THSCC Forums

I coned away dinner and (more importantly) beating a fresh out of retirement Bucklenator on Sunday.

But, having said that. I suspect me and the DAs have come to an understanding and I'm looking forward to fine tuning that in Sanford in a couple of weeks. My rear pressures were too high on Saturday. And just right on Sunday.

Hats off to Highlands, I had no idea how few people they had actually running things. The event certainly had it's issues, none of which need to be rehashed here, but all in all, I had a good time and got what I needed to out of it.

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Not spectacular just decent.
I'm not sure what I'm driving.
Maybe an ITR in DS.
Or half-assed STX prepped 330.

Ditto on kudos to Highlands, this is not a small undertaking. The timer issues did impact the fun factor, but overall I would think the event was a success. I'm sure I'm not alone on this, but the heat about did me in.
Sitting in the car w/ the AC full blast and still sweating my ass off...brutal. Right now I wished I had set up a Gatorade concession stand!

On a personal note, I was VERY disappointed w/ the cone calls. On my first and third runs on Sunday, I had some cones move into the path of my car and I KO'd them with a pretty solid punch. Both times I hit the cones I was called w/ a DNF, to which I call BS. Make the cone call, I'll accept that, but I did NOT DNF the course. I have to say that was my biggest point of contention for the weekend.

Again to wrap up, a good event and I hope the final count shows that THSCC holds onto the club cup. That was worth the heat.

Any idea as to when and where the final results will be posted?

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Rodney

'08 Bullitt mustang, CAM 7
Autox VP '09-'10, President '11-'12, interim President 2nd half of ‘14
proud recipient of the Bowie Grey service award '12
Now just a guy driving a mustang....

Thanks Keith. It was fun just getting out there. If you hadn't coned your 42.9, I think we would have been separated by a little over .10 second. Not too shabby on the competition.

I will agree, delays aside, the debacle of announcing 4 runs in Saturday's drivers meeting, allowing everyone in heat 1 to run 3 runs (some got 4 runs) and then deciding to cap it at 3 runs was ridiculous. I think everyone in the first heat got screwed considering everyone drives with a "plan" based upon the number of known runs. I was fortunate to finally pull my head from my rectum on my 3rd run, otherwise, Keith would have had me by about a second or more. I have yet to review the DL-1 data, but after looking at the video, I'm pretty confident that I could have squeeked out another 5 to 6 tenths with my planned 4th run BANZAI. Unfortunately, others had the same planned and got hosed.

Bryan ran in the 1st heat (running Pro on Sunday only) and was dirty on all of his runs, but ran a raw time of 42.1. The best raw I could muster was a 42.9 in the 5th heat. My hats off to him. I know some say that site tends to get slower with r-compounds throughout the day, but I think I just got worked At least I got a clean one in

I'm looking forward to the ProFinale and Nationals, praying that the courses are tight and slow - AB

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'14 Toyota Sequoia Platinum 4WD
Super Westerfield Bros - '93 Integra - LeChump Du Jour
STX 93 - Scion FR-S

As to AS finish order, the official results put Eric in first, Steve in second (by .09 sec) and Donna in third. I say official because penalties on the results did not match the actual runs. On Sunday Donna was not charged with a cone on her dirst run which she clearly hit and was reported at the finish line, and one was charged on her fastest second run which our camera and my close observation as well as the finish line report says was clean? That run would have put her strongly into second. I was charged with a cone penalty on all my runs Sat when one was a definite DNF when I wiped out 3 cones after the finish (A club rule DNF as announced at the driver's meeting). Having announced and kept raw sheets as work assignments Donna and I saw (and brought to the attention) several penalty mistakes in the heats we worked. Not to take anything away from Highlands, they had one person working computer and radio, and a lot of software and hardware issues that were not their fault they were working with so the mere fact they were able to see the event thru was commendable. Saturday's long delay was caused by a mysterious interference problem with the wireless timers, that had worked flawlessly the week before at a hill climb where the trips were more than a mile apart. It was suspected that the close proximity to the airport's electronics may have caused the problem. Even the solution was strange, orienting the receiver antenna horizontally rather than vertically(which is opposite any radio wave theory) cleared it up, who'd have thunk it! Just shows how willing they were to try everything and anything to fix it.
The late starts were due to the fact the computer kept eating some of the competitor's info so their number would be there but who it was etc was not. I witnessed AXware spontaniously change it's default settings! It quickly became AXswear in the trailer.
I don't know if they will do a full audit vs the raw sheets or if the raw sheets are even any more correct, depends if the raw sheet person was simply copying penalties off the computer screen or not.

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SPIN or WIN!
there's no glory for going slow.

It's a miracle they pulled it off - anyone have direct contact info so we can email a thanks for the hard work? Maybe someone from THSCC can pass it on to thier forums?

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One of those LeMonHeads...
91/95 Miata, 02 Focus SVT, 01 Ford F250, 09 Suzuki SV650SF
rusty 84 C4 Vette, tiny piece of the General Lei
Irish Sport Horse - 1hp NA!

