Discussion: Attackpoint is amazing ... Almost all the time

But, apparently the automatic activity type classification isn't infallible. Did a 3 hour work-out this morning with 1250 m elevation gain. And, AP thinks it's "paddling". Got a good laugh out of that :-).

Maybe, in retrospect, it makes sense. I was roller skiing, which I don't distinguish classic vs. skate. So, maybe AP thought I was skate skiing, which would have required a lot of "padling" to climb that much.

4 pm on this date looks similar enough.

User error.

Thanks Mr Wonderful, now fixed that one too. I have no doubt there's some user error involved :-).

How easily can the auto-classification be overridden? Can it simply be turned off like auto-(IN)correct on a phone?

Never been a fan of technology making decisions for me, on the assumption that doing so would make life "easier". It often does the opposite...

You have one option - turn off auto-upload and do it yourself.

Otherwise it's dead easy to change the activity. Just click on 'edit'. The thing about auto-upload is that it has to select an activity otherwise what else is it going to use?

My O races tend to end up as trail running. I guess my slow low intensity O runs makes it fail and trail running becomes the best match.

Is there a way to pick up the activity I select in watch? I always select "orienteering" in watch but it gets lost in auto import. I guess it would need some sort of cross reference table of activity type names.

What's amazing is that it picks an activity type from among your own activity types. I wondre what it does for a brand new user who has not previously logged anything?

Is it my imagination, or is the auto-correct feature on ALL software becoming more aggressive? I'm beginning to picture a schoolmarm with a ruler!

For instance, trying to enter stock symbols in Safari....just won't allow MSFT; keeps getting corrected to MIST! But I don't want to buy Milestone Pharma!

Maybe you should. They may have a Covid vaccine in the works.

re: technology making decisions.

Yeah don’t you just hate it when you are orienteering and you want to run to the left but your compass decides for you and shows you that right is best.

My O races lately have come up as Walking... That only shows how fast I'm "running" so actually reasonably correct but forgetting about the map.

AP seems to have learned that when I am "walking" on the water I am actually sailing. I appreciate that.

Bmay, I think you have to accept that you actually were paddling, despite what you may think. Last week AP classified one of my runs as an orienteering event, and at first I thought that it was a mistake, but upon further reflection, I don't see how the software could have been in error. I'm glad that AP corrected me - clearly I'm not as in touch with my own physical reality as I thought.

I love seeing what AP chooses. It is usually correct, which is impressive given all my activities. But when it's not, it often gives me a good laugh - like snowshoeing in August (in terrain where I have often snowshoed). It only takes a second to fix - no big deal.

I've been "walking" only for the past bit. When AP first started downloading the tracks, they split between Orienteering and Walking/Hiking. After I recategorized them, it appeared to "learn" and all of my walks now come down correctly categorized.

Another Q...
On peoples logs, distances can bounce between kilometers and miles. Since it doesn't seem to relate to whether the activity happened in the USA / UK, or in metric countries, what would account for that selection?

You can select your default units under Profile/Preferences.

I have metric selected but I have noticed in individual logs that people can alternate between the two, possibly because they have the wrong default selected and forget to manually override.

Always embarrassing when you do a run so slow it thinks you were orienteering...

GuyO, you can select km or miles when you make an individual activity report. I generally use km for orienteering since course lengths are given in km (and I use straight line course length rather than actual distance traveled unless it is a score-O or rogaine where I took my watch - I almost never bother with a GPS watch on "normal" O courses.) But, I generally use miles for running or cycling where distances may be marked in miles, roads are often laid out in a mile grid, or my watch (when used) is generally set to miles. For a race that is known to be 5 or 10 km, I'll use km, but split times generally in miles since that's what the organizers mark, and what my watch is generally set to record. Why?, probably just because that's what I've always done.

....the United States is one of only three countries (the others being Myanmar and Liberia) that have not officially adopted the metric system...

Mike, as a major O teacher, mentor and organizer in the US, your excuse "That's what I've always done." comes off as a bit lame. Leave the Dark Side; go metric! :-)

I'm always puzzled as to why run training programs use kilometres and miles interchangeably, e.g. run 5 miles at your 10km pace or do a 1 mile warmup, 10 x 400m intervals and a 1 mile cool down. It makes zero sense.

That's for Americans, and nobody ever said Americans make any sense.

We run 10km and 5km races and train on 400m tracks, but talk about our pace and weekly distance in miles.

How do I change my settings so that all my training is logged in surveyors' feet?

Handy speed conversion factors: 3280.83 2.237, 0.000166309524. 375.805

Right, there is always room for yet an other poronkusema thread in AP.

Buy a pair of surveyors' boots,Twitch.

While we are off on a tangent let me tell you this story. I had just started setting up orienteering events in the Suncoast area of Florida. A park manager told me that they already had a permanent orienteering course. It had been set up for an Eagle Scout project. I could hardly wait to see it. I got ahold of the map and lo and behold there was this 'orienteering course' where the measurements were in compass bearings and in rods and chains, traditional surveyors measures.
The map notes contained explanation about these archaic measures and how they had been used in the past. Did the eagle scout course have any relation to modern orienteering? Only in the use of the name. I don't know if he had an advisor that steered him that way or if he just scammed the Scouts out of a distinguished award.
Anyway that park had too much swamp, too much palmetto and way too many alligators. I never have gone back.

