Electronic Punching Info
The Miami Valley Jr. Champs uses electronic punching (e-punching) at many events. With e-punching we can print a complete result sheet including splits between controls within a minute or two after each finish. This involves some additional equipment and hence a nominal additional $2 fee. The extra fee includes a rental SI-card (a.k.a. electronic punch card, e-card, or finger stick). If a rental SI-card is lost, the replacement fee is $40 per card. A Rental SI-Card Agreement must be signed for use of a rental SI-card. This agreement includes the waiver, and registration time can be saved if you download and bring a filled out copy to the event. In liue of this you can also send registration details to the event director when you have them together. Of course you can just show up and take care of it on site. If you are a coach registering multiple participants, there is also a Coach Team Planner spreadsheet to help you organize your teams for the Miami Valley Jr. Championship competition.
Our neighboring Orienteering Cincinnati club has an e-punch "how-to" information page. Please review its information. The only possible operational difference between how OCIN and MVOC operates the equipment is that MVOC controls are always run in standby mode, so if they haven't been punched in a while, they turn off. Turning them back on and registering a punch takes an additional half second when a finger stick is inserted. The difference in punch time is slight and battery power is conserved. The first runner on a course may wake up several controls.
If you want to purchase your own SI-card, please visit the US Orienteering Federation's vendor page and check out some of their offerings. The SportIdent (SI) system used by MVOC is the main e-punch system in the US, Europe, Australia, etc. An SI-card purchase is worthwhile if you plan to orienteer in the future, here or anywhere.
A lot of data can be gleaned from the e-punching system. Preliminary results will be available the day of the event. After the event detailed e-punch data will be posted on the MVOC web site. Here is an example of available data. It contains the time-of-day down to the second that each control is visited for each SI-card. For competitions involving trophies, if during the event a competitor or coach files an official protest of collusion by a team to the meet director, and subsequent chip data indicates following (Winsplits Packrunning Index =>60%), the protest will be upheld and the competitors involved disqualified.
The extra information possible with e-punching is designed for you to analyze your orienteering experience more objectively. With the split data a host of useful information can be obtained such as time behind the course leader, time behind the fastest split for that leg, position during each leg, consistency from leg to leg, etc. These can be presented in both tabular and chart form. The WinSplits program that MVOC uses to analyze split data can do this and more. One really cool thing it does is show figures running across the screen to simulate all runners on a course. Ask me to show it to you the next time we use e-punching.