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Ah, I thought it was a NICE change and a very well run event. I would just like to make comments about it as I saw it:

- The B-line of the second run group was UBER slow. I don't know what happened, but Line A was 2-3 times bigger, and it moved MUCH quicker than the B-line. Heck, I thought it was time for me to run again, the B-line hadn't made it through its 1st group yet.

- The speakers in the pits was a GREAT idea.

- Why was the course so short? Laurinburg is one of the 2 places we go where we can have a LONG course. I was sorta disappointed to go there and run a 40-second course. While I am not saying the course was terrible, I am wondering why a short course was designed when we are about to go to Greenville where a short course is a given? With 145 people and 6 worker stations and the wireless timers + LONG course possibilities, it seemed like a let down. I am all for technical courses, but only Laurinburg and Sanford allow for long course configurations. Any reason for the setup the way it was? Danville, Greenville and Rockingham are all short courses... two of which on TERRIBLY slick surfaces.

- New Azeni tires (RT-215) suck (and my 'what if' this week). GREAT job by Marcus (my STU competition) as he hit our 41.9 goal, and I never qute made it there. He did it all on 225 stock RE070s against my 245s. THAT is talent and I salute you!!

- Fire Ants == Bad

- Great turnout, and the cars and drivers seem to me like they are getting much faster. Very impressed.

- 91.5 -- Is this the only way to get times? To me, if I am doing a run, and I DONT get my time, I am in trouble. I need to know if I ran clean -- 100% -- as this lets me know how 'loose' I can be with my next runs. Maybe it is just my 'n00b' opinion, but without CH 7 on the radio doing scoring, and FM being the only way I can get times (and 'unoffical' times), I am more or a fan of sticky notes with my times on it. If we are going to have THAT many people and only 6 stations, it seems like we should have the ability to get our EXACT times and scores as we finish. I don't see why it should be a hard thing to do (from my perspective), and it seems likea good step to take. Any views either way? Just my 2-cents.


The event today felt VERY well put together, and VERY well orchistrated. I liked the flow of the whole event, and I am ready to see if I can improve next event.


Great job guys!!

- brian

Disclaimer 1- This is all meant in an upbeat and happy/positive manner. If it isnt taken in such as light, it was all a farce, and you read it wrong.

Disclaimer 2 - I am an AWD hack. It is all the car.

There were a lot of unknowns at this event. A new crew running things, new timing software, a new bus that was still being tested. Also, since daylight savings time hasn't switched yet, we don't have as much time as we normally would. We chose to be cautious instead of trying to get too much done. Look at this way, since things went well, you got 5 runs instead of 3 if things had not worked out as planned.

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In need of car.

Variety is the spice of life. For as long as I have ran with the club, every couse except two was almost the same old L'burg "P" sweeperfest. Now dont get me wrong, I really enjoy that course. But variety is a good thing. When we set the course up, I thought it would have been a bit longer than it actually was, thats just the way it worked out.

Also, this just isnt directed at Brian but also at the 10 or so others who shared Brian's sentement. There is ONE simple way to get the course that YOU like to drive at a particular venue. CHAIR AN EVENT. The event GM has nothing to do with course design, its all on the event chairs. As long as it is safe, event chairs can do what they want to do for a course.




The way the times were being given out did suck. At least you have a radio in your car (I dont ) However, things such as the display board and FM transmitter are luxury items. Now that we have the wireless timer and the FM transmitter working, we are going to investigate how to get times to people with course designs like yesterdays. I feel we will run into the same problem at Sanford later in the year. So I guess we will just have to say, we will work on it.

I would like to thank everyone that made things happen yesterday. There were alot of people put into new roles yet, it seemed like the same high quality event as is expected from THSCC. Thanks for the hard work!

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02 Focus SVT
STF 9

Eh, I personally liked it. Between the total of 10 runs that my wife and I got, I think we only missed one time.

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In need of car.

I dont think it was bad, but could have been better. It didnt matter to me one way or the other, I still didnt have a radio!

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02 Focus SVT
STF 9

I don't have a radio either. It would have been nice to see my times from run to run. Espcially since this was the firt time that I made adjustments to tire pressures between runs. I know my first two run times but did not get my last 3.

During the runs that I was a passenger I noticed that the driver had to start reaching for the volume dial as they were braking hard after the finish. Maybe a few seconds more delay would have been better.

This is just constructive feedback. Great job by the organizers. It was a fun event.

