Method for determining winners

Anything related to Space Derby racing and event coordination.
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mdmoe
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Method for determining winners

Post by mdmoe »

I have finished building a Space Derby track and am trying to work out the details on how the race will be run. It seems I can go by distance, time, or placement.

The problem with time is I would have to rig up a way to use my Pinewood timer to work with the Space Derby track.

The problem with placement is determining the order fairly (1st, 2nd, 3rd). How do you setup a finish line?

The problem with distance is determining how many turns it will take to NOT allow a craft to reach the end (you don't want any to reach the end in this case).

I was also wanting to use the 'lane rotation' method to try to even out differences in lanes, but am not sure how this would work. I can understand doing with with times, because in that case, the actual 1st, 2nd placement doesn't really matter, what matters is the time, so you can get the performance easily by totaling the times and averaging them out. In doing the other two methods (placement or distance) I'm a bit more fuzzy on how lane rotation would fairly work.

Any suggests would help!

Michael Moe
Cubmaster - Pack 705
www.pack705.net
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Stan Pope
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Re: Method for determining winners

Post by Stan Pope »

Without electronics, determining 3-lane finish places with consistently high accuracy is a problem. Determining the heat winners is a lot more sure.

Option 1. PPN can be run with heat winners getting 1 point and other two getting 0. The accuracy of the final standings is somewhat lower than if all places are scored. IIRC, you can use Cory's Derby Sim program to evaluate this option.

Option 2. No-Chart Multiple elimination, e.g. quad-elim, running 3 at a time with draw for lane will assure everyone a reasonable minimum number of contested heats and a fair chance at lane equality. (Another reason that I like this scheme is that heat losers are not singled out... they come in pairs most of the time with no need to distinguish which was last.)


If you go for "distance competition", you may have to rerun heats with fewer turns. For instance, assume you set your winder for 50 turns (or 15 seconds, if you don't have a turns counter). You find that racers in lane 1 and lane 3 reach the end, but the racer in lane 2 doesn't. Then you need to drop the turns counter by 1/3 or 1/2 and rerun the two racers again in lanes 1 and 3. You can retain this "count" for subsequent heats or return to the prior count for a few more heats, then decide what to do for the next round. I don't anticipate any of the Scouts objecting to the reruns.


Regardless of the method you use, you must be exceptionally careful that winding is equalized.
Stan
"If it's not for the boys, it's for the birds!"
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