Optical timing data from the 2002 F2A World Championships 

UPDATED 28th July, 2002

More information about the system

The results from the Transitrace (TT) optical timing system have completely unofficial status. According to an agreement at a Team Managers' Meeting, the data gathered by the system is made available to the public.

A few things should be borne in mind when comparing the data to the official results:
Due to the background conditions, with high trees, the sensor had to be located 1/4 lap before the timing pole (assuming counter-clockwise flying). Also, the communication between the pylon judge and the computer operator was not perfect, and in some cases there seems to have been additional lap shifts between the official timing and the TT system.

The translation from competitor numbers to names can be taken from the F2A RESULTS that came from Matthias Möbius. If you have the printed results, you can also find the numbers there. I have made a conversion from HTML back to Excel format: F2A RESULTS Excel file
Through this you can work with all of the data in Excel.

To use the files, download them to your system! There they should be opened with the Wordpad program (in a Windows system) or any other plain text editor. From there you can print the files. For the log files, each flight will be on a separate page. Also, data can be copied-and-pasted into MS Office applications such as Excel or Word. The data items are separated by tab characters.
Bill Lee and Pete Soule both have developed software to make speed plots from the log files. I'll link to their software as soon as possible.
You can have a look at Bill Lee's data from the US F2A Team Selections

I have done some small edits in the files, just to remove some operator mistakes, and make them more readable. The only data that has been altered is the date and time for a few of the first flights, where the PC real-time clock wasn't properly set. If I find obvious typing errors in the operator input, I shall correct them.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to e-mail me!

I'm indebted to the W/Ch organizers for providing this opportunity for evaluating the performance. The system was set up by Bernd Kordisch, who was also F2A timekeeper, and operated by Kerstin Andreas. They set up and ran it successfully, using their own laptop PC, with very little input from me. Bernd actively flies F2A, and Kerstin is his helper and girlfriend. Many thanks for a job well done!
Also many thanks to FAI Juror Dr. András Reé for taking an active interest in the system. He will make a report about it to the CIAM.

Göran Olsson

Transitrace Files

NOTES:
  1. I have found what seems to be a mix-up of competitors 15 and 16 in round 2. This is now corrected.
  2. Bernd pointed out these errors in the operator input for Round 1, now corrected:
    Comp.      Mtime1   Mtime2   Mtime3   Moff       Bernd's comment 
A14      12.71      12.77     -       282.5      no 3rd time (data input error made by the operator) 
A34      13.03      13.08    12.99    276.2      three times - 1st attempt (data input error)
    (For this A34 flight there are no optical results.)
  3. And for Round 2:
    A15      12.75      12.68    12.72    283.0      Mtime2- digits swapped, was 12.86
    Now corrected.
  4. Competitor 33 was allowed his Round 2 flight at the end of the Round 1 first attempts. (He had to leave the W/Ch for business.)
  5. The logs For Round 3, Competitor 20, Attempt 1, Lap 10, and Round 3, Competitor 35, Attempt 1, Lap 7, show sudden jumps in speed. This is probably caused by external disturbances, such as a butterfly passing. The TT software suppresses such events by blocking the input for 1.18 seconds (for F2A) after each sensor detection. Here the disturbance got through, but then the model passing gets suppressed, so no extra lap will be counted, if the model speed is high enough. For an official result to be affected, the disturbance must occur in quite a small time interval just before the lap 0 or 9 model transits.

Results for: Round 1 | Round 2 | Round 3

Results

The result files give the results in a compact format. The competitor numbers and the manual times are given as entered by the operator. The official results were handled separately, completely outside the system.

Example: 


# FAI_F2A       Round 2 Friday 19 July 2002,         07:55:49
# Comp  Attempt Etime   Mtime1  Mtime2  Mtime3  ESpeed  MSpeed  EOff   MOff    Ruling
  11    1       14.9964 14.98   14.98   15.00   240.057 240.214 240.0  240.2   # Manual
  4     1        0.0000  0.00    0.00    0.00     0.0     0.0
  31    1        0.0000  0.00    0.00    0.00     0.0     0.0
  16    1       12.2711 12.31   12.37   12.28   293.372 292.208 293.3  292.2   # Manual
Comp = Competitor Number
ETime = Time from the TT system
MTime1 = Time of Manual stopwatch 1
ESpeed = Speed from the TT system
MSpeed = Speed from the entered manual stopwatch data
EOff = TT speed taken to one decimal according to the rules
MOff = Manual speed taken to one decimal according to the rules
Ruling = Decision on whether Manual or Electronic result should be used as official result (not in use here)

Logs for: Round 1 | Round 2 | Round 3

The log files give all the recorded data from the flights, with speeds for all individual laps. The records also cover attempts which didn't lead to an official result, and canceled flights.

Log File Example (from the winning flight of Luis Parramon, ESP):

 
##################################################################


# Friday 19 July 2002,  14:26:18
# FAI_F2A, Round 2,  Competitor 13, Attempt 1
# Timed Flight
# First Last   Time (s) Speed (km/h)  Official
  8     16      11.9151 302.139         302.1
# Best Speed:
  11    19      11.8516 303.756
# Individual laps:
# Lap   Time  Speed(km/h) Time Stamp  Course Speed(km/h)
  1     2.8668  139.530  1619.5976869
  2     2.0226  197.768  1621.6202577
  3     1.4550  274.909  1623.0752863
  4     1.3910  287.555  1624.4663265
  5     1.3700  291.980  1625.8362812
  6     1.3557  295.057  1627.1919524
  7     1.3440  297.609  1628.5359961
  8     1.3390  298.722  1629.8750350
  9     1.3330  300.078  1631.2080196   248.669  
  10    1.3279  301.217  1632.5359659   278.244
  11    1.3243  302.050  1633.8602510   294.118
  12    1.3222  302.525  1635.1824557   297.344
  13    1.3204  302.941  1636.5028440   299.090
  14    1.3177  303.549  1637.8205903   300.393
  15    1.3161  303.918  1639.1367357   301.387
  16    1.3143  304.340  1640.4510564   302.139
  17    1.3125  304.771  1641.7635179   302.814
  18    1.3122  304.828  1643.0757322   303.344
  19    1.3119  304.911  1644.3875903   303.756
  20    1.3950  286.743  1645.7825683   301.955
  21    2.3260  171.969  1648.1085742   278.506
The result for the timed laps was 302.1 km/h. The official speed from the manual timing was 302.5 km/h.
After 9 laps are flown, the speed for the most recent kilometre is given for every lap.
"Time Stamp" gives the absolute time for the sensor passes in seconds with the full resolution of the system. Will be removed in future versions.
Here you can see that the fastest lap was lap 19, at 304.911 km/h. This was a couple of laps after the official laps, which were laps 8-16. If the handle had been placed in the pylon three laps later, the result would have been 303.7 km/h, as can be read from the kilometre speed given for lap 19.