Hi all,

I need advice after last Sundays diabolical rain. We use Staceys Observer cards & you probably know how useless they are to write on in biro [or pencil] when they are damp & they are worse when wet.

The Results team then has to interpret the card when it's dried out - next day

Does anyone have a cost effective foolproof system that you can give to your Observers & know:

1 They can record the Lap, Rider Number & Marks lost easily from start to finish, when they are out for 4 hours in clouds & pouring rain.

2 It must cater for Multilap Trials - 3 or 4 laps of 20 or 15 Sections at most, & more likely 2 or 3 laps of 20 or 15 Sections

2 The Results Team can record the information without 'creative accounting'

3 Ideally it would be a hard backing with a rewriteable waterproof facing already preprinted with a Staceys style headed grid.

Pencil is probably the best writing implement for erasing so the 'boards' can be used again & again

4 Punch cards & Punches have been considered & discarded as - it's foolproof but you need twice as many Observers - One Observing, & one punching at the end of the Section. It also slows things down when Riders argue the Observers decision

Any ideas greatfully considered - What do the SSDT Organisers do for instance?

Keep your feet up & remember to thank those hardy souls who Observe for you they are doing their best!

Effsweet

Generally A plastic cover over the card big enough for the Pencil and your hand to fit under does the job.

Would something like this help?

http://www.wetwritesolutions.com/

Peter

quote name='effsweet' timestamp='1297783915' post='262283']

Hi all,

I need advice after last Sundays diabolical rain. We use Staceys Observer cards & you probably know how useless they are to write on in biro [or pencil] when they are damp & they are worse when wet.

The Results team then has to interpret the card when it's dried out - next day

Does anyone have a cost effective foolproof system that you can give to your Observers & know:

1 They can record the Lap, Rider Number & Marks lost easily from start to finish, when they are out for 4 hours in clouds & pouring rain.

2 It must cater for Multilap Trials - 3 or 4 laps of 20 or 15 Sections at most, & more likely 2 or 3 laps of 20 or 15 Sections

2 The Results Team can record the information without 'creative accounting'

3 Ideally it would be a hard backing with a rewriteable waterproof facing already preprinted with a Staceys style headed grid.

Pencil is probably the best writing implement for erasing so the 'boards' can be used again & again

4 Punch cards & Punches have been considered & discarded as - it's foolproof but you need twice as many Observers - One Observing, & one punching at the end of the Section. It also slows things down when Riders argue the Observers decision

Any ideas greatfully considered - What do the SSDT Organisers do for instance?

Keep your feet up & remember to thank those hardy souls who Observe for you they are doing their best!

Effsweet

not sure where we get em from but our club has observer cards that are sealed inside a plastic liner. you simply write on the plastic and it carbon prints through on to the paper. dont even need a pen as a sharpish object will do.

Ollie

SSDT & Scott Trial cards are waterproof, paper isn't that expensive. They're used at Richmond club trials on wet days as well. Get in touch with the RMC secretary as she'll be able to give you a contact detail for them............well maybe as our regular printer went bust recently, I'm unsure about how the pheonix will rise.

Try Stacy and Son http://www.stacyandson.co.uk/

Select Motor Sport on RH menu

tab down to observer cards then look for WATERPROOF - Ref 191W

I'm unsure about how the pheonix will rise.

The Pheonix is unlikely to rise, sadly im going to have to pay for a scott program this year.

Printwell in Darlington cant sort you out if you get stuck.

Forty years ago I had a similar problem after one very wet event. The cure was simple - we made up punch cards where the number down the side was the rider number and the others the score. Section/lap number was marked on the top in waterproof felt pen.

The observer had as many cards as he needed and I thought it was a better idea than giving the riders a punchcard which always seemed to cause a lot of hold ups as they struggled to reach the observer after fiving (not to mention the occasional dispute over the veracity of what was punched on the card that was handed in).

It also meant an observer was not run ragged going up and down to punch cards as often happens.

Edited February 15, 201115 yr by 2/4

Punchcards.....

Hi again guys,

thanks for the suggestions so far, please keep on making them.

Punchcards/Punches - We've found Punches go missing - you buy say 15 &at the end of the year you haven't got 15 still!

There is a potential problem, if the rider has the punchcard, that say you punch a 5 it is possible to punch out 3 1 [result = O] as Punches are not unique & are easy to get. As I said originally there a manpower problem as well - IMHO

Weatherwriter system - Not cost effective at

I can't help but think that nowadays cheap technology must exist for an observer to send a score direct back to HQ, possibly by mobile phone application. There must be something adaptable on the market.

I take your point about punches going amiss but are they really that dear compared to the hassle of losing a couple of sections due to unreadable cards? Anyway, you can always ensure you get them back when your observers sign back in.

Perce - I'll check what they do - I've never looked that closely but I thought the Scott issue was a card inside a large plastic bag - much like we do at present - but it failed us on Sunday - we had 2 sections we had to leave out the cards were so unreadable.

Scott uses waterproof books as per the ssdt, the big plastic bag is just a gift for the observers to carry everything in You can write in pen or pencil in them, this years books weren't the usual material & the pages stuck together causing problems in the results room.

RMC have used the same materials for standard observer board sheets.

In my youth we used to have a fibre board with the printed card on top and a six inch nail on a piece of string attached to it.

Works every time in any weather.

Remember the urban myth? The Russians used a pencil in space and the Americans spent a million on a pen......

Al

I can't help but think that nowadays cheap technology must exist for an observer to send a score direct back to HQ, possibly by mobile phone application. There must be something adaptable on the market.

This has been tried before. The Italians are right into it and there was an Aussie/NZ bloke used to appear at world rounds pushing some application he'd developed. The problem is, at a lot of Trial locations mobile signal is poor/non-existent.

This has been tried before. The Italians are right into it and there was an Aussie/NZ bloke used to appear at world rounds pushing some application he'd developed. The problem is, at a lot of Trial locations mobile signal is poor/non-existent.

Much as I expected - I'm not really an IT fan if something traditionally simple will do the job.