Discussion: Virtual Meet Packet

The virtual meet packet is available at the event website.

Print-at-home or save-a-tree and download it to a smartphone. Direct link to Meet Packet. Only a few printed copies will be floating around the event (registration, start, etc).

There is no packet pick-up and no race/bib numbers. See the Registrar on-site if you owe money or need to sign a waiver, as indicated on the EventReg Competitor List. Start crew will not allow you to start if these are not cleared up.

Speaking of Start Times. They are coming soon, as the Registrar works to accommodate our volunteers, start time requests, etc. They will be in EventReg and arrive as an auto-generated EventReg email.

Model / Locator Map Direct Link. Professionally printed versions of the model / locator map will be available at the (unmanned) park tollbooth (Fri) and in/around Registration Saturday, which you will drive right by.

Bring and use your SI-Air. Controls will be in beacon mode.

Classic SI-cards (aka fingersticks, thumbsticks, dibblers, etc) and pCards will work as usual.

O-vendor(s) on site--it's always a good time to upgrade your O-kit.

If you own and wish to use an SI Air, but registered using a non-Air card, contact the Event Registrar so records can be updated. The start and results crews will thank you!!

I don't recall specifically for Bigelow Hollow, but as I have been trail running in the general area for decades, cell reception down in many of the nearby hollows is pretty sketchy and you usually need to be up on a ridge to get good signal. So you may want to make sure you download the important stuff rather than rely on getting good signal once in the park...

Our anecdotal data:

AT&T: Decent all along the Bigelow Hollow Park Rd.
Verizon: Non-existent in the south; decent in the north. So no signal at Day 1 Start, very weak Signal at Day 1 Finish / Day 2 Start, very good at Day 2 Finish.

Sprint & TMobile: Untested

Yay for virtual meet packets!!!

Very comprehensive and helpful information.
Don't waste time inspecting boulder-like cliffs.

Sat courses are in Livelox. https://www.livelox.com/Events/Show/85459/Day-1-US...

Results?

The green and brown courses are not showing up on the age group results

How about those courses!
Just from what I can see "on paper", these look like some of the best I've seen lately, with great legs, but with very few controls, by modern standards, getting the most out of the terrain, especially with route choice, and letting multiple courses share the best stuff.

The event view of the results (Sat): https://www.newenglandorienteering.org/QRienteerin...

Splits on AP.

Control 126 was giving some very strange times resulting in negative splits for some early starters, which is why there are a few people with limited split data by valid results.

Looks like there was a problem on M-Brown where the course got switched from Brown-Y to Brown-X, but word didn't get put about that such that the majority of runners went out with Brown-Y maps and got listed as mispunched.

May be a results computer issue instead? I'll query the powers that be. M-Brown has always been on Brown X for this event, but I understand something got scrambled with the EventReg file during the assignment of starts. Not sure if it overwrote categories for M-Brown or if we had it set wrong to begin with, but I suspect that's where the issue is. Thanks for the heads up.

Course assignment changes for M/F-65 are here:
https://www.newenglandorienteering.org/2022masters...

The changes are in the meet notes, listed at the call-up and on map boxes. Everyone seems to have handled that quite well, thanks!

Sunday courses now also on Livelox for GPS replay: https://www.livelox.com/Events/Show/85483

Stephen (one of the affected people) tells me that at the start today (Sunday), M-Brown was listed as being on Brown-Y. M-Brown is definitely listed as being on Brown-Y in the print-at-home meet packet, as well as on the page linked above with the M/F-65 changes (and I'm pretty sure it was that way when I signed him up). In any case, if the people who ran Brown-Y get listed as such, rather than as DNF on Brown-X, I think they'll be satisfied.

Well, we'll have to re-upload anyway...for whatever reason, AP didn't register the epunches to their owners. Stand by for updates once the event staff has a chance to recover from a busy weekend. ;-)

No worries, and thanks for an excellent event!

Yesterday, at the start, I was told that I was listed as Brown-Y, despite being on M65+ (and there not being any question on Saturday). Problem might only have been discovered because Bruce Moore -- who apparently changed from M60+ to M-Brown -- and I had the same start time.