Note to THSCC officers. Keep buying Motorola radios. It seems Highlands has Cobra units, and I think half of the confusion was due to the function (or lack there-of) of those radios. They were horrible. It seemed they wanted to broadcast 2 seconds of dead air at the start and finish of every call, thus lots of calls were totally missed due to cross talk.

Highlands also got bit by the "can't see the car at the start" bug (been there done that), so the starter HAD to call the car numbers in, resulting in more missed cone calls.

At times it seems Highlands had a bunch of lemons at this event, but they did what you do with lemons. Make lemonade. It's worth noting that they finished at a reasonable hour on Sat. in spite of 2+ hours of delays.

I vote that next years NCAC be in October.

Scott

I agree about the radio traffic, I got caught at one point talking with a trucker on the highway. And calling in start resulted in , I know, me running over people on the radio calling in cones.

But congrats to everyone for bein supafast:) And also for those with that built and harbored us in Tent City

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http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2082/235 ... 9e63_o.gif

If you can ride it, you can race it:)
Cobalt SS/SC
CBR600F4i
BoulevardC50

Shawnee G

Isn't the easy fix for that to put a second radio in T&S and have the starter on a different channel from the cone callers? Ideally you then need a second T&S person for best results, but at worst with one you could ask the starter to repeat if necessary because you were getting the cone call. *shrug* Or is there an issue I'm missing there?


--Donnie

To give an idea of the skeleton crew that this event was run with, at the end of the first heat on Sunday, Bryan was at the line for about 25 minutes. The reason? The guy at the computer decided that he should have been relieved. All of the 'non relieved' course workers like myself were still at the course stations. After about 15 minutes of waiting, they told anyone who hasn't been relieved to leave their stations to force the heat 2 workers to come to their stations.

The saddest part? Bryan was on his 2nd run due to a red flag, and there was another car that had to make another run... all 1st heat cars. Thus, an extra worker in the bus wasn't even an afterthought. - AB

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'14 Toyota Sequoia Platinum 4WD
Super Westerfield Bros - '93 Integra - LeChump Du Jour
STX 93 - Scion FR-S

It's too bad they didn't give that a little more thought. In the first heat we had WAY more workers than we needed. I believe there were 3 people at each station. We could have easily spared a worker or two to help out in the bus. Of course, I think other heats were pretty pressed for workers due to smaller run groups.

Donnie - I wondered the same thing about putting the starter on a separate channel as we were constantly repeating cone calls and stepping all over the starter. Then again, it's pretty easy to Monday morning QB!

They did that for one of my work assignments, but for some reason they switched back. They definitely sounded a bit overwhelmed - I bet dealing with workers from so many different clubs was like herding cats.

Was the generator too close to timing? It seemed like they needed alot of calls repeated.

2 ideas I had - a headset for the T+S radios to muffle outside noise, and something to slip over worker radios when it gets windy so you don't just hear wind noise during calls.

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One of those LeMonHeads...
91/95 Miata, 02 Focus SVT, 01 Ford F250, 09 Suzuki SV650SF
rusty 84 C4 Vette, tiny piece of the General Lei
Irish Sport Horse - 1hp NA!

Even with all the problems and the heat, I had the most fun at this autocross. Tent City was a blast and a great idea.
Highlands tried hard and did the best they could. I too was frustrated at times, but left with positive feelings. The courses were great and the trophies very nice.
I didn't mean to fluster the Highlands guy awarding the trophies so much. I was determined to get a hug from somebody! I would have prefered a young woman, but he was my only option.
Even if we don't win the NCAC club competition, I know we have the best club. Maybe we have the best drivers and maybe not. We do have a great organization and a lot of really nice people.

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Rubbin' is Racin'

FYI...

We've tried to put the starter on a separate channel. Now you have T&S listening to two radios (generally the same person), trying to keep the sorted out, etc adds to the problems (or did in our case). The starter also needs to call in cones AND hear the hold start order of frazzled course workers.

Scott

I'd like to echo these comments. Frankly, I'm surprised Highlands stepped up to put this weekend on given their low turnout. I overheard them state prior to the awards that they didn't even think they had 10 people from Highlands driving Sunday.....Total.

IMO. tent city trumped any delays, and once things got running on Saturday and Sunday things seemed to go reaonably well. It really was worst for those people that were stuck out on course with nowhere to go during these delays. They did finally pull those workers in on Saturday (ammusingly after somebody who sounded a LOT like Bernie got on a radio that looked a LOT like those THSCC owns and made this recommendation )

In the end, we got out of there both days earlier than I think anybody expected given the delays. I really do want to thank Highlands for working through the issues and putting together what I thought ended up being a great race weekend.

We also need to thank Jim Feinberg for not only representing THSCC well, but also taking the initiative to make sure we had good, challenging, and safe course designs.

Final thanks to all the THSCCers who make running big events regularly seem easy. I had an absolute blast this weekend, and Highlands efforts should NOT be overlooked. But that said, it's events like this that make the dedication of our broad membership very apparent. Thank you team!

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Dustin Fredrickson
-- I'm a nobody --

Well the cat's out of the bag. I don't want to confuse folks with a compassionate image, imagine the worker Nazi worried about folks standing in the sun in 100 degree heat. It'll take years to regain the Hitler like persona that I've worked sooo hard to get.