Been thinking about cal course distances lately and I was wondering if longer cal courses are inherently problematic. It seems to me that the longer a cal course, the more room for error, whether it be tire wobble or not being able to ride the course perfectly straight, or error in setting up the cal course itself, etc.
In my opinion, the most accurate calibration would be 1 count of a Jones counter. Although not practical, if one could measure the distance a tire traveled for 1 count and extrapolate that data to arrive at a constant, that would provide the most accurate calibration data. So, if my theory is correct, wouldn't shorter calibration courses provide more accurate constants? To me it seems that if a measurer has a 100 foot steel tape and lays out a cal course with that, he/she will have less chance of making an error if there is only a single layout of the tape. Multiple layouts of tape (to achieve a 1000' course) are multiple points of potential error. I know there are safeguards in place but a single layout would eliminate the need for those safeguards.
I think that removing potential error points makes for more accurate courses. As far as I can surmise, every extra tape layout, every extra millimeter traveled on a cal course has the potential to affect course (both calibration and race) distance. Not sure if 100' would be the right distance but I do think that cal courses should be less than 1000'. Maybe make 264', 352' or 528' the recommended distance?
I'm probably not the first person to broach this subject but I didn't see anything about it on the forum and I wonder what others that have been doing this a lot longer than me think.