Why 500

When you input finish positions for boats in a race, a message like FR.*.W1.Bib1.RV=500 will be created. This happens if you - in application FR01 - select cell 1 in the grid on page Timing, and then push space bar or press Enter.

The message contains an assignment of type RaceValue (RV) to Bib1 (bow number 1) in W1 (race of Wettfahrt 1, here we have a German expression!), related to the anonymous division (class of boat *) in name space FR (Fleetrace).

The purpose of this is the recording of the finish for bow number 1. If you keep track of correct current finish positions of the boats you can input these manually instead of the 500 before you manually send the message. The trick here is that you don’t have to know which finish position the boat needs to be assigned. The 500 is too big for sure, so the application will use the next free position.

How you create a message is unimportant. On page Keying (in the application) you enter a bow number, then press Enter. In other variations of the FR application you can send a message over the network.

It would be possible to hide the display of the message, but I want to show how the application works.

A note about the context: When you input finish positions you should be in strict input mode, this is the standard and I assume this is the case.

With R- and R+ you can change the current race. The button in between shows the currently selected race. Following the selection of the race you need to click on the bow number and hit space bar, in order to generate a finish. Easy!

There will be variations of the method of input for finish positions, but the format of the message has been fixed. Instead of 500 you can input 1000, just ensure that the entered finish position is bigger then the actual one!

This is one of the spots where the application tries to be clever. Another spot is where you edit an already present finish position, e.g. in the grid on page Event. There it will adjust the following positions - but only mode Strict.