I doubt EventReg had a role in the M-Brown confusion, since the registration list did not make a distinction between the X & Y versions of either Brown or Green.

Were the recreational and competitive versions of White, Yellow, and Orange identical? Both days?

I ask, because I noticed that some of the Canadian juniors -- Mahoney and Revells -- who were registered in rec classes, were in the competitive Orange results (and AP splits) for Saturday, but on Rec Orange for Sunday.

EDIT...
Recommendation from a veteran registrar: Do course splits -- or merges, if applicable -- in EventReg. From experience, I know it is as simple as renaming courses to be split (eg, Green to Green X), adding new courses (Green Y), and reassigning classes as applicable (from Green X to Green Y).

GuyO: Bruce Moore's Day 1 (moved from Green X M60 to M-Brown, and ran Brown X) is on our fix list.

W / Y / O rec and competitive courses were identical. Both days.

And, worth "mentioning in dispatches" are Julie Cleary and Eric Kemp, who both stopped competing to assist Sunday's injured runner. And, maybe more folks, unbeknownst to me. Thanks to all. It is a testament to our sport and participants that no one thinks twice about sacrificing their run to help someone who is injured.

Both continued on with respectable runs--particularly noteworthy given how much this can impact concentration and focus.

And, I know many others helped in ways big and small. Thanks to all.

Last report I had was a handful of stitches and a "return to duty" was the reward for a pretty good leg gash. Normally, I think our injured cadet would already have been in formation, to breakfast, and back in class before most of us even woke up this morning, but methinks they also have a holiday, so maybe a brief respite...

Seems that the splits from Sunday have appeared on Attackpoint, but the splits from Saturday don't seem to be there anymore.

We removed them because they weren't correctly associating with people's AP accounts.

We are also doing some splits clean-up (we had a control in the woods with the wrong time on it for about 30min--affected ~8 competitors...their overall times were right, but splits weren't)...we are fixing those, then plan to repost clean Sat splits.

I also wanted to mention Eric's sacrificing time during his run to help a seriously injured competitor. the reason I love this sport and its participants.

Thanks to NEOC and Jon personally for flawless organization! The event machine was well oiled and punctually run. The courses were thoughtful and worthy of a Championship, highlighting the most challenging terrain of the park with beautifully executed fine-navigation problems and well balanced long-choice legs. And the arena was set up to amply socialize, which Beatrice took full advantage of!

And the map was... precise. Kudos to the mapper for rigorously depicting the woods in their rocky glory. However I, as a Masters runner with a sudden onset of eyesight issues, certainly wish that all mappers discover the hidden beauties of the International Standard for Orienteering Maps. Doing so may greatly increase competitor enjoyment!

This may be a losing battle since ISOM/ISSprOM, as I keep finding out, are interpreted liberally at even the topmost competition level, and so both may go the way of 1:15,000 (unlikely) or continue to evolve. But for now they are what we have, and these Masters runners are, blessedly, who we still have. Great to see all the folks at the event and the anniversary dinner.

Anyone recognize this Toyota key? Found at the finish on Day 2.

One request from a new M65+...

When using a 1:7500 map scale, please use larger paper, so we get to see more of the terrain. This would prevent going "off the map" from being a bigger problem than it might otherwise become.

(Only asking after seeing a Yellow course map -- also printed at 1:7500 -- on 11"x17" paper.)

Yellow course was at 1:5000. It did not include any additional terrain.

The map framer's son has already provided that feedback, Charlie. ;-)

My maps at both WMOC 2022 and O-Ringen 2022, M45+ were 1:7,500. Similar feature density as Bigelow, some areas arguably more, some arguably less. All 8 forest maps were eminently readable and, for myself, would have been quite readable at 1:10,000 but perhaps not for others. These maps were verifiably ISOM.

The Bigelow map, offered at 1:7,500, would have had the same non-compliances as its 1:10,000 version. They could have been easier to spot and decipher but that's still overhead. ISOM is there for a reason and larger map scales are not a pathway to defeat it.

