “start delay”
in seconds. Presumably, your “start time” is the start time for the
first boat and that boat has an r of zero.

If I understand, you use Elapsed times as input to SW. So, presumably
you enter Finish times into a spreadsheet that then calculates the
Elapsed times and you then enter the calculated Elapsed times into SW.
So, when you print out results your “Corrected times” are in fact
showing the Finish times.

Hmmm. I think its kind of six-of-one vs half-dozen-of-the-other. While I
think I would prefer to have Finish times called “Corrected” rather than
“Elapsed,” I don’t like the extra step of having the RC convert recorded
Finish times into Elapsed times. Presumably, you make that easy by
having Excel output a CSV that can be imported to SW. However, if you
were to manually enter the resulting Elapsed times into SW that would
make one more step where input errors might occur. Plus, importing
doesn’t always seem to go as smoothly as it should.

Still, I’m back to considering whether to use SW for the one “inverted
start” race we do each year. I think we might use the “Corrected =
Finish” method as opposed to the “Elapsed = Finish” method. That way
Elapsed times could be shown automatically and the only thing would be
to edit the column heading from “Corrected” to “Finish.”

Art

On 4/8/2013 1:56 PM, Rob Morton wrote:

Heikki,

I am using SW for our dingy handicap starts (pursuit races).

We have some boats starting at zero, and others starting at 32, that is 32
minutes after the first boat started.

I have made the rating for a boat, their handicap in minutes.

I use elapsed time from when that boat started and use the scoring formula
of (c=60*r+e) to document times. It seems to work. The only problem is
trying to guess the handicaps, so all boats finish close to each other, and
that is very difficult as the different boats perform relatively differently
in different conditions.

I cannot help with your question 1 or 3.

Regards,

Rob

Rob Morton

Pambula NSW Australia

From: sailwave@yahoogroups.com [mailto:sailwave@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Malcolm Osborne
Sent: Tuesday, 9 April 2013 1:05
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [sailwave] Beginner needs help

Heikki,

A partial answer, hopefully others will also contribute:

1. SW only permits one row per competitor. Additional data would have to be
   accomodated in additional columns on the same row.

2. In a pursuit race, competitors can be scored simply by finishing order (
   1,2, 3, etc) There is no need for a calculation - that has been done by the
   staggered starting time.

regards,
Malcolm Osborne
Sedgefield South Africa

On 2013/04/08 15:41, hkosonen wrote:

Hi,

I am a new SW user. Our sailing club in Finland organizes many races for
keelboats. The biggest is a ranked series of 12 races during the season from
May to September (a total of 100 boats) and an ocean race at night over the
Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia with many rating systems
(200 boats). We are thinking of changing the calculation and publishing of
the results from Excel to a more robust platform.

I have studied SW actively during the last two weeks and recalulated some of
our last seasons competitions using SW. My first impression: SW is excellant
software.

There are some features what are not clear to me. I am sure that experienced
users have solutions to my problems or practical solutions for missing (or
unknown for me) features of SW.

1.I have created basic data for competitors (skipper name, sail number, boat
type, boat name etc) using “Import competitors using CSV”. I want later to
complete the data of existing competitors (ratings, skippers’ emails etc)
using the same method, with a matching column, e.g. Sail number. The result
is a new row on a spreadsheet, and not updating the already existing
competitor row. How should I do that correctly?

2.I have read old SUG messages. SW does not support the calculation of
starting times for a pursuit starting system. No problem. Calculation can be
made in Excel and moved to Start time in SW using “Import results from CSV”
(Finish time column cannot be omitted, 00:00:00 works?). My problem is
rating and scoring. What should I select on the “Race scoring” tab so that
the shortest elapsed time is a winner and he has the correct rank number 1
etc? In the “Rating system” tab I have chosen “None” (individual starting
times include ratings). I have tried many “Race scoring” alternatives with
no success. One of the selections may lead to all competitors receiving rank

