Palm Scoring - Nationals

[BDH]

and stopping to down load to the stat's collection Palm while shooting a squad was rediculous, why not wait until after a squad had shot.

I'm not sure why downloading stopped any stage. On my stage we didn't stop anything... they showed up to download data... and we went ahead and ran the competitor. Since I had one of the fastest stages, we should have had less time to download data than most other stages, and I don't recall it ever slowing us down. Although, I'm sure that there probably was a time or two where they downloaded, and then we had a challenge getting the correct competitor pulled up which slowed us down ever so slightly (and I'm talking like 5 - 10 seconds). We had more slow downs due to things like tapping the Palm screen and it not recording the hit, so when you went to save the score, you had to first acknowledge the error message, and tell the Palm that 'yes, you did want to correct the score'...

[BDH]

On some stages to keep the palm dry they tried radioing the scores back to the palm guy in a tent. That was a big pain.. lots and lots of "say again?!?" and who knows if all the answers were correct. That's another downside to the reciepts-- you can't say 'where was that delta?' and see at a glance (maybe in time to correct a mistake) without digging back into the Palm itself, which the shooters didn't get to see unless they insisted.

We used radios on my stage, but actually started using them before the rain came in as we were often having a hard time hearing the scores yelled up range because of shooting in bays to both sides of us and normal banter back in the tent. Once the rain started, the additional noise from the rain pounding the tent made it impossible to hear the calls. Since we needed to keep the Palm dry anyway, just using radios for all the calls made total sense. Did we have to repeat some calls? Sure, just like when you call them without radios. Probably the biggest issue we had was because I only brought a single radio with me. We used my radio along with the radio supplied by USPSA to call in the scores, and obviously had to use a different channel than the match channel. That created some problems when the weather was going back and forth as when we were not scoring, I changed my radio back to the match channel to listen for the 'bag' and 'un-bag' calls. Then we would start scoring and I forgot to change to my 'stage channel' in time which meant I had to ask for the call to be repeated. Just another lesson learned... next match I will bring TWO radios. That way we can keep those radios set for scoring, and keep the main radio on the main match channel for the other calls....

[Flexmoney]

Sounds like it's a heck of a lot easier to keep a Palm dry than it is to keep a stack of score sheets dry. The Palm doen't have to go in and out of the baggie for each shooter.

At last year's Area 5 match (something like 12+ inches of rain in as many hours), we figured out how to keep our stage shooting, but we probably were in more danger of losing that stage due to the fact that the wet score sheets were very hard for stats to read. The match director built us a quick lean-to and the clip-board RO then stayed under-cover with the score sheets at all times. (they were still soggy, though)

[Jim Norman]

There are better mousetraps out there than the Palms. Yes they cost more, but a smartpen system COULD be devised to input the scores from a traditional sheet straight into EzWin. No I cannot do it. I can barely turn a computer on, but I have read up on this a bit and feel that the technology exists and is pretty good. A clipboard with a sensor and a STANDARD two part score sheet just like we always used. Entry is automatic, the RO has a copy by TARGET and so does the shooter.

Best of both worlds.

Need the pens, laptops and a wireless network, although data collection COULD be done with out the network, just use memory sticks and pull the data off. In fact the data could be written to the stick directly or as a mirror and collection could just do a stick exchange. We might need power, but that can be supplied with a car battery and a small inverter. (Actually I have a power module that allows me to use my Laptop in the car without an inverter! cost about $20)

But enough. The Palms were not the problem, even when the ROs got a little flumoxed over who was next. that can be corrected with training and a few minor tweaks to the software. The scheduling nightmare was due 99.9% to the rain and mud. We likely finished earlier that we would have had we had to manually enter all those scores from damp soggy scoresheets.

ROs thank you. Stats Thank you.

Jim

[kimel]

We used radios for scoring during the heaviest part of the rain on Thursday but Stage 10 was small enough that it quickly became evident that unless it was a total downpour; an umbrella and a baggie could do the job just fine.

For my stage, Palm scoring was much faster than paper once we got the hang of things. The disappearing targets issue has already been mentioned so I won't belabor that point. IMHO, the CRO of the stage should be able to set-up the scoring sequence in the Palm to fit what is happening on the field so you can score in a logical progression.

When things really went to hell with the weather my crew and I started calling scores as "T3, 2 Alpha" with the same as the response from the Palm person. This eliminated the annoying missed target.

The biggest issue I see with the Palm system is the addition and subtraction of shooters throughout the match that didn't get updated to the Palms. Had two shooters in the same squad (430 and 431) come in and they were ZZZ Walk-In in the Palm which we had to be careful to not get screwed up. Then there were the drop-outs which for O/L10 were plentiful and caused much confusion. This made things cumbersome, at best. IMHO, the shooter database needs to be updated at least daily if not a couple times a day.

I'd much rather see some sort of small printer that we could beam the scores into and produce a receipt for the shooter as well as a paper record that they sign and we save for stats "just in case".

I'd also suggest that if we are going to continue with the paper score sheets ala Nats this year that USPSA investigate a way to pre-fill the shooter info onto these sheets. A LOT of time was wasted copying down info like shooter number, name and stage number. Impact printers still exist and it wouldn't be THAT big an ordeal to burn off the sheets.

And bring back the plastic envelopes for the score sheets for Stats to pick up. Ours ended up in the range bucket and we had to go on a mad search to find a missing sheet after the last shooter. The chance that some squad's score sheet would be entombed in the mud at USSA was pretty high.

I also think that the training session Saturday should have included some "follow along" examples. Have everyone with a Palm go through and score a stage as the instructor called off the hits. Then go through error correction, etc. Nothing like actually doing something to really learn it.

Overall, I liked Palm scoring and hope we use it again...after some fixes are made.