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Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

I just kept the radio at a low volume- too quiet to be distracting during my runs, but easily heard as I coasted out the runout. But it would've been nice if the display could have been at the finish.

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Carl Fisher

Be Cool to the Pizza Dude:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4651531

I worked start the second heat so I can explain a few things. I had a stopwatch and tried to launch cars every 25 to 30 seconds, but couldn't on a large number of runs.

Many competitors hit cones on their runs. Often it was 2 or 3 or more. Some of the DNFs in the results were multiple cone runs. Many hit cones has a tendency to slow things down in any event. It makes it harder on T&S, on workers, can slow the launch interval, etc.

Part of what hurt launch times yesterday in this regard was the number of times that somebody hit a cone early in the course. When a cone is fairly near the start, you have to hold the start as needed to give the course worker a chance to at least get to the cone before you launch the car. Otherwise, he doesn't have time to set the cone and get out of the way before the car gets to that area. Having novice workers, worker stations far away from the cone that gets hit, and even simple things like the cone getting booted 50 feet away from the box all adds time to the next launch.
In at least one case, commonly hit cone was a good distance away from the station and it took awhile for the workers to get there.

Other things affecting the second group launch times were:

- one or two delays requested by T&S, possibly to let them catch up on some scoring related tasks. (not a big deal IMO)

- an incident where one driver sprayed his intercooler right at the start and left a puddle for others to drive through of what looked like coolant at the start line. It took some time to clean this up to help it dry. We thought at first it was a coolant leak and that's why we pulled the car off course.

(by the way, if you have a car with an intercooler sprayer, please don't do that at the start line on the course, or even in the grid. Don't do it anywhere your competitors have to drive through it. It's just not nice. Even if it is pure water, people are very sensitive about wet spots under cars and on course at an autocross.)

- lots of novices. Novices are a good thing for the club and we love having novices. I think most of the novices were in the B line of the 2nd heat.... In certain ways, novices can slow things down a little. Here's a few examples:
* if a fast driver follows a novice, a slightly greater than normal launch interval is required. (we don't want Dick passing cars on course).
* yesterday, novices kept blocking the pre-grid line while they waited on helments, got out to get helmets, etc. We need to educate them not to do this. There was plenty of room to pull to the side, get yourself ready and then pull back in line. (this is something that we just need to add to our novice education training)

Fortunately, only one car was not registered correctly in the computer in my heat, and had to be pulled from the start line. But it did cost a minute or two while we took care of that.

It was a long heat and I know I lost focus a few times and didn't launch every possible car at 25 to 30 seconds. I take the blame for a few minutes of unneeded delay.

As for the "B" line taking longer, sometimes the cars just don't end up gridding evenly, so there may have been more cars in the "B" line for some reason.

By far though, most of the delays were due to hit cones and waiting for the course to be set back up.

Thanks to the event chairs, setup crew and the officers that ran the show. And congrats to Rick for some nice driving. And thanks Dick for having my car win the class, proving that you can fit a pig through a needle if you have enough talent.


Miles

It seems like the course layout equalized a lot of factors and made for what appears to be a relatively tight scoring spread across all classes. It was a fun course but I'd like to see the guy with the Impala SS design the next course

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Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

We were trying quite a few new things at this event. Considering we have new AX VPs, new AX software, relatively new wireless timer, a new wireless PA, and new rig and trailer, I think things went pretty darn well overall. We have bugs to work on, but they are mostly minor in scale.

To address a few of the comments ...

1. Course design. This is totally up to the Event Chairs. Their limiting parameters are generally, safety and overlap. The rest is totally at their discretion. If you don't like the course design, volunteer to be an event chair and design your own. Find out first hand how much work is involved to setup a course and help run an event. Hint: It's not as easy as it looks even if you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express the night before.

I personally think LB should be used for a bigger course, but the event chairs decided otherwise which is perfectly fine with me. They took on the commitment and did what it took to make it happen. Did we mention that Jim P. commutes to Charlotte to work for Raleigh? Still he and Rick found time to run a Novice School and be event chairs.

2. Getting your times. The new wireless timer allowed us to use a different course design and have good overlap so you all could get five runs. The new wireless pit speaker and FM transmitter setup helped with communication a great deal for the most part. The was a trial run to see how well it would work. We actually have two speakers we can use in the future. The current setup costed THSCC exactly ZERO dollars BTW. We already had the speakers and the amp was donated by Stephen Westerfield. The position of the speaker closer to the finish would have solved the problem. Live and learn right? The next event it will be better, stay tuned.

