While sending out scoring spreadsheets for seeded MOM, I got a request for a spreadsheet to set up the flight groups for matrix MOM. I don't know how many are interested, since matrix MOM is not flown too often, but I thought I'd post this comment.
There's no need for a computer to set up the flight groups for matrix MOM, since the process is easily done by hand. If there are frequency conflicts, it gets more complicated, and a computer program could be used to do optimal grouping, but let's stick to the simple case. The process is as follows: First, determine the number of flyers in each group. This will depend on the number of winches available. Then, give each flyer a unique identifying number, and set the groups by permuting the numbers. It's easiest to explain with a simple example. Suppose there are 16 flyers and you have four winches. Then you number the sixteen flyers like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 20, 30, 40, 100, 200, 300, 400, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000. The first digit goes only up to 4 because there are 4 in a flight group. If there were to be 5 in a group, it would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 etc. Then make as many numbers as possible that do not contain the same pair of digits. In this case, there are sixteen such numbers: 1111 2222 3333 4444 Groups for round 1 1234 2341 3412 4123 Groups for round 2 1341 2412 3123 4234 Groups for round 3 1412 2123 3234 4341 Groups for round 4 To interpret this, read each digit as the ID number of a flyer. For example, the first group in round 4 is 1412. That means that it consists of flyer 1000, flyer 400, flyer 10 and flyer 2. You don't have any flyers with numbers containing more than four digits, so you can have only four rounds before you start having duplication in the groups. If you had twenty (or more) flyers, you could have five rounds, and so on. Of course, there are other four-digit numbers using 1, 2, 3, and 4, but they all contain one or more pairs of digits that are already used in the set shown (unless I made a mistake, which is certainly possible). With a little experimentation, you can see what happens if there are frequency conflicts, figure out the tradeoffs between group size and number of rounds, and so forth. You can see that it's easier to get conflict-free groups for a big contest than for a small one, because the number in a group is small compared to the number of flyers. Of course, small contests are usually flown as seeded MOM, so this isn't a problem. RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
