Tony,
I worked the trailer during the second group on Sunday, which is about when
we had that 10 minute break between groups you were referring to. Let me
tell you that between the four of us in the trailer, there was very little
trailer job experience. I had done announcer a couple of times, and our
card sorter was great, but that's it. And I really think that we did a good
job considering the circumstances, especially our scorer and cone counter,
who had never worked the trailer before and *absolutely* never missed a beat
or got behind during the 1.5+ hours we were there.
The fact is though, that we didn't especially know what we were doing going
in, but there just wasn't anyone else to help. *I* made the decision to
take a few minutes in the beginning to get things sorted out, because once
you get behind in the trailer it is very hard to catch up. I also told the
entirely rookie trailer crew for group three that if they got behind, they
should just hold the start and take care of it rather than screwing up
everyone's times and causing even more delays and frustration.
I run in the PAX/Street Tire group, which often has 15 or fewer entrants.
While we only usually take about 1/2 hour to run, the group we work often
takes three times that long to run. Sometimes worker shortages are
unavoidable. As for putting experienced people in the trailer, keep in mind
that there have to be at least a few experienced people out on course to
ensure the safety of our rookie course workers.
So I hate to sound like "if you feel the need to complain, then volunteer to
do it yourself", but yeah, that's basically what I'm saying.
Peter Thana
SFR AS-ST
> -----Original Message-----
> From: adozzell@sc9.intel.com [SMTP:adozzell@sc9.intel.com]
> Sent: Monday, August 28, 2000 3:40 PM
> To: Kevin_Stevens@Bigfoot.com; ba-autox@autox.team.net
> Subject: Re: 2000 Winter Slush Series-revised
>
> Kevin highlights one of my pet peeves with recent events.
> The trailer should be able to handle a 15 second overlap
> with no more than 3 people in the trailer if they know what
> they are doing and are paying attention. A solid trailer cew
> is essential to a smooth event and maybe we should restrict the
> trailer crew to those folks that can do the job.
> At the 8/13 GGF event Jim Ochi and I ran the trailer alone and
> we averaged 21s overlaps for our run group and we had time to
> hold the start and run out onto course to reset cones that had
> been knocked over and missed by the crew on course.
> I can buy the safety argument for overlap times and I can buy
> the argument that you have to wait for folks to finish their
> conversation before running to pick up a downed cone, but I
> don't agree that the trailer cannot keep up.
>
> I'm hoping that doesn't sound too harsh but the trailer hurts
> our events on a number of occasions.
>
> Tony
> (still in nomex)
>
> Kevin wrote:
>
> >> > In all seriousness, running cars closer together is the only > thing
> I
> >>can think of.
> >
> >Running cars more closely than about 25 seconds is a net time loss
> because
> >there isn't time to reset cones, and/or the timing trailer
> >can't keep up and has to hold the start occasionally.
> >
> >
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