A Better Control Card
by Harold Bridge

Of the 7 control cards for 2002 that were returned to me the other day, 2 appear somewhat different from the others. They were ones I designed myself and I think they have benefits not contained in the "normal" cards.
Our standard format has the column sequence as as follows:
Distance (km) - Control Open - Control Close - Location - Signature - Time of Passage

1. Control cards have more longtitudinal space than transverse space and we can save on the latter by only having one control time column which shows both open and close times under "Control Open". Also, for the elderly randonneur, there is a benefit in making room to use a bigger font than has been the case so far.

2. It is normal, when signing for something, in this case a time of day, to write the time down before signing. Also, for the benefit of gas station attendants and convenience store staff the time of arrival should be next to the signature or stamp column.

3. In order to relate the actual time of the rider's arrival at a control to the time limits the Control Open column should be next to the time of arrival column.

From all this we can see the following column sequence has benefits:

Examples (pdf):
Control Card from "Make-up" 200 km Brevet and Control Card from "Make-up" 600 km Brevet