2005 January Jaunt Results

• Event Report
• Overall Results
• Detailed Results

Event Report

The Jaunt proved to be a challenge for all again this year, with a stellar turnout of 23 cars. 3 Experts, 6 Intermediates, one Open class car, and a whopping 13 Novices were in the starting field.

The road conditions were good winter conditions, with a hard-packed snow and soft ice base, covered by a few centimeters of fresh snow delivered by the rally gods on the morning of the event. The conditions were good, with good traction, but managed to catch out one crew running on all-season tires.

New this year was the introduction of an Open class, for competitors who wanted to get in some practice before other winter rallies by running Novice instructions. While there was interest, there wasn't sufficient interest this year for the class, so the Open competitors opted to run in Novice class instead to be eligible for awards.

The results really show that a good challenge was provided. A number of cars missed one or more checkpoints (so don't feel bad if you were one of them), and a couple of cars decided that Leg A was long enough for various reasons. We still had 20 finishers, although two of the cars decided to cut route and head to the finish (one due to mechanical difficulties).

The results were posted around 10:37 PM, and finalized at 10:50 PM. The finalized results are included with this report; they are formatted differently, but reflect the results as posted (including errors), with the exception that the Leg A scores for cars 4 and 5 have been included.

The results are presented in 3 tables: the first is a summary with overall and total scores, sorted by finishing position within class. The second and third tables present detailed scores for each leg including totals, sorted by car number for (hopefully) easier lookup. For interest, the rank for each car by class (for that leg only) is included in these tables.

Some adjustments were made during scoring, to reflect the situation on the road. Checkpoints A10 and B7 were not placed, so they were left out of the scoring (everyone scored a zero at those checkpoints, and the ET was added to the next checkpoint when calculating the score). B8 was originally going to be timed to the minute, but since cars on the road would have thought B8 was B7, it was timed to the second instead. In addition, the timing instructions told competitors to travel at 72 kph in a 60 kph zone for several km in section B3 - since this was not legally possible, checkpoing B6 was scored as "route in time out", meaning you scored a zero if you hit the checkpoint, but still were scored a miss (and the ET used for scoring the next checkpoint) if you missed it.

Also, maximum lateness was not calculated, and was not scored (it counts as a missed checkpoint). Maximum lateness occurs when your total lateness less your early scores totals 30 minutes or more (or 60 minutes at the finish).

I mentioned above that there were some errors in the results (this is the first time I've used this scoring spreadsheet, and a couple of bugs crept in). After results are declared final, it is simply not appropriate to alter any scores, so these results are posted with errors (I stated I was going to make an exception to this for cars 4 and 5).

If you look closely at the results, you can see the occasional checkpoint timed to the minute where there was a timed to the second score - these really should have been rounded to the more beneficial score for the competitor. You can also see that some scores are above 15; the maximum score you can have when you show up at a checkpoint is 15, and maximum scores were not calculated.

But fixing these errors would not affect the overall standings - only some competitors might feel more comfortable with a lower score, rather than just winning their position.

From an organizer's view there were a couple of new things that we tried, and that worked quite well. One of our primary objectives was to track lost cars and ensure that we knew where everyone was. Dietmar and I used a ham radio net for the first time on this rally, and that proved most useful for this. We also recorded contact info for competitors on the entry form (i.e. cell phone numbers), and actually used this information to track down one competitor who was lost.

Overall, I'd call this year's Jaunt a success. Dietmar and I would like to thank all the People who put in a lot of hard work, and suffered through various levels of frustration:

The rally just doesn't run without a great worker team like this. But we'd especially like to thank all the competitors for coming out to play in the snow and making our hard work a success.

We hope to see all of you on Saturday, January 7th, 2006 for the next January Jaunt!

Kurt Seelenmayer VA3KSE
Co-Organizer, 2005 January Jaunt

Overall Results

Detailed Results