The officers are always listening to new ideas and constructive criticism. However please keep in mind that this is a "big show" and it takes a LOT of work to make it happen. Pitch in and lend a hand when and wherever you can. Get to the events early, help setup equipment, move port-a-johns, pickup trash, etc. At the end of the day stay and help pack up. There is plenty of work to go around.

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Vincent Keene
'06 Ford Mustang GT (track rat)
'15 Dodge Charger R/T (yeah, it's got a HEMI!)
'07 Ford Fusion SE (205,000 miles and counting)
'98 Chevy Z-24 (retired)
'93 Acura Integra (Team SWB 24HOL Car)

Another thing I forgot to address is our new "trophy" design. I apologize for not having the large year long plaques available yesterday to affix the individual event magents to. Honestly Ryan and I have been busting our tails to get the CRX ready and neither of us have had much free time.

The year-longs will be available at the Greenville event (maybe as soon as the April meeting) so let me know if you want one...just shoot me a PM. BTW, they will look a little nicer that the ones have in the past.

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Vincent Keene
'06 Ford Mustang GT (track rat)
'15 Dodge Charger R/T (yeah, it's got a HEMI!)
'07 Ford Fusion SE (205,000 miles and counting)
'98 Chevy Z-24 (retired)
'93 Acura Integra (Team SWB 24HOL Car)

Brian, you have the Laurinburg event in October to look forward to. There will be nothing even remotely short or tight about that course. I hated yesterday's course so much that to make it fun I had to take the Forester out on the crappy oem tires & do some concrete rallyxing. (I was in 1st gear all the way until the VERY short straight before the finish) I've designed a few courses myself; sometimes I've done a decent job, sometimes I've really screwed up. So I've heard all the comments about my own work. <edited> Maybe it was actually a fun course to most people, I don't know. All I'm doing is expressing my opinion, but I think when you have miles & miles of concrete & a wireless timer, you should be able to get a fairly well-driven WRX above 50 mph.

But overall, I thought everything was well-run & I had a good time. I did a lot of standing around talking to different people yesterday, took some people on "fun" runs (it was fun to them ), and wasn't "in charge" of anything. But it really made me appreciate rallyx. At a rallyx, when I'm waiting to run, it's not really like I'm waiting. I'm actually standing there watching the cars, because it's entertaining. At the autox yesterday, there was a LOT of standing around (lots more people to get through the course mainly), and I never even considered watching other than to let people know how they looked from outside the car - well, except for Randy Melton; but he makes autox look like rallyx.

Regardless of what my opinion on the course was, thanks to Jim & Rick for putting on a great novice school & putting their time & energy into this weekend.

In the past we usually said that safety, overlap, and FLOW were the limiting parameters. There have been courses in the past that were trainwrecks the VPs took over and improved flow in sections.

IMO, in general, there are some course mistakes that we need to learn from and avoid. That's part of the VP's job. Things like - using more cones than necessary (just makes the event run slower when elements are hit), and emphasizing letting people choose a line through elements rather than force fit people to a line, which results in a conefest (same problem as above, event efficiency).

Also IMO, there was only one "learn from your past mistakes" section on Jim and Rick's course that I would have pushed to be changed if I were a VP. And that was minor. Everything else flowed quite well and it was fun!

Thanks to everyone as usual for all the hard work behind the scenes. We did, what, 600 runs yesterday? That's a lot.

Mike (who always seems to do really well on Jim's courses)

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

PS - Can somebody put Brian Herring down as a co-chair for the school & autox in October?

Hmm, and a wireless timer is not the new and improved panaceia of autocross that people think it is. It's a tool. Design a course that puts the finish a mile from the start and we can run it just fine, but that means you just spent 1-2 miles walking to the end of the course on your walk only to have to walk back. Think 1 course walk in 40 minutes. That's unacceptable. Jim made a course with the wireless that allowed it to be walked multiple times without being a burden. It also allowed pretty good communication over the entire course (couild be seen start to finish), another sign of intelligent course design.


Edit: removed content not relevant to this conversation.





And a big fast course at Laurinburg helps address this how? Jim set up a course that could be seen start to finish, that's as good as it gets for a spectator. 3/4 of our courses in Laurinburg can be seen from start to about 100 yards down the runway, then you wait to hear someone finish, no spectating value at all.

An autocross is only fun if *you* make it fun. I don't care how good an event chair is, they can't design around bad attitudes and people that will complain about ANYTHING.



I agree 100%.

Scott