Your Date Format: The program requires that your date format is set to MM/DD/YYY. If your date is not set to this format, you will get an error when calculating races. To reset you date format go to Start\Settings\Control Panel\Regional Settings\Date and change you format.

Your Time Format: PC's have two ways of showing time: 24 hour format or AM/PM. Both will work in the program but the display and printing of results will look much better if the 24 hour format is used. The AM/PM format tends to run into the next field owing to its length. To change go to Start\Settings\Control Panel\Regional Setting\Time. The time setting you must select or if not there, type in is: HH:mm:ss - The uppercase and small letters way of typing is important!

Your Screen Settings: Your PC's screen can be set to 3 settings, all of which might not be available to you depending on your PC hardware. These are:

640 by 480: With this setting your screen will look very bad indeed. Should your screen be set to this one, the program will give you a warning advising you to adjust it to 800 by 600. Please do so. You will immediately see a big improvement.

800 by 600: This is the setting most computers run on and the one that you should at least use.

1024 by 768: If your PC has this setting try to use it because then you will get the best screens for the program.

To Adjust your Screen: Go to Start/Settings/Control Panel/Display/Settings. There you will see the wording Desktop Area with a bar that you can move with your mouse. Move it and then click on apply.

Here you select the level you want to operate on. With the Division and Federation/Union levels you can import the results from the Club level. Both these levels operate the same so it does not matter which one you use. Normally you would use the Federation/Union level if there were no Section level.

The Combine level is used to import results from the Federation/Union level. This combine Federation/Union results.

With one program you can operate on all of these levels at the same time by selecting the appropriate levels every time. Should you wish to do the results of say 3 Clubs and that of a Union, you only need to load copies of the Winbird.exe file in two further directories, open a sub-directory called WinClub and operate two of the clubs in those directories.

You must also choose the country, as this will provide you with the Provinces of your country. Once you have selected your province, you do not have to select the country every time as it is then no longer needed. Even should you forget to select the correct country, you can switch the provinces inside the program.

This is the Main Menu for the program. All actions branch off from this window. It also advises you on:

1. What level you are operating on.

2. The name of the organization you are working in.

3. The path of where your data files reside on you hard drive.

The Left side options are directed at day to day operations whilst the right side is to do with once off settings and initial data entering.

Like in any program, you need to first enter in the basic data before you can start.

Enter all your members/flyers. With each you must give an unique Member Code. This is an unique code that the program uses throughout when doing its operations in the background. This applies from Club level through to Combine level. So please ensure that you plan your member codes that they are all unique in all of these levels. Should say two members have the same Member Code in two Unions and you combine these results in the Combine level, the program will take these two as being the same member/flyer! Please plan this carefully. An idea would be for the Federation/Union to allocate certain blocks to each Club like 100 to 200 to Club 1 and 200 to 300 to Club 2 and so forth.

Another aspect to keep in mind is that the program sorts the Members/Flyers according to these Member Codes. If you want the Member/Flyer list from which you will be selecting members many times in the program, to be in alphabetic order, you can say allocate the Member Codes by using the first letter of the surname and then followed by a number (B1200) or any other means that will have the same result. Once again, plan and be consistent. It also makes provision for co-ordinates of the member's loft to be entered. This is optional but makes the calculation and changes to distances very easy if used. Latitude and longitude is required. Should you fly from a new Distance Point/Race Station, all you then need do is to enter the co-ordinates of the new point/station and the program will calculate the distance for all members within seconds. The same applies should the co-ordinates of a member changes or a new member is added.

Provision is also made for a field called 'Group'. This is a 1-character field that will print on your Race Results after the Member/Flyers name. It can be used as you please. Our Club is divided into three groups, A, B and C. It is handy to see how a group has performed on the Race Result.

These are the liberation points that your birds will be flying from. It is important to note that this is the name of the town/place and NOT the name of your race as on your Race Program for the season. You might have a race called Colesburg Derby but the Distance Point/ Race Station name will be only Colesburg. You can fly many races from the same Distance Point/Race Station with different race names but the liberation point will remain Colesburg. Please do not confuse this with the Race Name of the race. These are different concepts and critical to the program! Once again it is optional to enter the co-ordinates but recommended. You can only enter your season's Race Program if you have Distance Points/Race Stations to select from.

These are the official races that you will fly during the season as decided by your organization. This normally changes every season and for this reason needs to be changed every season. You first select the Distance Point/Race Station to use for the Race Program Race that you want to enter. Once selected, you can then name your Race whatever you want to. Lastly you need to specify the kind of race it will be: a) Normal Race Program Race - Count for points and is your normal races for the season b) Additional Program Races - Sometimes an organization has a series of races in addition to its normal program races which counts separately, points wise and does not form part of the normal competitions or c) Special Races - From time to time a special race is organized that is not part of the normal race program and is a one off. It does not count for any points.

