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Rainier Auto Sports Club |
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The Wishbone Alley GazetteFebruary, 2002It’s Dues time $17 single, $20 Family. (corrected from $$ in the January WAG) WAG subscription stays at $10 for the umpteenth year. Club Meeting It’s at Billy McHales in Factoria, again. Rally News * Oregon Trail decided to move to a really nice date. After high level negotiations, as only Ben Bradley and the Oregon Rally Group can, Rainier Auto Sports Club conceded and moved Raindrop to April 28th. Rallymaster Steve Willey will confirm the Start location very soon, probably in Tacoma, near the Narrows. Raindrop seems to be a very rare event these days- a nice little tour in daylight, at (unfortunately?) civilized speeds. Something to take a friend on. *BC’s Thunderbird Rally reached it’s maximum of 70 entries by the Feb. 5 cutoff. Club News January meeting notes Visitors: Jeff Laru and Aaron Endsley have heard about rallying and watched it on Speedvision and wanted to see what it's about. Welcome mat was extended and hopefully they'll find rallying interesting. RASC Generals rewrite committee may meet Sunday January 20. (The intent is to clean up some weak points and clarify some others-ed.) NWRC Friday Nighter general instructions have been revised for 2002. Notable: SOP class has been renamed "Intermediate", the term "FOLLOW" is a synonym for "ON" or "ONTO", and other changes. NWRC will be doing a "Novice Championship" for Friday Nighters. We assume to encourage return competitors. A nice note from Carl and Ellen Graff was read by the secretary. They are doing well but their trees are not. Doo Wop ClubRally will run March 2-3. Rainier has stages on Sunday. Mr. Nolte is soliciting warm bodies to stand in the rain. Would probably meet 10:30 on Sunday. Jerry Hines updated us on Alcan. Entry (which fluctuates) currently 17 cars and 4 motorcycles. Interesting entry is the Triumph Tiger, a pretty huge dual-sport bike. Hoping to get response from recent advertising in cycle circles. Eric's web hosting service. Eric has turned mercenary and would like the club to pay a modest fee for hosting the highly successful web site. The server resides in his basement and there are expenses associated with that. A competitive fee of $20 per month was suggested. Eric will submit a formal proposal to the board. Raindrop Rally: Rallymaster Steve Willey completed the first reconnaissance drive yesterday (Jan 13). It will tour the Kitsap Peninsula. Vince Plancich made a motion which was detected to be a motion to adjourn, it was seconded by Mark Nolte and approved. FOR SALE *VHF radio already tuned to 151.625 MHz. This frequency is used on long distance rallies and is a requirement for Alcan. GE MASTR radio. 60 watts, ex-police radio. Control head and trunk mounted radio. 4 channels. Very powerful. Used twice on Lost Patrol. $75.00 No antenna. (Installation assistance negotiable) Peter Linde. E-Mail buckley2wa@hotmail.com or leave message at 253-804-7465. * Ed Millman got a '97 Taurus, wants to sell the '91 white Taurus wagon. 150K mi. $2000 (206) 361-7389 * Mike Jones still has the collection of parts in his garage that could make somebody a dandy Fire Arrow. Make an offer. (425) 823-8329 *Colleen wants a convertible. The pearl white (with white
17" wheels and new tires) '89 Corvette is offered at $ Call Jerry or Colleen at (206) 227-6343 or (425) 823-6343. ’84 BMW 318, rebuilt head, etc, Inc. studded tires (unmounted) $2500 Contact Pete Shelton (206)783-5681 Trivia *The SCCA Worker’s party had the usual hours-long drawing for door prizes, at lot of t-shirts and caps, along with enough flavors of Subaru posters to cover garage walls from Bellingham to Salem. More useful was the scuttlebutt. Tillamook wasn’t as eager to have the PRORally as Hillsboro, so Oregon Trail moved its HQ there. Still a lot of the same coastal range roads. Ron Barker was out of job last fall when the Aberdeen furniture store where he (and Caroline) worked shut down. A new owner took over the place, and went into the furniture business. Hired the Barker’s back to their old jobs! *Vince Plancich got himself an e-mail account. He was the last holdout on the RASC roster. *Pete sold the Suburban, Found a ’91 Pearl White Audi wagon (loaded, 5-speed).
