If you are going control by speed it cannot be average speed, it has to be top speed,because you are computing time against distance of the course
instead of time against distance traveled.
I.E- 3-p4 boats racing 5 mile, 4 corner course. boat A has top speed of 80 mph racing hard tight on every pin. boat B has a top speed of 90 racing outside boat A ,going slow in corners but catching up in the [90mph][straight,sandbagging.Boat C has a top speed of 95 and races far outside the other 2 boats so far, that he actually traveling 5.2 miles per lap and at the end of 5 laps instead 25 miles boat C has traveled 26 miles .At the finish boat C catches the other two boats wins by a foot,boat B and C are dead even .All three boats average speed are between 74.8and 74.9 .In reality boat B was exceeding his top end of 80 mph ,also ran slightly outside boat A so should have a higher average speed should DQ. Boat C was even worse, the actual average speed the boat ran was 83, because he ran so far outside his time against distance was not acurate and they based his time against 25 miles instead of the 26 miles he traveled,should DQ,also had more top end than both the other boats. The class has an average speed of 75 and top speed of 80.A -ran agreat race ,should have Won ,B,C should DQ .

I know I know..its pricey...but thats what we need. and the public can access real time lap speeds via the internet.

I also noticed that the detection loop must be embedded in the track. So, obviously, this will not work for marine applications

we would need transmitters and receivers instead of transponders and detection loops.

I like that!!!

I spent a lot of time looking into a solution for OPA racing. It's not so much price as it just doesn't exist. Race cars have it because sensors are in the track. We can't do that because everything is floating around. GPS won't work because I want the system to show boats going around the buoys too.

So I did finally find something, it's for the Security industry. It's basically a reader system that works for great distances. A transmitter tag goes on each hull and then someone on each turn boat need to hold a flat antenna always facing the turn buoy. It can read up to 300 feet.

Then ya gotta tie in all the data from the turn boats and turn it into a readable document that shows times. The software part is easy as long as it's spec'd out right from the start.

If it was done wirelessly, and the software was sophisticated enough, it could be put in the web.

Is that possible with still having the prop calculation enforced?

One of the guys on my rescue team actually wrote a plotter program based off of GPS readings, and charts downloaded from the NOAA website. It showed us going aroung the Cleveland breakwall within 20 ft of accuracy, which is a lot in racing I know, but that was relative to a stationary object, the boats relative position to each other would be accurate.

The software part being easy, you have never written software before have you (I do it for a living)? It would depend on how the data is sent from the ID tags, as well as how to interpret the data. then you have to do the math involved to plot it all for the web(trigonometry here we come).

I have actually written scoring software for offshore racing (almost finished after 2 years of working on it a little bit at a time). If you could capture the moment in time that a boat crossed S/F, the race could actually score itself. It gives you lap times, and avg lap speed, as well as who is in what place throughout the race. The turn boat scorers would then only be needed to assess penalties at the turns. It still doesn't answer the problem of Boat C breaking out, going further, and still winning, but hopefully the prop calc would take care of that.

Of course a GPS, even with a dropout, would still have the distance travelled, and you have the time for each boat to complete the race. But that just gets complicated.

Look at the tracking program that nextel phones has.

Their business solution can track all the info you want and display on a computer screen.

Mike Sadlon

That is exactly what I was hoping to accomplish with the video.

The other rules in place should be able to keep the boats from being 10 to 15 mph per hour faster than they should be...

Can sandbagging occur? Not if you look at each lap time. Mainly because once you fall off the pace for one lap, and you suddenly have a much faster speed in the following lap, there is a good chance you will be breaking out.

Remember, this is "Bracket Restricted Racing"

It's not about who can get to the finish line first the fastest, but who can get there 1st and be the closest to the minimum allowed amount of time or max speed in total or individual lap times or speeds..

I just feel the video equipment would cost a lot less then say X # amount of very good GPS units.

Whatever you choose, let's just hope it all remains fair competition....

what's going on with the SOB class is there still going to be a class for them in opa. from what size to what size can the boat be. how about max speeds. thanks in advance

jr mike

What I meant was that if you can electroincally capture the crossing of the S/F point, it could be fed into the scoring program, and then the race scores itself without having to be looked at from a video and written down. It would be captured in the database, and from there the possibilities are endless (post in real time to a website, etc).

Video would certainly be cheaper, but the software would work without any capture device. All you need is a ten-key USB for the laptop, then just enter the numbers as they cross (kinda like now, but with an up to date program).

Keep thinking of the ideas, they are all worth looking into