How many alligators are too many?

Google Myakka River State Park and look for images of the alligators along the river near the bridge. That's too many.

Our club recently had a Scout contact us about an Eagle Scout project of a permanent orienteering course at a city park. I told him we would be happy to make the map (even expand his area a bit) and I gave him some advice about the type of controls, designing a course, etc. I told him it would take a couple months to get the map produced. After a couple days he got back to me saying he had decided to create the the orienteering course by the "Scouting Method" using just compass bearings and pacing and no map would be needed. I wonder if this type of Eagle Project was approved.

Sherlock I came across an Eagle Scout Orienteering project done exactly that way. It is actually pretty good. The posts are permanent and carefully located in nice terrain. So I made an orienteering map, placed his control locations on it and now give the map to local schools to run their orienteering training there. My courses do not follow his. Being a compass course the scout legs are pretty short so the course does not occupy much of the park and does not inhibit regular orienteering events. My advice to you let him finish his course, get his badge, move on with his life and you map his control sites and promote regular orienteering maps on his control sites.

So if you don't find the marker using a compass bearing, what happens next?

@ tRicky: depending on the alligator count, your next of kin are sent condolences tempered by the disappointment that in this case there will be no posthumous award of the 'orienteering' badge

@Sherlock: Re the map-free "orienteering" Eagle project...

Tell the kid that "Orienteering" is a trademark, and that calling a course "orienteering" without a map would be a violation, and he and his troop could be sued for infringement.
(BTW, I'm only half joking...)

Would like to know who called that obsolete notion of orienteering, the "scouting method".

I only use three conversion factors, all of which are exact:

1 inch (international) = 2.54cm, and this gives the other two:

1 ft (international) = 0.3048m

1 mile = 1.609344km

It was my understanding that "map-free orienteering" had been eliminated from Boy Scout orienteering publications. Is that not the case?

Orienteering Merit Badge is sport orienteering as we know it. However, the First Class rank requirements include pace counting, height estimation and related map-free skills that they continue to call orienteering...

First Class 4a: Using a MAP and compass, complete an orienteering course that covers at least one mile and requires measuring the height and/ or width of designated items (tree, tower, canyon, ditch, etc.). [emphasis is mine].

The Scout Handbook goes on to describe the tools of navigation as "maps, compasses, and GPS receivers." I don't see any map-free navigation emphasis. It does address methods of estimating height, width, and distances using various items readily at hand (pace, sticks, compasses and a bit of trigonometry). cmpbllj and I suspect the measurement task doesn't neatly attach to any other requirements, but is still considered an important skill, so it got stuck on 1st Class 4a. Such is life. Humor your local scouts, there's a surprising number of them who return to pure orienteering later in life.

i think our Scouting Committee has done a fantastic job with the Orienteering Merit Badge. I'm quite happy with it with both my OUSA hat on and my assistant scoutmaster / merit badge counselor hats on.

There are other single items, and none of them require an outside organization to take extra steps to accommodate them. It'd be trivial to say, "meets your requirements, sure!" if it was punted somewhere else, or it was understood that they are welcome to measure whatever they want, and we won't fact check them on the answer. I guess a counter proposal is we should estimate heights or widths of dozens of shelters and keep a repository of such information....

Usually when they ask me about this at registration I tell them it's not a normal orienteering thing and to just pick whatever along the way and measure it. Nobody has ever complained about that.

The very first orienteering I ever did was at a high school phys ed teachers' Outdoor Education workshop. We were paired up, given an air photo with pin pricks indicating control locations. We were also given a list of compass bearings and distance from one control to the next. For most of the locations as well as writing down the code there was also a skill testing question such as measure the height of something or the perimeter of something else.
Somehow right away I caught onto the idea that if we read the air photo and went around some obstacles we would not have to follow that bearing through the thick woods, etc.
My partner and I zipped around the course in no time, finishing at least a half hour ahead of the next team. We earned 6 points for first place but only one point for one correct answer. The team coming in second, a half hour behind, earned 5 points and got three answers correct so they beat us. So did two other teams.
Ever since I have not been a fan of those mixed-skill formats. Well no, I like them for students such as STEM students, but not for me.

So, in all fairness, scouting navigation is more than just orienteering. And estimating distances and dimensions is part of that chapter, along with reading topo maps, converting magnetic to grid, and using a GPS. Measuring stuff might not be part of what we (orienteers) do in designing orienteering courses, but OUSA doesn't write BSA rank requirements.

Perhaps we should consider ourselves fortunate that once a year, most troops will seek out a local orienteering club to get their latest crop of prospective First Class Scouts through a map and compass navigation experience. If this requirement didn't exist, then we wouldn't be seeing the income that comes from Scout Os. I know of at least one club that funds much of its annual budget from scouting-related activities.

Nice solution, Furlong47. ;-)