From Dangerousdave26 on one of the other thread

Race Tracking:


This is the part of the race that I know can be improved and improving it would make the committee's job easier as well as each teams. I would love to see the rules come out with a self calculating excel spread sheet to track each leg, bonuses, penalties and requirements.


No matter how complicated the bonuses, penalties, and requirements are a properly configured spread sheet should eliminate any tracking head aches.
My biggest problem with this is two fold.

One is that we do create a spreadsheet each year, but in the 80 hour week before the race starts, we are often a day into the race before we finish the spreadsheet.

The second is the 'automation' aspect.

We on the Executive Committee would LOVE to see that work out. But it would also eliminate several team members from being able to fly the race. Especially folks with marginal computers, or dial-up internet access, proxy servers, etc. On-line tracking is useful and we get a very high compliance rate.

But we continue to have some big problems.

Every team has 'skipped' legs each year. Those which are not recorded on-line correcty. And we have some technical glitches such as the reset to 0N 0E which occurs on some pilots computers.

The other is pilot inattention. We have some pilots who select 'Baton or Wingman' for every test flight they do during the race. We have others who forget to select 'Baton or Wingman' for their baton/wingman flights.

We will come up with a common tracking spreadsheet in advance in the future. It will probably be read-only on Google documents so that everyone can see it and the Committee will update the spreadsheet, or selected team members.