Cal Club Autocross Forums

Thank you to all that braved the hot weather at Hotana on Father's Day. I hoped you all had a great time.

Yes No$ event was fun. We had a couple people doing new jobs (Yuki and Steve) and they did a fantastic job.

Many many thank yous to the Pat, Earl, Nic, Mike, Marco pit boy Brian Robertson who on bad wheels helped pick up the course Yuki's dad and anybody else that helped out. And of course the Angels for allowing me to step up to the plate and Chair the event. Edit: Oops. I forgot Tom Phillips and his crew. They tried something different for tech and it seemed to work just great.

Yuki, I have your training wheels. You don't need them any more. Within hours of spring the job of Event Chair for Saturday, Yuki had straighten out the practice and updated the web.

To those that were hoping for fun runs before lunch, I was blindsided by the 3rd run group, the run group from hell. The majority of x runs where taken during that group.

[soapbox/rant] X runs are fun but yesterday it make a lot of VOLUNTEERS stand in the sun for a longer time since the smallest work group was up and that was pure bad luck. I won't be fooled again.

And people, Yuki and Renee aren't your mother so don't leave your trash around grid. We had plastic bags to put your water bottles in. Under the cones aren't trash cans. Good news is that I almost got enough money for the Divisional.

So be a good ambassador and pick your trash and leave the site clean, [/soapbox/rant]

X runs are fun but yesterday it make a lot of VOLUNTEERS stand in the sun for a longer time since the smallest work group was up and that was pure bad luck. I won't be fooled again.

So we count on not having X Runs at NO$ events?

No spins Bob. All I said was I won't be fooled again. Plain pure and simple. If I chair another event, I will watch the size of the runs more closely and if there is a large run group, well there just might be no x runs in THAT group.

This is in MY opinion only, but I still don't feel it's right to run without working. The short work group could have been filled easliy with x-run people.

With all the x-runs early, we ran out of time for fun runs before lunch. No real big deal but with the heat, most left and we didn't have enough people for fun runs at the end of the day.

Bottom line, and this is all IMHO and doesn't reflexct the opinions of No$, CSCC or SCCA. X runs can be used to help both the driver and the event if they work another group. We would get more workers, be able to go to either 7 (4 in the am and 3 in the pm) or 8 so each group could have a rest period be they ran or worked. Better for the masses and not the few.

i've seen other clubs keep a list of who got X-runs and limit it to 4 or 5 per run group to try a spread it out

I'm not spinning anything Glenn; questions are not spin. Why didn't you say it like that to begin with?

We offered no-work X runs to deal with monetary issues. In turn, if you find a work group that's short, maybe offer those that volunteer for an extra shift a free set of X runs? I wouldn't throw that offer open unless a group was short.

Fun runs shouldn't be a goal we're aiming for. They're availible to take up excess time. I not a fan of no work X-runs, but that's what was voted on and passed, and I'd rather see those sold than none at all and granting fun runs.

Jay W

Glenn Duensing wrote:With all the x-runs early, we ran out of time for fun runs before lunch. No real big deal but with the heat, most left and we didn't have enough people for fun runs at the end of the day...

Jayson Woodruff wrote:Fun runs shouldn't be a goal we're aiming for. They're availible to take up excess time. I not a fan of no work X-runs, but that's what was voted on and passed, and I'd rather see those sold than none at all and granting fun runs.

Jay W

Glenn Duensing wrote:With all the x-runs early, we ran out of time for fun runs before lunch. No real big deal but with the heat, most left and we didn't have enough people for fun runs at the end of the day...

Jay, I don't believe it was ever passed by the Committee, just on the web site and one club started it and everybody followed. Kinda like when the x-runs were stopped for one event only but everybody followed. I did bring it up at the last committee meeting that I wanted to use a two-tier system for x-runs. $10 and you work and regular price and you don't. It wasn't approved.

Now I wasn't shooting for fun runs but it did look good at one point. Knowing that I had about 200 entries, I said at the driver's meeting when asked that I was doing 3 runs and maybe fun runs before lunch.

The one thing I don't understand is the "hold the start" every time something tripped the lights and everybody on course got a re-run. Maybe I need to pay attention to the computer more because I thought there was a way to correct an issue without messing up all the cars on course.

All in all we got done early, most people were burned out and I hope they left with a smile on their face just waiting for the next event.

Yeah ... I think Will said, "why aren't they just pushing the "X ?" button?"

Not sure if this was mentioned anywhere about the event yet.
But, coming from radio worker #4, me, run group 3, I was SUPER busy calling in cones near the finish.
Seemed like about 30-40% of the run group had cones.
That amount of cones really keeps the motor home folks somewhat distracted, thus getting some timing errors.

Glenn Duensing wrote:The one thing I don't understand is the "hold the start" every time something tripped the lights and everybody on course got a re-run. Maybe I need to pay attention to the computer more because I thought there was a way to correct an issue without messing up all the cars on course.

Sometimes you get people learning in there, it happens. And if you don't catch the error incident right away, you can't really tell who's times are 'good' and who's are false.

BTW, the No$ flyer did say X runs limited to 10/group, did some one actually track that? In theory this should add only a max of 15 minues to a group.

Jay W

No and that's my fault for being late.

Glenn Duensing wrote:
The one thing I don't understand is the "hold the start" every time something tripped the lights and everybody on course got a re-run. Maybe I need to pay attention to the computer more because I thought there was a way to correct an issue without messing up all the cars on course.

One of the by products of a course that had high cone counts. Even some of the most experienced people in timing had problems with the high and constant cone calls combined with a hard to see line of cars coming to the start. A car would be missed by back up timing and/or the computer operator. Over the years I've found it's much better to fix a problem like that when it occurs rather than try to figure it out later.

An occasional light trip by something other than a car wasn't the main problem, those were in fact usually handled by a button reset.

Thanks Rick. A couple that I saw were "trips" from somebody running thru the lights. The massive conage at the finish sometimes caused problems. That's why I stayed out of the motorhome. I knew good people were in there.