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Star relays ​

Audience: Organisers of school events, club trainings and fun relays where a team shares the loops of one course.

In a star relay, every leg goes out from one central control, the pivot, and comes back to it. The team's runners take turns running the loops: one runs a loop, comes back to the pivot and hands over, and the next runner goes out on another loop. The team is finished when every loop has been run. Each team may run the loops in a different order, so there is no fixed sequence of controls.

Manager scores a star relay as a course with loops: one example of the course, plus a pivot that Manager cuts into loops. A team is OK if it ran every loop, in whatever order. You don't list every possible order as a fork variation. With six loops that would be 720 variations.

A butterfly is set up the same way. It is a single runner's course whose loops come back to a central control.

How a star relay differs from a relay event ​

A star relay is not set up as a relay event. A relay event gives each leg its own runner, card and course, in a fixed leg order. In a star relay the team shares one card, handed over at the pivot, and the order of the loops is free. So:

Relay eventStar relay
Event typeRelayIndividual — or an individual class in any event
EntryA team of leg runnersOne competitor per team. Use the team's name as the competitor's name
CardOne per leg runnerOne per team, passed on at the pivot
CourseOne per leg, run in leg orderOne course with loops, the loops in any order
ResultComposed from the legsThe team's one time, from start to finish

Nor is a star relay a class whose competitors do All courses (a Duo class, for example). There, one competitor runs several different courses back to back on one card, in a fixed or free order, with a changeover control between them, and each course is scored by its own rules. In a star relay there is one course, and its loops all come back to the same pivot. See Classes whose competitors do every course.

Setting up the course ​

  1. Create the course on the Courses page (see Creating a course by hand), or import it from your course-setting software.

  2. Enter one example of the course, with the pivot between the loops. For six two-control loops around control 90:

    97 96 90 93 94 90 91 95 90 95 91 90 96 97 90 94 93 90

    Each stretch between two visits to the pivot is one loop. The example doesn't need to be an order anyone runs. It just has to contain every loop once.

  3. On the Controls tab of Edit Course, tick Course with loops and choose the pivot as the Common control. Manager proposes the control the course visits most often. The pivot is highlighted on the course.

  4. Finish at the pivot. A star relay usually has no separate finish unit. On the Details tab, choose Last control in the Finish list, so the team's final punch at the pivot is its finish. See Starting or finishing at a numbered control.

  5. Create an individual class for the course and enter each team as one competitor, with the card they will share.

  6. Start the teams. The simplest start is a mass start for the class. If the teams start when they choose, with no start unit, choose First control in the Start list instead. Each team is then timed from its first punch on the course. The example above starts with a loop, so its first control is the first control of whichever loop the team ran first. Start the example at the pivot (90 97 96 90 …) if the teams should punch the pivot as they set off.

Manager refuses a common control that doesn't cut the course into at least two loops. One that only appears at the start or end of the course leaves a single loop, which can only be run one way.

Tip: Hand out maps with the loops in different orders, so teams spread out across the loops. Manager doesn't need to know which order each team was given.

On the day ​

  • Downloading. Download each team's card at the end as usual. A team that ran every loop is OK, whatever order they ran them in. A team that missed a control, or a whole loop, is a mis-punch, and the controls it missed are named just as on an ordinary course.
  • Direction counts. A loop is matched by its controls and their order, so 91 95 and 95 91 are two different loops, as they are two different legs on the map. A team that runs a loop backwards has missed it.
  • Splits are listed in the example's order, not the order the team ran the loops. Every team on the course lines up loop by loop.
  • Radio controls. A radio at the pivot shows each punch as it happens. If the course finishes at its last control, a radio punch there doesn't show the team as finished, because the pivot comes round again after every loop. The card download decides.
  • Nobody checks the order. As in MeOS, a team that follows a different team's order is still OK. This is what makes loops best suited to training, school and fun events rather than a championship.
  • Any number of loops. Manager reads the order of the loops from the card itself. It pairs each stretch between two pivot punches with the loop it matches best, across the whole card at once. That is right for every clean card, and for most cards with a mistake on them, such as a missed pivot punch that puts two loops in one stretch. When the reading still leaves a control missing, Manager tries other orders and keeps the best: every order on a course of up to seven loops, and above that one loop moved at a time. There is no limit on the number of loops.

Changing the course later ​

  • Re-importing the course file keeps Course with loops and the start and finish settings, because a course file from Purple Pen, OCAD or Condes has nowhere to record them. The loops are dropped only if the corrected course no longer comes back to the common control between them.
  • Orienteering JSON carries all three settings, so a star relay exported and imported as Orienteering JSON comes back as one.
  • A forked course (one with variations) can't also be a course with loops. Its variations already name every sequence.