DOO WOP The published schedule is below. No information on Saturday spectating has appeared on the SCCA-NWR web site yet. Nolte is recruiting workers for the Brooklyn Stage. Need lots of Road Guards, since someone let it out that this is a great stage to watch. Workers will meet at Oakville High School at 10AM. Breakfast at the nearby Jag’s is suggested. Diane Duran has crewed this stage for the last 4 years, but went to Arizona for some respite and education. Mark Nolte; (425)652-3578; e-mail: mnolte@qwest.net
Doo Wop ClubRally March 2-3, 2002 Tentative Schedule Saturday, March 2, 2002 Start Time Control Stage Miles 10:00 Start at Westwood Inn 10:23 ATC 1 Failor Lake 7.0 11:56 ATC 2 Moclips Heights 1. 0 Tahola Service 12:49 ATC 3 Quinault 1 10.40 Tahola Service 13:52 ATC 4 Quinault 2 10.40 Tahola Service 15:25 ATC 5 Quinault Reverse 10.34 16:55 MTC 2 Quinault Beach Resort Casino 18:30 till ? Westwood Inn pizza feed
Sunday, March 3, 2002 Start Time Control Stage Miles 08:30 Transit Hoquiam - Montesano 09:00 Parc Expose - Montesano 09:15 Driver's meeting - Montesano 09:30 MTC 1 Montesano 09:53 ATC 1 Pico Left 9.47 Montesano Service 11:16 ATC 2 Pico Right 9.51 Montesano Service 13:49 ATC 3 Brooklyn West 6.99 Brooklyn Service 14:32 ATC 4 Smith Creek West 6.61 15:35 ATC 5 Smith Creek East 6.44 Brooklyn Service 16:18 ATC 6 Brooklyn East 6.99 16:58 MTC 2 Oakville Grange Finish and Party
NW Rallyists’ Calendar • Call the NWRC Hotline (206) 256-9627 for latest info on Puget Sound TSD events.
Won’t Do That again: Stage Captain’s notes to self: -Don’t Start cars until the Stage is “Open”. The Pace car has to finish opening the stage before the first rally car leaves. Pace car does have the option of delaying the start until they are sure all is well and ready. Pace car shouldn’t be too far ahead of the rally cars, either. A big gap negates the whole reason for the Pacing process. -Stuff happens: Trees falling on the road. On a February Doo Wop, the winds had weakened the roots, so a few trees fell across the stage. Imagine the consternation in the 12th car when they find a 2-foot (diameter!) fir across the stage road. Wrong road? The only thing we can suspect to cause the massive tree to give up was that the 11th car was particularly loud RX7. Another stage, another tree. This one on the west side of Capitol Forest. Pace reported a tree covering the road. For some reason, we feared vandalism. Vince was Stage Captain, and told me to keep talking on the radio until I was positive someone hadn’t chopped the tree down. Two of us drove up to the spot, where I warned the other guy to stay clear of me, just in case there was a gun involved (hard to shoot two of us if we’re spread out). It was just a big vine maple that had suffered from erosion. -Take abilities into account when assigning workers. No one really wants to discuss their handwriting, so assigning someone with illegible handwriting to a writing task is unkind at best. The only scoring question that ever came up was based on bad handwriting. I assigned Steve Richards and Mike Jones as Starters. This is the only job that requires some nimbleness – the starting cars throw rocks and debris. Steve’s knees were slowing him down, and Mike was walking with a cane. They gave it their best, but very gently reminded me not to assign them to that job again. Then there was the time I put Sue Calvert as a lonely Road Guard on California Road. She would have complained about having to drive her little Miata on the roughest roads of the rally, but she’s just too nice. (Or forgiving.) Barb Raemer got somewhat the same treatment when her grocery getter was required to cross a dry stream bed to get to a ATC job. We could hear the bottom of the poor car scraping from a 1/4 mile away! -Once in place, is it safe? For the car, I mean. Jack Helm parked at the Flying Finish of Kennedy Creek, at the only place available. It was sopping wet, but a rally car managed to chew a rock out of the roadbed and send it into his windshield. Another year, Mark Hillman brought out a towel to cover the Mustang, and it was sort of dirty after the stage was run. No big rocks, though. All smaller than grapefruit. - Remember to block the road! Between runs, we ate badly cooked hamburgers and told stories. A little Ford drove up, but didn’t even slow down as it went past. Nispel and I had to go in and find him. He was looking for a spectator location, and badly lost. -The road should be obviously closed, even during runs. But prudently. We looked skeptically at the shutdown area at the end of a long stretch of Mainline road, but went with the course marshal’s plan. Rick Damitio had his truck sprawled across the road in a proper block. The third rally car was well and truly out of brakes, and stopped 3 feet past Rick’s truck. Same goes for leaving a “lane’ for a car to get past if the brakes are truly gone. -Reality- Yes, a car can start a stage before it arrives. Yep, says right here on their log- arrived 2 minutes after their actual start time. (This closes things up, never a bad idea. Unless someone decided to run on their assigned time, which leaves a five-minute gap. Bad things can happen to a vacant road in 5 minutes). Make sure the Control folk know what the rally forms look like and which blanks to fill in. Someone gets it wrong on each rally, and (ah hem) no one is immune. -Newbies need a lot of guidance. It defies belief that it really can be fun in a cold wind, with drizzle, while standing in 3 inches of ooozing mud. Can’t leave. Not that much to do unless things get hectic…. Attire makes all the difference. Where there isn’t the mud, there are rocks with all sharp edges. Thin-soled shoes don’t cut it. Baseball caps absorb rain. So does down. When you get down to it, there isn’t a lot of choice. If you take 20 minute to put on the full-wet weather gear, the sun will come out. The very best defense. - MN
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