Date: Sunday, March 15, 2015
Rallymaster: Bill Wagner
Cold run:
Workers: Austin Grant

Since I disappointed myself last year by not getting the rally done, I was determined that it would go off this year. We had really good weather and a great turnout with seven teams appearing to test their skills. Some folks already had a couple of rallies in the bag this year because of the 2 Winter Rallies in January and February.

Gary Patrick held one of his rally schools just before the event. It was well attended and appeared to have assisted the novices who had some pretty good scores. The novices made all the checkpoints and the winning team of Williams/Peterson even used a time delay slip to keep 4 of 5 leg scores below 100. That is a great accomplishment for their first rally. I expect we’ll see them at future rallies and even some autocrosses. The team of Burkholder/Burkholder made a good showing as well. If they could have brought their high score down close to their best legs they would have made it really close.

The SOP class had some tight competition. After 2 legs the Miner/Miner team was in control with a 23 point lead over Martin/Lichtenberger. Their scores of 4 and 2 were excellent but they weren’t able to maintain that over the last 3 legs. Martin/Lichtenberger kept the pressure on finishing the rally with 2 single digit scores on the last 3 legs. At the end, the 2 teams were separated by only 23 points with Martin/Lichtenberger finishing in first place. Third place was taken by White/Hamilton and fourth by Bedford/Blackwelder who didn’t score as well as I expected.

The Nav class only had one team, Townsend/Flora, who put on a really good show with ones on all legs except the last. We determined after the rally that I must have mis-measured one tiny section that caused them to score 12 on leg 6. Somehow my measurement was about 0.1 miles off from what they showed in their computer.

I must thank Gary Patrick for letting us use the Subaru of Champaign County showroom for the rally school and registration and for putting on the school before the rally. Hopefully we can have one or two more schools this year. I also want to thank Austin Grant who came over from the Peoria area to attend the school and see how rallies are run. He spent the afternoon in the car with me at checkpoints and made the day go by quickly.

Date: Friday, October 31, 2014
Rallymaster: Bill Wagner
Cold run:
Workers: Bob Townsend

Well, I didn’t get the publicity out as soon as I should have, so the turnout was smaller than I would like, but I went ahead with the rally. This wasn’t a tough rally since the teams only had to find 7 instructions in the candy bags. I also made the evil numbers easier to work with this year. I think I need to find something in between for next year. Thank you to Bob Townsend for hanging out in the dark at the checkpoint. Congratulations to Jerry White and Wayne Hamilton for finishing with a nice 1st Overall score of 36.

Date: Sunday, September 14, 2014
Rallymaster: Russ Bedford
Cold run: Mike Blackwelder
Workers: Mike Blackwelder

It was a great rally. Not because of any innate skill by the rallymaster (me), but because of the competitors who showed up and played. We had a beautiful day, light traffic, reasonably good roads. And I was ably assisted by Mike Blackwelder, who has a lot of experience at this.

We started in Mahomet and angled somewhat West and North. Drove around Saybrook, through the shadow of a bunch of Windmills, found Bellflower and Farmer City. We took a break midway at Huck’s in FC. After the break we drove West and South, crossing Clinton Lake a couple times before heading back East. We went through DeLand, near Lodge, Galesville and Seymour.
The rally finished back in Mahomet, at Monical’s, where we had dinner and awards. About 100 miles and 4 hours.

Eight cars entered, with 15 people in them. (No, that ratio doesn’t meet the normal rally formula of 2 people per car, more on that later). Trust me, it really makes a difference when a lot of people show up.

Jerry and Barry took first overall, they’ve teamed up for a while now, this their first first overall. Congratulations!

Gary Patrick was looking for a partner, but couldn’t find one. He went ahead and ran anyway. His co-driver was listed as either C. Board or MT Seat. Either way, it did the trick, he came in first in SOP.

No teams ran in the Novice class.

Thanks to all who participated and to Mike B for cold-running and working with me.