Posted on August 9, 2010
Yesterday, I attended our event at Coles County airport. As usual, Tom Ingles and Greg Lukach did their usual fine job offering a quality autocross. It was hot, but there was a breeze. It was a pretty good day and the food was good at the Airport Steakhouse, as usual.
I noticed something I want to bring to the attention of our autocrossers. It has been years…… years, since I was the starter. This is the most important job of any “work assignment” because the starter controls the pace of the event and who enters the course and when. It is very important that an experienced autocrosser be in this position.
Having said that, I have some concerns. Course workers, of course, often consist of less experienced workers. They are the most “in-the-way” of anyone and need to be careful or they could be injured. After one of our entrants was injured at a St. Louis area autocross early in the year (not a CCSCC event, of course), we are trying to be very careful. But are we?
Yesterday’s course had a “Hit-most-often” cone that was the signal to the starter to start the next car. But the starter couldn’t see the cone. He only knew it had been hit when it was announced or the corner worker ran. Literally seconds after that cone was passed was time to send the next car. But the corner workers weren’t ‘fast’ on the response. Once I sent the next car and ONLY THEN did the corner worker start running to get the cone! So I backed off and waited. Eventually we changed corner workers and it was better.
What should a corner worker do besides chase cones? Well, we need to tell them to STAND STILL. That is right. If they are running along the course, we don’t necessarily know whether they are chasing a cone or exercising! The corner work needs to stand still if not chasing a cone. We need to tell them that.
One more comment. Comments to the starter by entrants about car spacing are not really helpful, since the entrant is not “in the starter’s shoes”. The person who needs to discuss the starting instructions with the starter is the safety steward. It would be good for us to remember that the starter is a volunteer upon whose decisions the safety of the workers and entrants depends.
For the first time I’m going to allow comments to an editorial on this web page. Bring them on!
Posted as: Editorials |
Posted on July 10, 2010
This autocross event was put on by HISCC and the CIR/SCCA region.
Posted as: 2010 Autocross Season, Autocross Reports
Posted on July 4, 2010
Yesterday, July 3, I was fortunate enough to run Mike Blackwelder and Harold Davis’s “Where’s the Beef” road rally. It was a blast. We left Urbana’s Farm and Fleet parking lot at 10:00 plus our car number and ODO legged out to Oakwood to start the rally. We went along all the wonderful roads around the Oakwood-Catlin-Westville area, finally driving by former club member and ralliest supreme Paul Trapp’s house as we entered “Grape Crick”, a great area south of Danville. From there we drove wonderful roads to the Newport, Indiana area, actually climbing the hill used in the Newport Hill Climb for antique cars before going to the Beef House near Covington, IN for lunch.
After lunch we stayed mostly on the north side of I-74 as we returned to Farm and Fleet. It was a blast. [Continue reading →]
Posted as: Editorials
Posted on July 3, 2010
This was the third year that I put on this type of rally. The idea is to run for a couple of hours, stop for a nice relaxed lunch and then resume the rally to come home. This year we stopped at the Beef House in Indiana. The two previous years I made the rally fairly simple. This year it was a little more challenging. We have to thank Harold and Karen Davis for the first part. They had laid out that part to put on their own rally but Harold had cataract surgery and wasn’t quite ready to do it at this point. They put in the “protected” main road rule part of the first half. My job was to turn their directions into rally instructions, mileage it, and make sure it worked and produce paperwork. The second half of the rally was laid out by Cheryel and I.
The teams did fairly well on the first half. I was quite surprised that everyone made it through the first leg and were generally close to their calculated times. The first leg was forty five minutes long and that was without the Odometer Comparison Section as I had everyone re-zero their odometers before the start of the measured portion of the first leg.
The two teams that ran the Navigational class did not ultimately finish the entire rally. One team was from California and were here for a Porsche Club event. They were just checking their equipment to make sure everything was in order. The other team from Indianapolis were competing with the California group and didn’t want to interfere with our awards and points.
| Teams |
Leg 1 |
Leg 2 |
Leg 3 |
Leg 4 |
Leg 5 |
Leg 6 |
Leg 7 |
Leg 8 |
Total |
| Nav |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Charles/Judith Hanson |
9 |
84 |
0 |
13 |
500 |
500 |
500 |
500 |
2106 |
| Jessica/J. Toney |
7 |
87 |
4 |
12 |
500 |
500 |
500 |
500 |
2110 |
| Sop |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Jerry White/Jim Hamilton |
79 |
30 |
7 |
44 |
162 |
137 |
77 |
1 |
537 |
| Brian/Sandy Grable |
58 |
100 |
32 |
199 |
80 |
128 |
46 |
26 |
669 |
| Barry Rowe/William Hoffman |
188 |
123 |
30 |
137 |
71 |
288 |
75 |
8 |
920 |
| Novice |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Vivek Bhaskar/Stuart Ford |
200 |
290 |
8 |
500 |
500 |
67 |
11 |
10 |
1586 |
| Tom Ingles/Adrian Astorina |
194 |
359 |
76 |
493 |
500 |
500 |
500 |
500 |
3122 |
Even though some of the Navigational class leg scores seemed a little high I noticed that there scores were never more than 4 points difference between the two teams. When one had a problem the other did also.
I want to thank everyone who helped. Not only did Harold and Karen put together some great roads but the extra little things like the run up the hill In Newport where the hill climb for vintage cars is held every Fall to finding at least one covered bridge to cross. The scenery was great and the roads were fun. They also worked half of the checkpoints so we did not need to hold vehicles at any checkpoint.
I want to thank Gary Patrick for cold running the rally just a few days before the event. He had some great input also. Cheryel helped considerably by helping lay out the second leg and mileaging the entire rally. I was also happy that we could put on a long rally with good weather.
Now, where can we eat next year?
Mike Blackwelder
Posted as: 2010 Rally Season, Rally Reports |
Posted on June 19, 2010
This autocross event was put on by HISCC and the CIR/SCCA region.
Posted as: 2010 Autocross Season, Autocross Reports
Posted on June 12, 2010
It started out as a very warm and humid afternoon in Gibson City for the Junebug Jam-a-Lam Rally. I had planned a 90 mile rally in North Central Illinois featuring Ford and Iroquois counties. It was my hope to include some routes that no one had seen before, or at least for quite some time. While planning the rally I realized that there weren’t too many interesting roads in this area and it was a challenge to come up with anything particularly exciting. I came across an idea that I had noticed for trap rallies and that’s when I decided to add my trap. [Continue reading →]
Posted as: 2010 Rally Season, Rally Reports