Please note that the race name you use will also be used by the program as the file name for that race. Because of this certain characters may NOT be used in the race name. They are amongst others: . , / \ ( ) The safest route is NOT to use these odd characters - stick to plain characters of the alphabet! Spaces is allowed. You will get an error that your race name could not be found when you want to calculate that race should it contain characters that are illegal. Go back and rename your race and the error disappears.You can change, add or delete any of these names at any time.

Consists of Organization Name, Race Secretary name and telephone number, Club names(Division, Federation/Union level), Fed names(Combine level), Provinces and Seconds allowed per hour.

Organization Name: This is the name that will appear on the top of all your results.

Club Names: This must be kept short as only 12 characters of the name will appear in the Section, Federation/Union results. Pretoria Racing Pigeon Club could be entered as Pretoria only. The Club on their side MUST use exactly the same name as the Section and or Federation/Union. In our example, Pretoria Club must enter their Organization Name as Pretoria. If they do not, the program will see it as two separate clubs! The same applies to Federation/Union names and the Fed names used by the Combine. Computers work on exact matches. Even uppercase and small letters is seen as different names. A space will also be seen as different. THEY MUST BE EXACTLY THE SAME IN ALL RESPECTS!

Seconds per hour: This is the number of seconds that your organization allows for a clock to be out before penalties are imposed. If the seconds per hour is say 3 seconds per hour, this means that the clock variance allowed will be 48 seconds if the clock ran for 24 hours. If a clock is 49 seconds slow, the program will make that clock double, that is 98 seconds slow and do the velocity calculation on 98 seconds slow and not the actual 49 seconds. If a clock is 49 seconds fast, the program will change the clock variation to 0 seconds and to the velocity calculation on 0 seconds.When you change the Club Name during the season, the program will change that name on all the results already entered at that stage. The same applies when you change the Organization Name. To add a club during the season, go to Fix Information and add the club.

As mentioned, distances can be entered manually for each member or done quickly by using co-ordinates. It is recommended that you use the WGS84 formula at all time when calculating distances on co-ordinates. The Clarke formula was used previously but is no longer used. Whenever any changes are made to any co-ordinates, you must run the calculate option to update the distances. The program will warn you when you calculate races and a member has a 0 distance. GPS can be used to determine co-ordinates because as from May 2000 the error readings that were previously experienced have been removed.

There are three categories you can make use of:

These work on the traditional basis of allocating points to calculate schemes. With this I mean that the number of places you allocate will determine the points. Should you give 50 places, the first bird will get 50 points, the second bird 49 points, the third bird 48 points and so forth. You give the Scheme a name and thereafter you will be presented with choices on Races, Members, Birds and Basis for Points allocation to build the scheme you want. You are provided the building blocks to built with and not predefined fixed schemes. Once you created a new scheme, the program will immediately calculate that scheme for all races already flown at that stage. Thereafter the calculation and updating of the schemes already created will be done whenever you exit after entering or importing a race. You also have the option to recalculate all schemes at any stage from scratch.

Once you have defined the Normal or Progressive Pools you use at your organization, these will come up as a Nomination option when you calculate races every week. This means you define it once and thereafter use it every week. When printing race results you will have to option to print the pool results either directly after the Race Result or Separately.

Here you are presented with schemes that must be accepted as they are with no option to make changes to them. This includes Inter Club Competitions of which you have 3 options.

Here you can print general report like Distances, Member Register, Bird Register and others. This list will be added to as additional reports are added.

This feature has as its goal for you to transfer data between PC's. With this you can transfer files between the Federation/Union and Clubs for instance. Data need only be captures on one PC and thereafter you can transfer it to any PC you want. No need to retype data over again. The same applies to when a Club wants to use more than one PC to calculate their results. Each PC captures certain results and once done, transfer the race results to update all the PC's with the full race result. The program always checks to ensure that no data is duplicated. Should the data record already exist, it will not write that record again. So if you are not sure if you have already transferred that data, no harm will be done if you do it again.

You have the choice to apply strict checking that only registered birds for a member/flyer may partake in a race or not. Should you choose that only registered birds may fly, the program will not allow a bird into the result if it is not registered to that Member/Flyer. Regardless of your choice, the program will automatically register every bird that you enter when entering birds for a race. This will assist you, as very soon you will be able to select the member's bird from a list instead of entering the same detail of the bird week after week. Provision is also made for members flying two teams.

