Hi,

Apologies for the late publication of this Championship Summary; other things interrupting the world and the Crow's activities (see below).

The Thalamorph and Breckland rally results are now final. Congratulations to the podium placements:
Breckland Rally: 1. Marcus Duyzend  2. Andrew Green  3. Glynn Hayward
Thalamorph Rally: 1. Marcus Duyzend  2. Robert Owen  3. Monica Dowson

I judge the success of a season's TTR by how much has been raised for charity. With £3,000 donated for 2019/2020 it's been a pretty good year. Almost twice the earnings from the previous season. 125 (2019/2020) paid competitors to 60 (2018/2019), but below the peak of 2017/2028 (£5,000 and 189 paid). My thanks to everyone for their generosity.

The revisions to the format: splitting Real-Time/Plotting events, reducing Legs from 12 to 6, and increasing the event duration found favour. And the pop-up help, helped!

There were very few reports of system errors. The plotting and real-time interfaces are well-tuned now. The new, albeit basic, Portal and Forums aided communication.

Hardly any Route Card gremlins; the setters did a great, self-sacrificing job and allowed me to concentrate on administration and coding matters. I am very grateful for their efforts.

I thought return rates i.e. how many leg attempts were made as a percentage of total possible attempts, were lower than previous years. But if you look at the new column on the Event List page you'll see that the "norm" of 50/60% declining by rounds to 30/40% was achieved.

Click for the Final standings for the 2019/2020 Championships.

Here's the Roll of Honour for the season:

Plotting Championship
Masters
1st Marcus Duyzend, 2nd Monica Dowson, 3rd Phil Robbins
Experts
1st Steve Gaddy, 2nd Clive Hodgson, 3rd Matthew Mantle
Novices
1st John Murdoch
Beginners
1st Michael Cochrane, 2nd Phil Carpenter, 3rd Rosemary Mead

Real-Time Championship
Masters
1st Chris Bean, 2nd Alex Hoult, 3rd Marcus Duyzend
Experts
1st Gordon Blunkett, 2nd Andy Elcomb, 3rd Matthew Mantle
Novices
1st Nigel Fraser
Beginners
1st Michael Cochrane

Combined Plotting & Real-Time Championship
1st Marcus Duyzend, 2nd Robert Owen, 3rd Andrew Green

With income of £3,000.49, £3,000.00 paid to charities, fees still due to Google, and no sponsorship, there is no money available for awards. In the past I have paid for these personally, but the costs, particularly when postage is added, is more than my pocket can accommodate. However there are two awards to present:

The CrowKup Trophy
Back in 2007 when I resurrected the Cloverleaf Rally as an historic regularity event, I bought a huge trophy called the "CrowKup" which was only ever awarded twice for the best regularity timing performance. Since then it's been gathering dust in the cupboard under the stairs. I have made this THE prestious trophy for Table-Top Rallyists and decided to award it to the best performance in the annual Championship.
I think my nominated winner might be pretty obvious. Marcus Duyzend won 3 of the 8 events, was overall Plotting Champion and came 3rd in the Real-Time Championship. Congratulations. When I am allowed back into society I will get the trophy engraved. Not sure at the moment when or how the trophy can be personally presented.

The Rookie Reward
By coincidence the only other award on offer is that kindly donated by Marcus Duyzend. The trophy has been awarded to the Beginner or Novice with the best single-leg score(s) across all TTR 2019-20 Plotting events. Michael Cochrane is the clear winner with 5 clean legs.

World Rankings
These have been updated. After the Breckland Rally, Robert Owen's brief visit to World #1 was taken over by Alex Hoult. Only for an hour though, because after the Thalamorph results, Marcus Duyzend climbed back to the top.
The current podium rankings are: 1. Marcus Duyzend  2. Robert Owen  3. Monica Dowson.

The Future
Next season 'd really like to get back to the peak of almost 200 entries and £5,000 raised from two years ago. I think it's a matter of spreading the word wider, so with me trying to reach out to other mapping, puzzling and navigating competitors, and you telling your mates perhaps we'll get there.

System-wise there's a lot going on. The Portal and Forums will have more functionality, but the biggest change will be on the mapping side.

The current Ordnance Survey mapping host (called OpenSpace) has been earmarked (by OS) to be replaced for a few years now. There's no current deadline for its demise, but I have been gradually converting the TTR software to the new host (called OS Maps). The OS vector and street maps will disappear, but in their place will be other scales and map styles, including 1:25000. Plus, testing has shown that the delivery of these on-screen maps is quicker and more reliable.

For many years my geocaching software has also been using Google maps and Open Street maps. I'll be including these in the TTR software to add more variety to the plotting and real-time challenges.

Expect all the above changes to be available for the next winter Championships, assuming I and the world survive the current crisis.

BUT, here's some immediate news ...

La Slog
There's been quite a number pleas for some TTR events over the coming stay-at-home months. I was looking forward to a break from TTR admin, but feel obliged to make available some virtual rally competitions as my contribution to keeping you  locked-down.

I'm working on something now called La Slog a parody of the famous Le Jog rally. I'm hoping to roll out the event in April. It will run from Land's End to John o'Goats over 100 Legs; each leg will be about 20-30 miles long. Most of the legs will be Plotting Legs and very straightforward. You'll be given the start and end controls and a few via points, which will be pre-marked on the map or will be basic instructions like spot heights. You'll have to tackle the legs in sequence. They will become available on a daily basis, so should keep you active for over three months.

I'm probably going to set the entry fee at around £50. And of course all the fees will be donated to the usual four charities. The charities are suffering in the current climate and need an injection of funds.

There's a lot of work involved in bringing this to you. If you intend to take part (or rather at least pay the entry fee), please register for the event. Keep checking the TTR home page for an announcement. DON'T PAY YET. Unless I get at least 50 committed-to-pay registrants, I won't run the event and don't want to hassle of refunds.