1. What is a practical solution or trick to manage that?

3.I have understood that the rating method of SW is based on to one
boat-specific correction factor (c = r *e). The commonly used ORC Club
rating method needs two boat specific factors r1 and r2. What is a practical
method to manage this rule (c = r1 * e - r2 * d)? A correct answer is not
“Don’t use it”
The practical solution could be: Start times, Finish times and Sail numbers
from SW to Excel, calculation of Corrected times and “start specific rating
values” (r = corrected time/elapsed time), writing results back to SW using
sail numbers for matching. (This “start specific rating” guaranties that
“Rescore” now correctly calculates corrected times for these ORC boats.) It
seems to me that SWPH Excel (almost) does that, but I don’t understood how I
should define the link correctly for this purpose?
What is “Sailwave ID” in SWPH Excel sheet? I could not find this column in
the SW spreadsheet.

Many thanks in advance
Heikki Kosonen

[hkosonen]

Hi,

Art and Rob, thank you for your answers to the pursuit starting system.

First off all: Communication usually fails, except by accident. I made a fatal typing error in my question 2. I wrote Elapsed time but I mean Finish time. Once again:

1) Every boat has its own individual Starting time based on its rating. I entered Starting times from csv to SW (Finish time 00:00:00 is only a trick, because Import resutt from csv does not work without this column). Starting times are rounded to the nearest 30 seconds. All this is carried out a few days before the start.
2) The first boat over the finish line is the winner and he will get rank number 1 etc. Only the Finish time is important.

My problem is that after calculation, the boats are not in correct order with correct rank number based on Finish time.
In our case important information in the resut list is rank number and Finish time (+ boat and skipper etc). Nice to know information is Starting time, Elapsed time, Rating and Average speed.

Your suggested formula (60*r)+e is a good idea.
I tested it and I stored "delay r" as Default rate in the boat data. Now I lose the original r for a boat. I have seen in the Edit result tab three other ratings: Previous race rating, Rating for this race and Race rating. I don't understood how to use and manage these extra ratings. Can I use these for delay purpose?
  
Heikki

···

--- In sailwave@yahoogroups.com, "Rob Morton" <robmorton@...> wrote:

Art,

I use the formula (c=60*r+e).

The start time for the competitors vary, depending on their handicap, so as
is what happens, the starts are staggered.

The start times noted in SW are the times that each boat started.

The corrected time is equal to the finish time, the elapsed time is just
that, the time it took for that boat to sail the course.

I do not import from excel

I use the sail number wizard to input the results, using the start time -
finish time system

I hope that makes sense.

Rob Morton

Pambula NSW Australia

From: sailwave@yahoogroups.com [mailto:sailwave@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Art Engel
Sent: Tuesday, 9 April 2013 8:12
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [sailwave] Beginner needs help
  
Rob,

I just wrote Heikki to say I couldn't figure this out!!

So -- you put all boats into one class, define the same start time for
all boats in the class and use [c=(60*r)+e] as a custom rating system,
where r is the "start delay" in minutes and so 60*r is the "start delay"
in seconds. Presumably, your "start time" is the start time for the
first boat and that boat has an r of zero.

If I understand, you use Elapsed times as input to SW. So, presumably
you enter Finish times into a spreadsheet that then calculates the
Elapsed times and you then enter the calculated Elapsed times into SW.
So, when you print out results your "Corrected times" are in fact
showing the Finish times.

Hmmm. I think its kind of six-of-one vs half-dozen-of-the-other. While I
think I would prefer to have Finish times called "Corrected" rather than
"Elapsed," I don't like the extra step of having the RC convert recorded
Finish times into Elapsed times. Presumably, you make that easy by
having Excel output a CSV that can be imported to SW. However, if you
were to manually enter the resulting Elapsed times into SW that would
make one more step where input errors might occur. Plus, importing
doesn't always seem to go as smoothly as it should.

Still, I'm back to considering whether to use SW for the one "inverted
start" race we do each year. I think we might use the "Corrected =
Finish" method as opposed to the "Elapsed = Finish" method. That way
Elapsed times could be shown automatically and the only thing would be
to edit the column heading from "Corrected" to "Finish."

