Problematic

The Organization of a F3A contest requires a serious logistic, especially about the ranking. A regional contest (20 pilots, 3 flights) means more than 3,000 scores. A FAI contest has more than 15 000 scores .The judges score the figure to the scribe with the fingers, it is written by the scribe on a paper and manually registered in the calculation program.

This organization needs a meticulous scribe for each judge and one or two people for the data-processing entry. Different mistakes are possible: the interpretation of the secretary, his carelessness or him filling in the evaluation forms with the wrong numbers.

It is difficult to find 3, 5 or 10 reliable scribes. They are volunteers, but the accomodation is provided and implies more charges.

The idea of this project is to automate the whole chain, from the scores elaboration to their registration on the calculation software.

Another guideline would be the real time display of the scores.

The evaluation in F3A, F3M, F3P

When the flight is starting, the scribe notes the competitor and the judge numbers on an evaluation form, provided by the organization. For each figure (the figure may be announced by the judge’s scribe) the judge countdown from 10 and removes one points for each fault (sometime half point for F3M).

The figure over, he shows the scoring to his scribe with his fingers.

The scribe writes down the score on the evaluation form in front of the figure. This procedure allows the judge to stay focus on the planes.

At the end of the flight, the evaluation sheets are collected and the data are entered in the calculation software.

Following a discussion with the judges from the CDF of Surin, it turns out that this type of procedure is more theoretical. Indeed, the judge nuances his judgment and elaborates the score according to many other criteria (figures, harmony and size...) A simple counting cannot be applied.

Principles

The judge will have at his disposal a portable device on which he will be able to score while still looking at the planes.

The marks and manoeuvers announcement will be made through a headphone connected to this device.

The judge will be able to enter the marks using two different ways:

1. A button (-) removing points or half-point from 10 faults noted by the judge and a button to fix. Each time you press <-> or <+>, the headset will announce preliminary score which will become final when pressing the button: "Valid», then the next figure is announced in the headphone.

2. A keypad from 1 to 10 with 11 aligned buttons that the judge may go down with his finger as he will observe fault. At the end of the figure, the judge press on the button and the score is announced in the headphone. This mark will be validated by pressing <Valid>. As <Valid> is not pressed, it may change its rating. Then, once <Valid> seconded, the following manoeuver is announced by the headphone.

3. In the same way, a "Not Observed" key is available.

The judge’s devices communicate with a computer which centralizes all marks to extract intermediates and finals classification.

This allow to:

- remove the manual registration

- display in real time the notes for each manoeuver

A written track of each flight (like a receipt) will be printed by the device to be signed by the judge and constitute a written record. This written record can replace traditional paper flight, so it will be possible to mix judges equipped with devices with traditional judges with scribe.

At the end of the flight, and before printing the receipt, the judge can see all his scores on 4 lines screen and change them if need be.

Moreover all the scores will be stored on SD card. This card could be reread by the computer in order to automatically enter the scores in the software.