Some time ago I recall someone asking for an ISOMinator app that would suck in an OCAD and label all non-conformant (to first degree) objects. Maybe even to second degree. E.g. the length of a linear object (say a cliff) is easy to calculate and it can be straightforwardly reported, no rendering needed, even I can code that. Gaps between features, that's less straightforward, more coding necessary to render but can still be done by a computer-science major. If cliffs bend back upon themselves where the nominal length is over the minimum but the resultant space-configuration is a black blob, well that's higher art to detect, maybe we don't deal with that for now. Has someone created this ISOMinator yet?

According to this, 0CAD now provides: "The Check Legability function checks if your map meets the ISOM 2017 requirements."

By "additional terrain", i did not mean additional detail, I meant more of the terrain that was visible on the 1:10,000 maps.

I frame a lot of maps. By frame I mean show portions of a larger map. In the world of commercial printing, that gives you three standard sizes: Letter (8.5x11), Legal (8.5x14), and Tabloid (11x17). My go-to print shop told me that Legal size paper is currently unavailable--it'll be a cut-down from 11x17.

Framing correctly is not trivial. Take text/font as an example. For peripheral information (Scale, contour interval, map name, credits/copyright, etc) 16-point font on the 1:10,000 should be 16-point font on the 1:5,000 (not doubled to 32-point font). But, course information font must proportionally enlarge (by ISOM). The control numbers must be twice as large at 1:5,000 as 1:10,000 (trivial), but importantly, the control circles must enlarge--their diameter is set by ISOM (75m diameter footprint at all scales).

Terrain bound on a map is also important. Having a hard bound like a major road, river, etc is ideal. Next best is having a significant catching feature shown past the edge of any reasonable route choice. Third best is a major linear feature used on a reasonable route--this is the road/trail on the edge of the map that is a reasonable route choice.

Legends are particularly tricky. Say you have a nice 1:10,000 legend with 8-point font. When used on a 1:5,000 map, the legend symbols should be twice as large (ie match the map), but the font should stay 8-point.

For minor scale adjustments, say 15k to 10k or 10k to 7.5k, it's often ok to do a proportional enlargement of all: map & peripheral information. Who cares if the 8-point legend font becomes 12-point font? For triple (15k to 5k) or double (15k to 7.5k, or 10k to 5k) scale changes, this becomes troublesome.

All this is lead up to what I want to highlight. There is a trade-off in framing any map: scale, paper size, and peripheral information.

Interestingly, I felt worse going into the event about having to frame Day 2 W/Y/O onto 11x17 paper to fit the course & a legend. I am a firm believer in legends on non-advanced (Brown & above) courses. In my shadowing years, I watched my own kids struggle with maps that are just too large to handle well ("horse blankets").

I didn't worry too much about the close crop on Day 1 W/Y/O maps. Here's the Day1 Yellow that was a swing-and-a-miss. My son wandered off map on the vehicle track north of #7. Note that jumping to Legal paper (same width, just longer) would only have "fixed" the next-major-feature bounding trade-off on one of two sides (#3 or #7); it would take a Tabloid (11x17) horse blanket to do both.

GuyO: I am unclear on where to expand the Brown 1:7500 maps. Is a horse blanket justified?
BrownX Day 1
BrownX Day 2

All that being said, the maps and courses were worthy of a Masters Championship and it certainly made the trip worthwhile. Well done NEOC!

@cmpbllj: thanks for the hard work on a successful event. But I have to say the day 1 yellow map begs the question of why you wanted to use 1:5000. Kids on yellow have better eyes than some, and aren't reading all the point feature detail anyway. At 1:7500 or 1:10,000 you could fit a lot more area on a given paper size.

The brown maps look totally acceptable to me in terms of framing, but I'm maybe not the one to judge that.

I think the larger scale for White and Yellow maps may somehow be an extrapolation from the idea that we give big fat pencils and crayons to kids in kindergarten and first grade. But kids on White and Yellow aren't for the most part in that age range; Yellow is for young teenagers! They'd probably be fine with 1:15000.

(The Brown maps look fine to me as well; I guess you might be able to wander off to the south early on in either course if you really weren't paying attention.)

Constructive criticism happens as it should, I suppose. Maybe I'll even contribute some in a bit. Regardless, thanks for an excellent event.

