Settings

The Settings dialog lets you customise TackTracker to suit your specific requirements. Click the Settings button at the top left of the window to open the dialog.

Changes to Settings take effect immediately and are remembered between TackTracker sessions as they are saved to disk in your My Tracks folder. (The Settings save file is My Tracks\backup\SaveData.xml.)

At the top of the Settings dialog are at least two tabs:

General Preferred player settings such as units

Landmarks Define fixed landmarks that occur in your race area

You may see one of the following tabs if you have the associated licence:

Club Tools Settings for Club Regatta licensed features, such as fleets and handicaps

Navigation Rally Settings for the Navigation Rally licensed feature. These are described in the Navigation Rally documentation.

General Settings

General settings include preferred units of measure for speed and distance and display and replay settings. Most are self documented, but Jury Mode deserves additional explanation:

TackTracker is sometimes used by a race jury as evidence in a protest. TackTracker's track display interpolates between track points to generate a smooth track, but this interpolation may incorrectly represent the true position of each boat. The purpose of Jury Mode is to present the data in the form of actual locations and timestamps, so the jury can assess the raw evidence for themselves.

Check the Jury Mode box to turn on Jury Mode. When finished, return to Settings and uncheck the Jury Mode box to turn it off.

Landmarks

Many locations have fixed or permanent marks and landmarks that impact the race course. You can define and manage these fixed marks in the Landmarks settings page. Landmarks cannot be used directly as course marks, but can be used to locate a course mark as it will "snap" to the landmark position when layed with the mouse.

The Landmarks page lists all defined landmarks, or you can choose to list those nearby to the the location currently shown on the map. You may select a landmark on the list and update its name, location and color. Click Apply after changing any values.

You may type the Lat, Lon coordinate values for the location, or use the Lay button to place the landmark on the map with your mouse.

Adding a Landmark

Click + New Landmark to create a new landmark. You will see the "Add a Landmark" dialog:

Type the landmark's Name, Latitude, Longitude and click Add.

If you don't know the Latitude and Longitude, you may search for the approximate location using the search box above. Type a nearby place name. You may need to supply the state or country to avoid ambiguity. For example, if you type rye, you will need to select from 11 different Rye's around the world. You can avoid ambiguity by typing rye, au, for example.

Using the search facilty will create the landmark in the approximate position. You will then need to go back and edit the landmark and use the Lay feature to precisely locate it.

Club Tools Settings

This tab will appear if you have a Club Regatta licence:

Fleets

You can manage multiple fleets in a single race. See Fleets.

Check the New races enable multiple fleets by default checkbox to enable fleets for all new races. If not checked, fleets will need to be manually enabled in the Race Editor Options tab for each race.

Default Handicap Settings

Select the default Handicap Mode used for calculating adjusted times. By far the most commonly used method is Time on Time (TCC).

Navigation Rally Settings

This tab will appear if you have a Navigation Rally licence:

There are many advanced settings here, which are relevant only to highly experienced clubs where the competitors are able to achieve very low scores. For clubs new to Navigation Rally, the default settings should work well and are a good place to start.

Setting	Default	Explanation
Show seconds in Schedule start column	False	When unchecked, rally start times are in whole minutes. Check this only if you need sub-minute start intervals.
Use Nautical Miles (NM) for Rally Distances	True	Most rally events are defined in NM. If unchecked, the default length units are used.
Use magnetic bearings for Rally Course	False	When unchecked bearings are GPS bearings. If checked, TackTracker will consult the internet to derive the magnetic declination for your location and bearings will be expressed as magnetic bearings.

Gates

Setting	Default	Explanation
Default Gate Offset	250m	The distance from the previous turning point or gate to a new gate being added
Default Gate Length	200m	The length of the new gate

Penalty Points

Setting	Default	Explanation
Miss Start Gate	100	The penalty for missing the start gate. i.e. Did not pass through the gate on or after the nominated start time.
Miss Other Gate	50	The penalty for missing a gate on the course. A gate miss is recorded when the boat does not pass through the gate on the correct leg.
Max Gate Score	300	The maximum penalty seconds for being early or late through a gate.
Multiply penalties by speed (m/s)	False	Adjust penalties to reward slower boats. For advanced rally teams only.
Apply Cross Track Distance (XTD) penalty	False	Increases the penalty by a factor of the crossing point distance from the centre of the gate. May be considered if advanced rally competitors are acheiving very low scores with the normal gate penalties.
Score rounding	1.00	At 1.00, penalties are awarded only for whole seconds early or late. At 0.8, penalties are awarded if at least 0.8 of a second early or late.
Use fractional scoring	False	If False, the penalty is the integral number of seconds early or late. If True, a fractional penalty is awarded, equal to the fractional seconds early or late. For example a boat 4.56s early will be awarded a penalty of 4.56.

Advanced

Setting	Default	Explanation
NM Decimal Places	3	The number of decimal places used when reporting distances
Local WGS-84 Ellipsoid Model Factors	1.000	Adjust the earth spherical model for distance calculations between points. Only relevant for very large course lengths.

Schedule

The Rally Schedule can incorporate custom columns with additional competitor information needed by the organisers. Up to two custom columns may be defined. Suggested column names are "Email" and "Phone", but these labels may be changed to whatever you require. The custom columns will appear in the Rally Schedule dialog and the Rally Schedule report.