Josh Sirota writes...
>The target to shoot for is 25 seconds. Everyone >should shoot for that
>and if we pull it off with room to spare, great.
Absolutely. 25 is the magic number.
And now I would like to address the issue of expediting the worker change
overs.
The event where I completely lost it, which is rare for me, what with my
last name being Kelly and all, was at the Candlestick event where, in an
effort to cut back the changeover time, the event chair decided, wisely, to
just meld the eighth group with the conclusion of the seventh group.
In THEORY, the plan was solid, except for one oversight: the replacement
timing crew, that being the eighth group crew, had no idea that there were
still cars left over from the seventh group.
What this means is that ALL the cards from the seventh group, even the cards
for drivers with one run to go, were all now hidden somewhere. And we didn't
know where they were. We had no idea that there were drivers with runs left.
All we heard was, "Okay, let's send a car out, let's go!"
The result was more red flags, yelling, missed times, and confusion than I
have ever seen. It wasn't pretty.
On-the-fly changeovers are possible, and even necessary, but it's not a
simple matter of, "Okay, hurry up, let's go." There has to be some form of
communication between the two crews, particularly between the cardsorters,
as in, "These cards still have runs left, these are done," blah blah blah.
Now I'd like to bring up a second, really important issue:
Card sorters need to look for more information than just the car number. You
have to look at the class, the car make, the car color, the name of the
driver, etc. I say this, because the OTHER thing that just made me
completely loopy was the amount of duplicate numbers... in ONE CLASS. We
were writing down all the right times on all the wrong cards. Then all these
people came screaming at us.
What really helped at that event, once we got into a rhythm, was that our
starter announced on the radio the car at the line, including the class, and
car color, and then one car directly behind it. That was all. It totally
simplified the process.
Once you get into the rhythm, and relax a little, it's really not such a
tough job. After awhile, you recognize the actual driver of the car (which
REALLY helps) even if the drivers don't change numbers (ahem).
Things can, I've seen it, be really calm yet exciting in the trailer. I've
seen it. It really can be fun working in there, especially when the
announcer can actually describe the drama as it unfolds, and, you know,
announce.
Katie
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Josh Sirota [mailto:jss@marimba.com]
> Sent: Monday, August 28, 2000 9:06 PM
> To: adozzell@sc9.intel.com
> Cc: ba-autox@autox.team.net
> Subject: Re: 2000 Winter Slush Series-revised
>
>
> Tony writes:
> > 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.
>
> While I agree that a well-coordinated timing crew can (sometimes) pull
> off a 15-second start interval, that doesn't mean we should be using
> 15-second start intervals.
>
> Even a good crew can have trouble with short intervals. Cars that run
> while their card is still "in the process" (posting, re-insertion) can
> wreak havoc. Duplicate car numbers, even in different classes. Etc.
> Interruptions by non-T&S folks.
>
> But even in the best case when none of those conditions occur, it just
> isn't safe. I know you mentioned this, but: cones need to be reset,
> workers have to be watching for cars coming from multiple
> places, etc.
> It's just a mistake.
>
> The target to shoot for is 25 seconds. Everyone should shoot for that
> and if we pull it off with room to spare, great. I agree with Kevin
> that less than 25 seconds will more often than not result in a net
> loss. Just because the T&S crew may have been able to handle
> it easily
> doesn't mean that faster is better.
>
> This from someone who has made a 13-year career out of
> figuring out how
> to do T&S at autocrosses. We do really well for the turnouts we have.
>
> If you want to concentrate anywhere, do this:
> Get the start intervals to 25 seconds, no quicker, no slower
> (At GGF this weekend, part of the problem was the course layout,
> with
> cars barreling towards each other when the interval was just
> wrong)
> Reduce downtime between groups. 10 minutes at the non-walkthrough
> breaks
> means a total of 1 hour of downtime. That's a lot.
> Start on time. I haven't run much this year so I don't
> know how well
> we're executing there.
>
> That's about it.
>
> Josh
>
> PS: I loved the course this weekend too. I have no idea why
> Charlie is
> apologizing.
>
> Josh
>
|