The Brown X maps, including their framing, looked great to me. I very much appreciate the 1:7500 scale. And the 8 1/2 x 11 paper.
I guess if someone was *really* off course, it could have been an issue, but I didn't hear of anyone drifting off the map.

I've always assumed from this blurb in ISOM (and a similar one in ISSprOM) that there is some research that supports youngest age groups having enlarged scales. In contrast, I think we can safely accept (sans research findings) the larger scales for older age groups because of deteriorating vision--I can't read a thing without glasses anymore.

Younger age groups...larger scales. I suppose this is similar to young children's books having larger font--it's middle-school years (11 or 12yo, I think) before the font size has converged to normal adult size. But, as @jjcote points out, we are off by ages here: White is for <12yo, Yellow for <14yo.

"For older age groups where reading fine lines and small symbols may cause problems due to deteriorating vision, enlarged maps are recommended for all formats. Enlargement to the scale 1:10,000 is always recommended for the youngest age groups where the capacity of reading complex maps is not fully developed."

I applaud you for selecting larger scales for shorter courses. I also applaud you for not taking up room on the map paper for a legend.
Vision acuity is not directly proportional to age. It has never made sense to me that someone running in M21 would need to wear glasses to read a map while I didn't need to because when it rained the glass wearer was in deep trouble. (Well okay back in the 1970s one of the best Canadian orienteers was Bob Kaill. He wore glasses. I didn't wear glasses so when the weather was wet I had a much better chance of beating Bob. If the maps were 1:10000 or 1:7500 instead of 1:15000 perhaps my occasional advantage would have been wiped away.
So please event directors go as large as you are allowed and as gives you room to put on the best course for the participants . Leave off the map trimmings if necessary.

1:10000 for the young age groups seems entirely reasonable to me, but 1:5000 seems beyond what's needed.

Entirely depends on the terrain and the eyes., jj.
Also for young people and those learning to to read a map it should be like learning to read a book. You start with large print editions.
Other than getting more terrain on smaller pieces of paper there is absolutely no reason to go with those 1:15K, 1:20K even 1:25K scales we had in the 'good old days'.

GuyO: I am unclear on where to expand the Brown 1:7500 maps. Is a horse blanket justified?

I do not have detailed thoughts about this, other than to add as much terrain at 1:7500 as would fit 11x17, with the course appropriately placed.

I guess that, as a person who loves maps -- like most orienteers -- I like to have more map to look at -- not really while on the course, but while pondering it afterwards. Worth carrying a "horse blanket"? I can say "sure", but that's just me; I can understand the desire to carry and fold a more compact map.

My comment about running off a 1:7500 map, was more about my Long course experience in Quebec last month. While looking for a control close to the east edge of the map -- on which there was no road, trail, ... to serve as a clear boundary -- I was having a very difficult time relocating, and may very well have gone off that map. Being able to see the terrain east of that control might have helped. (I ended up bailing out by going west, until seeing a control I had already visited.)

Vision acuity is not directly proportional to age

To a large extent it is correlated, as far as short distance vision goes. There are certainly variations for individuals (some people need reading glasses from a very young age), but most people start losing the ability to focus up close as they age. The medical term for farsightedness is "presbyopia", which translates from Latin as "old person's vision". The problem is that the lens in the eye gradually hardens as you get older, and can no longer be pulled into the shape needed for up-close focusing. People who have perfect vision tend to start needing reading glasses when they get to be around 50; nearsighted people may still be able to focus up close as they get older but can't read a map through their corrective lenses for distance any more. Young people in general don't have this problem, they can look at a map up close and see all the detail wiithout the need for a magnifier. As I said, it's reasonable to have a 1:10000 map for younger orienteers, or maybe even 1:7500, but a cartoonish 1:5000 for teenagers is not necessary.

It's not just about vision where kids are concerned (or perhaps any new orienteer). It's also a question what supports people learning a new "alphabet" - in this case, symbols. A quick look through research on people learning to read and font size seems to support the generalization that larger letters are necessary for some, and not harmful to those who don't need it.

