Just how many faults can you get?

Inspired by a conversation at a judges' training day...

In an agility round, we could have up to 20 obstacles. We need weaves, as well as a dogwalk, A-frame, and seesaw. That's 4 of our 20 obstacles - everything else can be jumps.

• Refusals - we can have 2 (without being eliminated) - 10 faults
• Dogwalk - can miss the up and the down - 10 faults
• A-frame - same as dogwalk - 10 faults
• Seesaw - same as the dogwalk and the A-frame plus you can fly this one - 15 faults
• Weaves - 5 faults
• Jumps - 16 potential knocked poles - 80 faults

Obviously this is just faults on the main equipment, but even still, we've got 130 faults up for grabs there...

Where's champ at?

Quick map to show where 2019 champ qualifiers are happening. Hopefully it's mostly right.

Based on the official KC list of qualifiers and on info from agilitynet.

How long is the contact equipment?

Short answer:

• The dogwalk is just over 10.5m long (10.58m to be precise). Lowering it by 6 inches only made it a tiny bit longer (12cm / 5”).
• The A-frame is 4.3m long.
• The seesaw is about 3.4m long (depending on the height)

An interesting (maybe?) fact about the seesaw, because agility people love talking about seesaws.
The lowest permissible height for a seesaw is the height of the new (2019) dogwalk, while the highest permissible height is that of the old (pre-2018) dogwalk.

Long answer:

The Judges’ Guide to Equipment just states heights of obstacles and lengths of planks, but it’s obviously quite useful to know the length ‘on the ground’ of this stuff, so that we can work out what we can fit where when we are designing courses.

The dogwalk was recently lowered, and the sloping planks do now take up more space, as measured along the ground - but only about 6cm each. A 1.2m high dogwalk is 10.58m long measured on the ground. 

The A-frame is 4.3m long. This is the nice easy one.

The seesaw is about 3.4m long - I say "about" because the height of the seesaw isn't specified exactly, it just has to be between 61cm and 68.5cm tall at the pivot point. As the pivot point is halfway up, this means the height of the seesaw to the end of the plank is between 1.22m and 1.37m (a 15cm window).

Mathsy answer:

Dogwalk - full length is 3.66 + 2x

Aframe - full length is 2y

Seesaw - full length is z (but this changes depending on height!)