Renewal of Calibration Courses

Thanks Pete for this post.

My feeling are similar to yours. In my opinion the person that set this course should be the only one to apply for a renewal after the 10 years.

I thought at our annual meeting we mentioned this and the majority felt different. They felt since it is not difficult to lay out a Cal course then just do a new Cal Course.

I leave this open for discussion to others.

How about authorizing either the state certifier or the original measurer to apply for renewal?

A case in point would be a "communal" course in a densely populated area which is known to and used by lots of measurers but the measurer of record is no longer involved in measurement...

I couldn't agree more. In fact, I have defied the expiration policy on two calibration courses that I measured and continue to maintain. One of those, in fact, does use permanent street utility access panels.

I see no reason to eliminate a well maintained calibration course that meets the criteria of permanent road utilities as end points or original nails. I even would consider replaced nails if the references were very accurately replaceable.

Dave Poppers
Colorado Certifier ("B" and a 1/2 measurer)

Leaving it to the certifier is OK, but the certifier should either be personally familiar with the course in question or should accept a statement from no one but the original measurer. It's not enough to just take somebody's word that they have been using the course for years. That's what we did with road race courses, and it resulted in a lot of bogus renewals coming in. A calibration course requires a higher standard.

I seem to recall a New York cal course that came up short last year, one that was taken as "just fine" by the original measurer (and FS) but failed to measure up later on.

Since cal courses do require more precision, my vote would be to re-measure. A precise measurement after 10 years isn't asking too much, is it?

I vote for special rules for Calibration Courses.

Since a calibration course is the foundation of all certifications, the accuracy is very inportant.

I think that if a cal course is in use for a number of years it would be good for a second person to verify it, re-measure it, before re-certification.

Most urban street surfaces get re-finished after 10 years, and the ones that are not are getting lumpy from sags, fillings and patches.

Any error in the cal course is magnified when scaled up to the full course. Therefore, for cal courses, I vote for re-mesureing after 10 years, and for it to be done by some one else.

If the cal course is found to be short, then all the courses derived from it are possibly short too. When we find a short cal course it should automatically bring other courses into question.

AND, based on the percent of error found when re-measuring the calibration course, a re-examination of all other cert courses measured by the same man or team.

The re-measure wouldn't have to be done by another measurer. Most cal courses are laid out in a spot that's convenient for one measurer (the Kirkham Road 1000' springs to mind) and mandating unpaid travel to re-certify someone else's cal course would be a most unpopular move.

Everyone here knows how to use a steel tape. I don't see much benefit to this proposal.

Validating the cal course through a second measurement may have some merit. It would be a minor matter (since two men are needed for the steel-tape method) to have both of them be course measurers, although the problem of travel remains. Perhaps a reciprocal agreement between the two measurers would take care of that. I hope everyone is within fair proximity of a measuring partner, or this just won't work.

As far as the races derived from a short cal course, I'm not sure who has the information. Is the cal course used part of the certification submission? If so, do all the state certifiers keep records? Because I don't have any. It would be a daunting task to correlate all 28,000+ courses to their calibration courses, even if the information exists.

This is sort of a tangent of the OP, but I'd like to see more attention paid to cal courses that should be removed from the course list (due to construction, repaving, etc.) There are few things I've found more frustrating than going to do a measurement where you expect there to be a cal course and finding out it's disappeared, for whatever reason (often it's merely last winter's snowplowing clipping one of the endpoint nails).

I think measurers, certifiers and the heirarchy should report and remove and such defunct cal courses as soon as it's discovered.

Without pointing fingers, I once visited a cal course that is used by a local measurer. It is located in a spot convenient for him, right near his house.
When I visited the course, I discovered it is on a major road, with quite a bit of fast traffic, and it appears to run across an intersection with a six lane highway.
I have no idea how he gets accurate calibration runs on this course. I tried and could not.
I only felt safe in one direction because of the traffic.
It is my understanding that this cal course is the basis of most of the courses measured by this locally prolific measurer.

That's what initially spurred me to lay out my own course on a quiet, straight street near me.

I would actually be happy to have some one validate my cal course. I always like it when my results are verified.

I would hope that all certifiers keep the paperwork submited, not just a copy of the final cert. That paperwork lists the cal course used.

It should be a simple job to pull all the courses that person submitted and figure out which ones were derived from what cal course.

All errors in cal courses are magnified by being scaled up into the full courses. If we don't now track the cal course used for each certification, then that is something we should be doing.

If we find a cal course is short, then it raises serious questions about every course derived from that cal course.

James you have my attention about the cal course in question. I would like to know where and who measured this course. Please email this information at newmangc@cox.net. I will not place you in the middle of this situation.

As for validating a Cal course, I have no knowledge of this ever being done. When a race is checked for records, it's sometime done. The person submitting the work indicates the Cal course used for certifying a particular race and it's used to measure that race. The cal course used has followed specific guidelines to be accurate.

When a cal course is found to be short then that race is no longer certified and the cal course is void or corrected by the validator. However, it would be difficult to go back and find all course measured with this cal course at the present time.

We need to take a look at this problem! Does anyone have any ideas on this subject? My first thought would be to list on the Certificate the Cal Course Certification # and then Stu could find those races that used this course. Now, we have the problem of notifying all those races that are no longer valid. Please comment on this issue.

Gene

We don't validate calibration courses because records aren't set on them. We check the calibration course used if a record is set, but the option for the validator remains to set up a new calibration course, so it may not get checked at all.

I think the error would have to be pretty serious to invalidate all courses measured using a single calibration course. And since the requirement for calibration courses was shortened to 300 meters about 20 years ago, chances are much better that calibration courses are closer to race courses, and less that one bad cal course could spawn oodles of bad race courses. (I say this sitting 30 miles from downtown Chicago, where one calibration course in particular has been in use for over 20 years and has been used in the majority of measurements in the downtown area. I checked it with a steel tape a few years ago as part of a validation; it's right.)

What percentage of certified courses are actually validated?

I'm not sure we really have a problem here.