Without digging into this deeply, my suspicion is that this is a matter of training the brain to focus attention on characteristics that differentiate between similar symbols - for example, a b and a d when looking at our alphabet. In orienteering terms, think of a small cliff w/o tags and a boulder. One has corners, one is rounded, but both may appear quite similar - a small, black "something." Depending on the scale of the map, it may be hard to see them as different symbols unless you know to look for that difference.

I wonder what scale they use at O-Ringen for young orienteers? One would imagine the organizers probably have more experience with this question than most.

p. 75 of https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/66622247/o-... says O-Ringen 2022 used 1:7500 for classes up to -14, 1:10,000 for -16; 1:15,000 for long and 1:10,000 for middle for -18 to 21, 1:10,000 for 35 and 40, and 1:7500 for 45 and up.

... although at O-Ringen H10 already do something that would be a plausible yellow course in the US, so maybe this is not quite the right comparison.

White and Yellow courses don't rely on a lot of fancy symbols, of course. A typical White course in the US could be done using a map that shows nothing but trails. That would be far from ideal, but we don't have White courses picking out a particular rock feature in a busy area. Rather than just blowing the map up, a lot of White and Yellow runners would probably have an easier time if we left off a lot of the symbols that only become important on advanced courses (especially in this era of overmapping).

I wonder what scale they use at O-Ringen for young orienteers? One would imagine the organizers probably have more experience with this question than most.

These are the map scales stated in the Swedish competition rules

Scale for för Ultra long distance and Long distance:
o 1:15 000 in D/H18-21.
o 1:10 000 in D/H16, D/H35-40
o 1:7 500 i D/H10-14, D/H45 and older

Scale for Middle distance, relays och night O:
o 1:10 000 in D/H16-40.
o 1:7 500 in D/H10-14, D/H45 and older

Scale for Sprint distance:
o 1:4 000 in D/H16-40.
o 1:3 000 in D/H10-14, D/H45 and older

So, maybe we should ask the youngsters...I kmow that my 2 orienteers used no less than 1:10000 maps, and they figured it out. But again, let's ask the youths.....and I always thought books for beginning readers used a large font, because if they used a small font, the whole book would fit on one page, and where would you put all the pictures, and parents would be wondering why they are paying $7 for a 1 page book!

I am a big fan of sticking to the norm, not leave off "fancy" symbols just to dumb down a map for the sake of whoever, nor of adding all kind of specialized symbols that may then be on a legend or not. There may not be a lot of kids and youth who grow up on US maps then travelling or living abroad, but if they do, at least they are already familiar with the majority of the symbols, and they do not have to rely on reading a legend, possibly even one using characters unfamiliar to them. If they know what a trail looks like and what a creek looks like, they will not really start looking for the unfamiliar things just because they are also on the map. On the other hand, if they grew up on totally simplified maps, it would be far more distracting or overwhelming to then have all that extra stuff on, e.g., an H10 or M10 map outside the US.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that we should simplify the maps, just that we aren't asking younger orienteers to interpret a lot of complicated detail. I've been trying to think of an analogy for 1:5000 maps, and I think it may be when someone who speaks another language doesn't understand what you're saying, so you TALK LOUDER. That doesn't help (but it does sometime when you're talking to old people).

JJ, I'm not sure that analogy is appropriate - there is research that justifies larger print as better for new readers, and I think it is reasonable to say that probably applies to new map symbol-readers, too.

The question is really a Goldilocks question - what is "just right?"

I don't often run on 1:7500 maps, but I think I found it easier to read than 1:10000. I'm pretty sure I would find it even easier to read if ISOM didn't require symbol sizes/line widths to be the same 1.5x the 1:15,000 scale symbols sizes
as on a 1:10,000 map, rather than 2x. After cataract surgery a few years ago, I have much better visual resolution again, but often I still have difficulties just picking up the existence of a small object on the map when I am running, even though if I am stopped, looking at it in bright light, and not breathing too hard or having my hands shaking, I can determine that it is there. In particular, it is annoying to cross a small trail in the woods, stop with some concern that maybe I've strayed from my intended route, and to discover that I have been running almost parallel to it for a couple of hundred meters and been unaware that it was on the map as an unobserved route option. So I actually found it much easier to read the model event map printed on my printer at home with a little bit of blur of the ink on uncoated paper compared to the crisp, sharp lines of the real maps for the races that had been printed commercially with better resolution. As for the level of detail on the map, the area was a lot less rocky than some New England maps, so mapping pretty much everything in excruciating detail was in fact possible, done very consistently, and at the speed I can go didn't feel like it was making it harder to read the map. In any case, I liked the map, and enjoyed the course setting and the terrain immensely. And even the weather during the event was pretty nearly perfect. A fine weekend!

