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I tried out 3 of the "Virtual Orienteering" options that are available, UsynligO (https://usynligo.no/ ), GPS Orienteering (http://www.hippsomapp.se/?lang=en) , and MapRunF (http://maprunners.weebly.com/maprunf.html). I think they all work similarly well at the actual orienteering part of the process. All three rely on your phone GPS to identify where you are, and have some settings to help set up how "picky" they are about the accuracy of your punches. So they perform about the same on the course. I'll just highlight (mostly) differences below. • UsynligO and MapRunF run on iPhone and Android, GPS Orienteering is Android only as far as I can tell. • UsynligO pushes your results to a central server and displays them for others to see on your phone, but does not put them up on a website (that I have seen). You can share/save/email/whatever the results from your phone though and it creates an IOF Results XML which can be loaded into Attackpoint/Routegadget. • GPS Orienteering and MapRunF also push the results to a central server and has them viewable on the web. You can't save them out to a results file as far as I can tell, we would have to copy/paste results to our own results pages. They also have kinda neat results viewers in the app that show your routes, etc. • All three allow you to save out your route track as a GPX file or upload to Strava (where you can save out a GPX file). • UsynligO lets you upload events through a web interface. I don't think there is any way to make an event private or require a special code to access the event. Events require that you upload a PDF "map". I think we might be able to password protect it or put a placeholder PDF if we didn't want to share the actual course map. • GPS Orienteering and MapRunF force you to create events in the app on your phone and push them up to the server from there. GPS Orienteering has an option to make the events private and will give you a passcode that you use to access a specific event. • UsynligO and GPS Orienteering work with formats we are used to using and can be created with Open Orienteering Mapper + PurplePen. • MapRunF is a little trickier and uses KMZ/KML files for the map and course which are possible to create but take more effort. • GPS Orienteering has the friendliest UI on the phone app. • MapRunF has a ton of settings/options that can be a little confusing. • GPS Orienteering and MapRunF have a way to "manually" punch a control or fix your results afterwards if you had trouble punching but were sure you are in the right place.

I just went to Tom Sawyer today and tried out the UsynligO app and it worked very well. It was slow to buzz at the first control, but at the rest it buzzed on my approach to the control point. I liked that it told you it found the correct number, and what the next number was. The app was simple to use. To set-up a course, it looks like a meet director just exports a Purple Pen .xml file into it - simple enough. The app works on both Apple and Android. The catch will be how do we keep the product (the map) protected for paying participants. I think we still need something physically there to give the added "excitement" that I am in fact at what I was looking for that we all need - be it an orienteering flag, or an ammo box in geocaching. For that, I suggest we use flagging tape. I liked Chris' idea for playing cards at first, but I think if they are out there for a week, they could get soggy, blown away, or people think someone is hanging junk and takes them down. Remember, the beginner course is easy and probably near trails or common areas the general public would see. The other nice thing about flagging tape is it "looks" like it is supposed to be there in a forest - people think that the rangers or grounds crew are marking something. The meet director pulls the tapes after one week. To deal with the GPS not working correctly, or for people who just can't figure out the app, I would suggest leaving a long tail on side of the flagging tape, and tie 1-6 knots spaced out down the tail. The number of knots would be the check number that the participant can write down to confirm that they were there. Each control does not need a unique number, like 101, 102, etc. These are just a poor man's old school pin punches that only the meet director or results chair know the correct number number of knots per each specific control. For reporting, the UsynligO app allows you to export the total results with splits in .xml format. And we can still use Routegadget for uploading GPS tracks, which UsynligO will be able to export GPS tracks from the app. OCIN is using a simple Google Form for completion submission on their website - maybe we have this option for the people that had trouble with the app and are submitting manually? But overall, I like the ease of this app.

Before I get started, last weekend I used the UsynligO app to go orienteering in Turkey Run Park. Overall it was a very good experience considering there were no controls to find, only features, it's a pretty neat concept. After tweaking the GPS distance settings I was able to claim control locations much easier. If you are expecting speed runs, you will probably be disappointed because sometimes I had to wander around the control for what seemed like a long time before my phone acknowledged I had found it. I've done some online research to see what other clubs are doing during this ordered isolation period. • Victoria Orienteering is using the MapRunF app to put on events (https://vico.whyjustrun.ca/events/view/4170) • British Orienteering has a very in depth draft plan on how to reintroduce orienteering (https://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/document/4dc3d6d72fb46d5f2c6e54033ddcc939.pdf/Back%20to%20Orienteering%20Action%20Plan%20v3.02.pdf) • Northeast Ohio Orienteering is putting on a simplified kind of Urban-O concept where you have to answer questions at the control locations - but instead of being outside, you use Google Street View (http://neooc.com/2020-virtual-cuyahoga-fallsquest/) I think UsynligO is a very viable option especially if we use streamers. I was thinking that if people don't have a good enough phone, or don't want to take their phone, we could add something at the control people would have to write down to verify they found it. I was thinking something as easy as each control having a letter, (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-3-in-Vinyl-Letters-and-Numbers-Kit-39793/303975024) or even perhaps a playing card stapled to the streamer? (I've got TONS of old playing cards that I have no idea what to do with)