Thanks for making this a great weekend

Wes Eargle · **Joined:** Mon Oct 27, 2003 9:47 am **Posts:** 3683

a) I'm really frickin' exhausted. Thanks to Karl and David for all of their work this weekend. I owe you huge.
2) We should have done something to improve the overlap today, I didn't realize until the middle of the second heat that we only had two cars on course at a time. It's something that will be an action item for future events. Thanks for not bitching to my face. :wink:

iii) ???
cuatro) I'd say that this is a great way to take a looooong vacation away from the sport.

Keith Vail · **Posted:** Sun May 16, 2010 9:40 pm

Big thanks for David, Wes, and Karl for making this weekend really fun. The long overlap did hurt stuff some in terms of how things dragged on.

I have to thank Rodney again for letting me run his Mustang. I thoroughly enjoyed it and had a ton of fun throwing the beast around. I just wish I hadn't gotten overzealous in a spot or two on my 3rd and 4th runs as the car had an easy 63 second run it in but I just couldn't quite get there with my dumb mistakes.

It is a complete 180 from my S2000 but in a way that I enjoyed. You put it in 2nd gear and just leave it there. Also torque is a wonderful thing that I had forgotten about. :lol:

Thanks again for the great course and a fun day overall.

Arthur McDonald · **Joined:** Fri Aug 29, 2003 1:54 am **Posts:** 2052

Wes Eargle wrote:

2) We should have done something to improve the overlap today, I didn't realize until the middle of the second heat that we only had two cars on course at a time.

T&S would have really struggled with more than 2 cars on course today. As it was, the rash of false finish timer trips in heat two kept us hopping.

I enjoyed the course, though it was too long for my little mind to hope to memorize. Thanks to Wes, David and all of the officers for putting on another great charity event.

ChrisSuich · **Posted:** Sun May 16, 2010 9:54 pm

Great course today. Thanks to all that help put on the weekend.

Here are a few photos I snapped in the 1st run group.

http://picasaweb.google.com/csuich/2010_0516JimmyV

Chris

Steven Carter · **Posted:** Sun May 16, 2010 10:05 pm

Thanks guys...tough event to manage with the weather and timing issues, but you pulled it off masterfully! Great work...glad to be part of a group that does this charity thing as a regularly schedule event. Kudos!

Gwen Habenicht · **Posted:** Sun May 16, 2010 10:06 pm

Thanks to all who made today another great one. I can't say enough about how much I liked the course. I never got all the dots connected into one run, but the cones just all seemed to be in the right place for me today. Thanks again.

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Sun May 16, 2010 10:36 pm

Thanks, everyone, for making the weekend a success!

I'm not sure what to make of how behind schedule we got. I think that a large number of walk-up registrants was a factor. That's a great problem to have, but I'm wondering if it had an adverse affect on the run group splits.

Now, the timing issues, that's something we're going to need to look at closely. I believe that we also had a higher than normal number of timing glitches at Danville in April, and we may have had some at Laurinburg too. Anyway, two events in a row is now a pattern, rather than a fluke, so I'm thinking about what might be causing it.

One way or the other, the lengthy event happened on my watch, so I'm sorry to those of you who had to stay longer than you'd hoped to.

I'm glad everyone liked the course. What I'm a little less glad about is the way I drove it. :oops:

As I often do, my first run out of the box was pretty tentative, and the time suffered badly. Runs 2 and 3 were faster - a lot faster - but I couldn't quite put a whole good one together. I found myself getting through one segment full throttle and really fast only to not slow the car down enough for the next element. I *thought* I was doing an okay job of looking ahead, but perhaps not. I also found that my control inputs got almost violent towards the end of the day, which is not the way to go fast in an S2000. My final "hail mary" was a scorcher, but I suppose anyone can go fast while knocking down four cones. Jeez. I thought I'd righted the cone hitting problem, so that was disappointing.

Having my codrivers discover that the front tires were starting to show signs of cord first thing in the morning probably did not help much. :oops:

Anyway, thanks to everyone who came out, supported a great cause, and lent a hand.

Arthur McDonald · **Joined:** Fri Aug 29, 2003 1:54 am **Posts:** 2052

Karl Shultz wrote:

Now, the timing issues, that's something we're going to need to look at closely. I believe that we also had a higher than normal number of timing glitches at Danville in April, and we may have had some at Laurinburg too. Anyway, two events in a row is now a pattern, rather than a fluke, so I'm thinking about what might be causing it.

Les and I vote for reinstating the covers over the timing heads and reflectors. The false trips seemed more frequent while the sun was shining in heat 2.

On the related note - for inattentive T&S workers like me: A nice enhancement to the T&S software would be a "That's too %#$& fast" alert. The T&S operator set a threshold time, and if the time logged is less than the threshold, a loud beep tells you to check for a false finish line trip.

MikeWhitney · **Joined:** Wed Aug 20, 2003 9:15 pm **Posts:** 4724

Quick note (it's late)

Take all the laser heads into a dim garage and power them up. Observe the intensity of the red dot. Mark the dimmest ones "use last" or pitch them. I had found that weak beams caused a lot of false triggers. There is a surprising amount of variation in the heads we have.

Next thing is to check the integrity of the extension cables. They wear out and get dirty and cause low voltage to the heads.

Karl if you wanna drag all that stuff over to my garage we'll test it out and rate/rank everything....

ChrisSuich · **Posted:** Mon May 17, 2010 6:52 am

One of the cables going to the finish head has a lot of road rash. I found the rash as we were working the laser problem at the beginning of the day. Unfortunately we did have another cable to swap then. The rain may have contributed the afternoon timer problems.

We definitely need to replace that cable. We should consider replacing others on a regular basis. All the spoolling, unspoolling, tugging, dragging, driving over the cables can take it toll on the wires.

JohnByers · **Posted:** Mon May 17, 2010 7:36 am

Great event everyone! I had a blast! I felt like I never was pushing the car this past weekend but finally put a clean run together on the last run. All in all a great way to spend a Sunday and for a great cause!

BriceJohnson · **Joined:** Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:33 am **Posts:** 2230

fun event, despite the rain, it did dry up and the course was pretty quick. I SHOULD have beaten Marcus, but I didn't

. It DID make me feel better to see Lee put down such a smoking fast run on his last one. At least I knew my 64.7 (if it had been clean) wouldn't have been enough to win my class.

MarcusMcRae · **Posted:** Mon May 17, 2010 8:47 am

BriceJohnson wrote:

I SHOULD have beaten Marcus, but I didn't

.

Did you get a dry run?

I trust you made a $20 donation

Keith Quistorff · **Posted:** Mon May 17, 2010 10:20 am

One thing the last two events had in common were very long distance between the bus and start/finish lines, meaning very long lengths of cables daisy-chained together were necessary to connect the start/finish timing equipment to the bus. Given this and Mike's comments about voltage issues with long/connected cable lengths (and possibility of lasers being down on output), seems logical that the past two events would reveal these types of problems.

As a member of the T&S team, I STRONGLY prefer events where the start (especially) and finish are close enough to the bus to see car numbers (without needing binoculars, etc.) - considering how busy it can get in T&S, there are way too many opportunities for mistakes when you require outside assistance or special equipment to see car numbers of a car at the start line.

Dustin Fredrickson · **Posted:** Mon May 17, 2010 11:25 am

Before anybody asks, I have the club computer, it has the results, and I haven't sent them to the webmasters yet (so blame me).

<somebody else> for president 2011!

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Thanks for making this a great weekend

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