Uncle, uncle, cries me with my arm being twisted...

It's too late for next weekend's NEOC event (Pearl Hill SP--site of last year's New England Champs)--I did the map layouts this morning and W / Y are getting 1:5,000, with a legend, and with one more major terrain feature "catch" than my overzealous cropping at Bigelow Hollow (Day 1 Yellow linked above).

Besides increased vigilance on map cropping (generically), I have two take-aways from this discussion for my map framing in the future:

1. White & Yellow (beginner courses) are ok on 1:7,500, particularly if 5k scale would create a compromise on cropping too close, omitting a legend, or ending up with a horse blanket. I believe legends must be on beginner maps. Frankly, IMO legends should be on intermediate (Orange) maps too. Advanced courses--too bad; know the symbology of your sport, although ironically, legends are pretty easy to fit on 10k or 15k maps. This difference in scale makes life much easier on me the map framer. W/Y with legends and lots of extra terrain on one letter-sized sheet of paper at 1:7,500 is a piece of cake. At 5k, it's always a bit of compromise.

2. The Swedish rule about 1:7,500s for M/F45+ is something that is probably worth considering. I assume the Swedish practice doesn't normally exceed the rules. The US rules are routinely exceeded for map scale. The OUSA rules dictate 1:10,000 for all ages (except elites: 15k for long/classic format), so the norm, I believe, is most sanctioning packets seek blanket exceptions (10k for elites--generally because of ease of printing, plus Brown, Orange, Yellow, White at increased scales of whatever flavor (7.5k or 5k)). But, with Swedish scale rules matched to the standard OUSA course/class structure, an F45 scale change creates two versions of Green maps, and an M45 scale change creates two versions of Red maps. Ouch at many levels--map prep & start line procedures to name two big ones. Red might even get three scales: 15k elite (F21), 7.5k (M45), and 10k (all other: M20, M35, M40)--that's a hot mess.

I agree that non-advanced maps should have legends, but one way to do that is to print the legend separately and not worry about how to fit it in with the course, control descriptions, etc. Depending on the level of meet, it can be just something available at registration for those who want it (maybe even some on advanced courses), or something included in the map case.

I mean the way that QOC does it with legends is that they just print them on the back of the map, which, in my opinion, is a good way of avoiding having to cram it onto the map and avoids the need of having another separate sheet of paper.

The legend for young orienteers should be on the map, one less thing they can drop in the forest and then be upset about should they need it.
I like the QOC back of them map part

Yes, back of the map is a good option.

For years Suncoast Orienteering has struggled with the issue of what to do with the map legend.
Printing costs are a major concern. So is the belief that shorter courses should have larger scales. Letter size paper is the most economical for printing.
To put the legend on the map can greatly decrease the size of the map area.
To print the legend on the back of the map doubles the cost of the printing for every map but only a small proportion of the participants need it.
Most of our partcipants are members of pre-registered JROTC teams. We send out ahead of time event notes with copies of the map legend and the control descriptions (aka clue sheets) to all the teams. They can print both for cadets who want them. We also have copies at the registration for the few public who need them. The legends go into their map case, front or back: their choice. We encourage arm carried control descriptions but few are doing that.
All in all the orienteers who need them get what they need and these little items do not break our finances.

My boys' O-kit (pouch with SI, whistle, pen, etc. contained for the longest time also a small, double-sided and laminated printout of https://www.maprunner.co.uk/iof-control-descriptio..., the one with control descriptions and map symbols side-by-side. They could then take it along in the back pocket as backup whenever they thought they might still need it.

You can print several legends on a letter-size sheet and cut them apart, and make them available to those who want them (or everybody) to save on printing costs.