From this window you can do everything without leaving this window. In the left-hand corner there are a list of all the available options available. You can at any stage select any of these. These include Select a new Race, Select Clock Detail to use, Get a Member/Flyer, Select a Nomination which includes pools, Add a new Nomination, Change existing Clock Detail, Recalculate a Race, Import Electronic Clock etc.

The important aspects that need to be understood is the following:

This is the time period from when the clocks were closed the previous evening and when the clocks were opened the next morning. The program simply takes this time period off the flying time of the bird when the velocity is calculated. Whatever rules applies within you organization must be used based on this knowledge. Let's use an example: The clocks closed at 18h00 the previous evening and opened at 06h00 the next morning. Flyer A clocked a bird at 22h00 the previous evening. For the program to calculate the speed correctly, the clock time for Flyer A must be entered as 06h00 and NOT 22h00 otherwise he will beat many birds clocked the previous evening! Remember his flying time is the time he clocked MINUS the Nighttime. Domestic considerations like moving of the time clocks closed and opened must be taken into consideration when deciding on the clock time to use for Flyer A. If you know how the program does the calculation, you can work out what to do. The Federation/Union must advise all clubs what the nighttime will be so that everybody uses the same time. Should the race go over more than one night, the nighttime of every night must be added together to give a total nighttime to deduct.

The program will overwrite an existing record that has the same Letters, Year and Ring/Band No. If any of these three items differ (even if it is a space that differs) the program will take it as a different bird and add a new record. I mean it must be EXACLTY the same! For this reason the program will convert any small letters typed in to uppercase. This has far reaching implications. Should you use a space for the one race and not in the other, the program will take it as two different birds, which means that for the Best Bird scheme that bird will not get its full points. You MUST ensure that you enter birds on a set pattern and consistently the same. The following two differ: 'SA FEDD' and 'SA FEDD'. The first has 1 space and the second 2 spaces! The 'D' for Derby birds has the same problem. Some people enter the 'D' with the Ring/Band No and others with the Letters. Whatever you do: BE CONSISTANT!

Once you have created the scheme in Create Schemes and Competitions or any other scheme for that matter, you must not type this scheme as a nomination. The program will take care of all schemes created and do the calculation in the background. The only time created schemes will appear in the nomination selection (provided by the program - not by you) will be when you created Pools, Nominated Birds or Ace Bird. Under no circumstances must you enter any created scheme name under nominations - the program will do that as and when needed.

The program does the calculation of speed when it exits the Seconds edit box. This means that whenever you want to recalculate the speed of a bird that you have already entered and made some changes, click on the Seconds edit box and then press TAB. This will recalculate the speed on the information then present AND write the record to file if no nominations are available for selection. If there are nominations available for selection. The program will first prompt you if you want to add a nomination to this bird before writing it to file in this instance.

Whenever you enter in the Member Code or select a member from the race result, the program will display all the birds entered for that member/flyer at the bottom of the screen. No editing can be done on these birds and the display is for information only. Should you want to make changes to a bird, click on it in the result window. The detail of that bird will then be displayed in die edit portion where changes can be made.

Import Electronic Clocks

Provision is made for the import of Tipes, Benzing, Tauris and Unicon electronic clocks by clicking on that option in the Select Options. The process consists of you first reading the data from the clock to the PC's hard drive or stiffy. You read in all the clocks and thereafter import it into the program itself. Complete help is provided in the program for the detail of this operation.

Under Import Window and Dos files you can import any file from any location into the program. Use this option to draw in results from Clubs. The difference between this option and Copy to Stiffy is that Copy to Stiffy only writes to and from drive A: whilst this option reads from any device. The name of the file must be exactly the same with Copy to Stiffy whilst in this option it may differ. You should therefor be careful that you import to the correct file. It is recommended that you draw in all files via this option. It also creates the Race file should it not exist when you import a race. Should you have by accident imported the wrong file, you can even reverse the operation.

You can delete all the data files and let the program create new empty files or clear data for the season where it then leaves your Member/Flyer Register, Race Stations, Bird Register and other fixed information ready for the new season.

Before clearing the data for the season, it is recommended that you copy the data of the previous year to another directory. This will enable you to operate on last year's data to print results or whatever. This means that you can build up directories for every season and have complete access to it at any time. To do this, open a new directory, say 'Winbird1999' and a sub-directory called 'WinClub' or 'WinDiv' or 'WinFed or 'WinComb' depending on the level you operated on. Copy the file Winbird.exe to 'Winbird1999' and all the data files to 'WinClub' etc.

In Transfer Results you can send results and other files via the Internet to your higher organization and to the National Result Website. You click on the files you want to send and the program will open your normal e-mail program with the address, heading and message already entered. You must then manually attach the files listed and send the e-mail.