Electric Flight Wizard (EFW)

Has your club ever considered hosting regional, national, or international competitions? Is there a need to organize a friendly in-house competition? Are you a national or international chief judge, or do you hold another position responsible for organizing and conducting model aircraft competitions? But wait—who compiles the list of participants, prepares the starting lists, handles frequency control, tabulates the results, and creates the rankings? Who ensures an overview and provides statistical analyses to support judges and pilots? Are you looking for an evaluation program that can be easily installed on any PC without additional software and offers you the following options:

The master data management feature allows you to enter

• pilots
• judges
• figures
• channels/frequencies
• Competition categories
• Model flying regions
• Clubs/Associations
• Under "Output," you can print address labels for pilots, judges, and club or association presidents.
• "Postal Code" provides all postal codes and locations in Switzerland (can be customized if desired).

Competition management allows you to:

• Defining the competition with various criteria for evaluation
• Entering pilots (from the master file)
• Entering judges (from the master file)
• Entering flight maneuvers (from the master file)
• Evaluations
• Rankings, interim rankings
• Output includes printing the list of participants, start lists, score sheets, detailed evaluations of individual flights, a certificate of recognition, and a summary of the competition (intended only for organizers and officials—not for participants!).

The program also allows you to define fixed-wing or helicopter competitions according to standard criteria as follows:

• Competitions can be flexibly defined with up to 4 rounds, discard results (Yes/No), 1,000-point scoring (rounded to whole points!), final round (automatic carryover of the 1,000-point score from the preliminary round to the final round!).
• Maneuvers can be individually defined and described by adjusting or defining the difficulty levels (K-factors); it is also possible to insert an image of the maneuver.
• Predefined regional, national, and international programs for helicopters are already available.
• Address lists and transmitter labels can be printed for registered pilots and judges.
• Judge evaluations are possible (comparisons/statistics).
• The completed rankings can be easily exported to MS Excel for further editing or sent via email.
• All reports can be printed or saved as PDF files, provided that a PDF writer combined with a PDF reader (e.g., Acrobat) is installed on the computer. These can be downloaded for free from the Internet today and allow for flexible document sharing.

- Your club logo will appear on the leaderboards and the printable certificates; it must be added to the program in the appropriate format beforehand.

- The program is professionally developed and runs smoothly on Mac and MS Windows systems. It is designed to be very user-friendly.

- Extensive documentation is available in the Help section.

- The program can be used for everything from simple club competitions to the scoring of national championships.

- Your club logo will appear on the leaderboards and the printable certificates; it must be added to the program in the appropriate format beforehand.

- The program is professionally developed and runs smoothly on Mac and MS Windows systems. It is designed to be very user-friendly.

- Extensive documentation is available in the Help section.

- The program can be used for everything from simple club competitions to the scoring of national championships.

Aigle-Bex
FAI Program B
AéRO Aéromodellisme Romand Ouest

Number of rounds: 3
Sat, June 24, 2006
Sun, June 25, 2006

If you're interested, I recommend the software product “Electric Flight Wizard” (EFW) from Software Factory. This program was developed by a software developer in close collaboration with active model aircraft pilots and experienced competition organizers. Even during

the software’s testing phase, various model aviators ran simulations of test competitions. Later, the program was also successfully tested “live” under field conditions. I had the opportunity to experience a “highlight” at the 2006 Swiss Championships in Aigle, where I used it to manage both the Swiss Championships and the second round of the Swiss Cup simultaneously. That means running three competitions at the same time—plus the final round for the F3C Swiss Championship standings—all on a single laptop. I recall the 2005 Swiss Championships in Oberönz, where 10 or more PCs were in use! The result was highly satisfying—not only for me, but also for the event hosts and organizers. Without this setup, there would likely have been one or two delays and some frantic scrambling. As an active judge in the model helicopter category and a co-organizer of various

competitions, I’ve focused my attention specifically on helicopter competitions. I’ve been looking for a program like this for a long time and was delighted to have the opportunity to help develop it. The model helicopter category is fully supported, ranging from friendly competitions like EHA to the new FAI programs in the 1000-class. The competitions well-known in Switzerland—including the valid FAI F3C programs—can be obtained from me, and the maneuvers can be imported very easily. CIAM has introduced a new scoring formula for FAI competitions. This formula uses a base value of 500, takes into account the total points awarded per round, and the number of pilots. This new formula is not yet integrated into the current version of EFW and has so far only been used at European and World Championships. This apparently makes sense when flying at different venues, and weather conditions also play a role. However, by exporting the data to Microsoft Excel, a comparison to the 1,000-point scoring system can be easily implemented. Anyone interested can contact me for support and a sample. Attempting to describe the full range of features would go beyond the scope of this article. A free demo version with all features is available for download online, limited to a single competition. This allows

allows interested users to get a first-hand look at the program. If you’re interested in the full version, the demo software you’ve been using will be “unlocked,” and all data you’ve already entered will be preserved. The cost for a single-user version is only CHF 350 or EUR 220. A full version is now also available for owners of FileMaker 8/8.5 for Fr. 500.–. These amounts must be transferred to the account specified on the website, after which the license key and instructions will be sent via email once payment has been received. A simple and straightforward process via the Internet and email!

For my part, I’ve found in Electric Flight Wizard (EFW) exactly the software I’ve been wishing for all these past years while evaluating numerous competitions. I think it’s a shame that modelers and clubs spend large sums on their hobby, yet such a powerful tool doesn’t find a place in their budget. In-house solutions built on MS Excel and MS Access—requiring hours of work by individual volunteers—are apparently still the preferred choice!

For more information, visit www.myprogram.ch/sofa.htm
Walter Heller, Chief Judge for the Northeast Switzerland (NOS) Region, CH-8645 Jona SG
walter.heller@hispeed.ch