søndag 11. februar 2007

Judge & Race Officers, level II

Four Evergreeners completed the Judge & Race Officer II course today. With comfortable margins all four passed the exams on ISAF and Norwegian rules.
These previous club level Judge & Race Officers (Level I) can now perform their duties on regional regattas (and use the better knowledge of the RRS while competing!). Congratulatons to Torgrim, Anders, Leif Terje and Jon!

torsdag 8. februar 2007

Real talking and virtual sailing?

Free version TeamSpeak

For the fun of Team Race it may be an idea to talk to each other? Jon, a crew member on NOR 954 Evergreen, has a "start flag land" friend with good data knowledge. This Finn has put up a server for us on (TeamSpeak). We can then communicate orally when sailing on VSK4Demo! (Big wave for the guys from Åland (Jon and his friend)! Follow the link and download this free version of TeamSpeak. (I downloaded TeamSpeak 2 RC2, whatever "2 RC2" means(?), and was immediately up running.)

Start TS, chose "Connection", "Quick connect". Then write:
- Server address: ts.c0r3.org (NB! zero, not big o)
- Nick name: Your VSK4Demo Nick name

Leave the following fields open:
- Login name:
- Password:

Press "Connect". An English speaking lady welcomes you(!) and "rooms" for talking appear. A little down the list you will find the "room" for Virtual skipper and can see who is online. Right click the Virtual skipper "room" and choose "Switch to channel" and you are with us.

Now and then there may be a need for finetuning to make it all function 100%. A head set with microphone will eliminate any echo feedback effects. I recently bought one such set for less than 5 US$, and it works perfectly well! In order to get good quality sound, on the menue line up right, "Settings", I opened "Sound Input/Output Settings" to adjust the sensitivity and response. Speex 12.3 gave good sound if that does not happen to be default. (It is also possible to "Activate local test mode". Press the button, and you will see that the green bulb lightens when the PC registers your voice (whispering/shouting). Then your PC sends the signal to your head set so you can check whether the sensitivity/response is OK. I fighted this for a while as a result of an old defect external microphone. Therefore I invested in a brand new head set !) If you don't have a head set and suffer from echo (and we all suffer from your echo), there is a possibility for "Press-to-talk" that might help.

As the observant TeamRace'er you are, you will soon see that "sub rooms" for blue and red team are already arranged for in accordance to VSK4Demo Team Race Mode. These we can use for tactical purpouses. (I recently completed IASF Judge/Organizer course, level 1, and realize that it should rather have been blue and yellow teams, but ...)

TeamSpeak does not require much CPU. Most PCs will therefore let it run while using VSK4Demo with almost no performance loss. (Best is not to open VSK4Demo in full screen mode. This leaves you the possibility to switch channels in TS and do performance adjustments without really leaving VSK4Demo. That works perfectly well on my new PC, while my 5 years old PC (screen card?) does not allow part-of-screen mode in VSK. With the new PC I can even listen to "Sailing" (Rod Stuart), "The winner takes it all" (ABBA) or "Holding out for a Hero" (Bonnie Tylor) if I want !)

We try to respect Racing Rules of Sailing, where RRS 10 to 18 is most focussed.). Also have a look at: Finch and UK Hasley. Both sites refer to RRS in each situation and priority of highest RRS rule numbers. What about a simple "examination"?

Hero welcomes you to real talking and team sailing!