Art

On 4/8/2013 1:56 PM, Rob Morton wrote:
> Heikki,
>
>
>
> I am using SW for our dingy handicap starts (pursuit races).
>
> We have some boats starting at zero, and others starting at 32, that is 32
> minutes after the first boat started.
>
> I have made the rating for a boat, their handicap in minutes.
>
>
>
> I use elapsed time from when that boat started and use the scoring formula
> of (c=60*r+e) to document times. It seems to work. The only problem is
> trying to guess the handicaps, so all boats finish close to each other,
and
> that is very difficult as the different boats perform relatively
differently
> in different conditions.

> I cannot help with your question 1 or 3.

> Regards,
> Rob
>
> Rob Morton
>
> Pambula NSW Australia
>
> From: sailwave@yahoogroups.com <mailto:sailwave%40yahoogroups.com>
[mailto:sailwave@yahoogroups.com <mailto:sailwave%40yahoogroups.com> ] On
Behalf
> Of Malcolm Osborne
> Sent: Tuesday, 9 April 2013 1:05
> To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com <mailto:sailwave%40yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: Re: [sailwave] Beginner needs help
>
> Heikki,
>
> A partial answer, hopefully others will also contribute:
>
> 1. SW only permits one row per competitor. Additional data would have to
be
> accomodated in additional columns on the same row.
>
> 2. In a pursuit race, competitors can be scored simply by finishing order
(
> 1,2, 3, etc) There is no need for a calculation - that has been done by
the
> staggered starting time.
>
>
>
>
> regards,
> Malcolm Osborne
> Sedgefield South Africa
>
>
> On 2013/04/08 15:41, hkosonen wrote:
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I am a new SW user. Our sailing club in Finland organizes many races for
> keelboats. The biggest is a ranked series of 12 races during the season
from
> May to September (a total of 100 boats) and an ocean race at night over
the
> Gulf of Finland from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia with many rating
systems
> (200 boats). We are thinking of changing the calculation and publishing of
> the results from Excel to a more robust platform.
>
> I have studied SW actively during the last two weeks and recalulated some
of
> our last seasons competitions using SW. My first impression: SW is
excellant
> software.
>
> There are some features what are not clear to me. I am sure that
experienced
> users have solutions to my problems or practical solutions for missing (or
> unknown for me) features of SW.
>
> 1.I have created basic data for competitors (skipper name, sail number,
boat
> type, boat name etc) using "Import competitors using CSV". I want later to
> complete the data of existing competitors (ratings, skippers' emails etc)
> using the same method, with a matching column, e.g. Sail number. The
result
> is a new row on a spreadsheet, and not updating the already existing
> competitor row. How should I do that correctly?
>
> 2.I have read old SUG messages. SW does not support the calculation of
> starting times for a pursuit starting system. No problem. Calculation can
be
> made in Excel and moved to Start time in SW using "Import results from
CSV"
> (Finish time column cannot be omitted, 00:00:00 works?). My problem is
> rating and scoring. What should I select on the "Race scoring" tab so that
> the shortest elapsed time is a winner and he has the correct rank number 1
> etc? In the "Rating system" tab I have chosen "None" (individual starting
> times include ratings). I have tried many "Race scoring" alternatives with
> no success. One of the selections may lead to all competitors receiving
rank
> 1. What is a practical solution or trick to manage that?
>
> 3.I have understood that the rating method of SW is based on to one
> boat-specific correction factor (c = r *e). The commonly used ORC Club
> rating method needs two boat specific factors r1 and r2. What is a
practical
> method to manage this rule (c = r1 * e - r2 * d)? A correct answer is not
> "Don't use it"
> The practical solution could be: Start times, Finish times and Sail
numbers
> from SW to Excel, calculation of Corrected times and "start specific
rating
> values" (r = corrected time/elapsed time), writing results back to SW
using
> sail numbers for matching. (This "start specific rating" guaranties that
> "Rescore" now correctly calculates corrected times for these ORC boats.)
It
> seems to me that SWPH Excel (almost) does that, but I don't understood how
I
> should define the link correctly for this purpose?
> What is "Sailwave ID" in SWPH Excel sheet? I could not find this column in
> the SW spreadsheet.
>
> Many thanks in advance
> Heikki Kosonen
>
>
>
>
>
>