Help the New Guy - Part III - spare track

[Nooby]

Going through or pack's accumulation of "stuff", I discovered that we have an extra "track". Now, what I mean by "track" is just that - no starting gate, no finish line timer, and no means of support.

The track looks very comparable to the official track - which has a starting gate and electronic finish line. No one currently in scouts has any "memory" of why there are two tracks.

I'm pretty sure that I could build some type of support and starting gate (at least as good as the one on the other track).

The question is what kind of uses can we make of a track without an accurate finish line? We are thinking of some "fun" activities for those eliminated from the race.

Also, we would like to get a new starting gate - ours is manually operated, and does not seem to lower as quickly as we would like it to. Maybe we could build one for the spare first - to test it out.

Thanks

[Stan Pope]

The first thing to do is to try to find out why it was retired!

Assemble it and support it by temporary means and evaluate it visually.

Look at section transitions. Are they smooth? Or are there bumps.

Look at the guide rails. Are they "chewed up?"

Look at the side-to-side levelness, especially of the raised portion. Is the track warped? Can the warp be stressed out?

Look at the levelness of the "flat." Does the track sag between supports?

Look at the racing surface. Is it consistently smooth? If not, can it be repaired?

Look at stability. Does the raised portion of the track sag or move as cars run down? Can you improve stability issues?

[Nooby]

All good issues - which we will check out if we move foreward.

Actually, someone has speculated that it was "retired" because it was too expensive to buy electronics for both tracks.

So far, we have been unable to find any concrete information - but the truth is out there, somewhere.

Our current track seems to produce very good results - i.e. the same cars won regardless of lane selection, and underweighted cars always lost.
We implemented lane rotation and there did not seem to be any fast or slow lanes.

Right now, I don't think the spare track can be used in our race program - but who knows.

We're looking for ideas of "other" activitys. For example - some suggestions so far are:

a slow race - slowest car that crosses the finish, or

a backward race.

Any ideas are welcome - especially if they are fun!

[gpraceman]

You can use the second track for "tune-ups" prior to check-in. Don't allow head-to-head racing and don't time the races, but allow the racers to test run their cars and tune as they feel necessary. If racers take advantage of this, then you should have very few cars that just plain do not finish, if any at all.

We actually have made our track available the night before the race for such tuneups, but if you have a second track and allow sufficient check-in time, then you can do this on race day.

[Stan Pope]

Most electronics are "add on" and can be adapted to any track. If the old track were in good repair, adding electronics to it would be much less costly than purchasing a new track + electronics!

If you find that the track is good quality and provides results consistent with the other track, then you could be running two den (rank) races concurrently. Some packs are large enough that this could be helpful.

Our district races have been stagger-started on 4 tracks with 2nd year Webelos and Tigers running on the same track. Few pack races need to handle 300 to 400 racers, though!

Other uses:

Challenge and unstructured racing AFTER official racing. (Caution racers who will be taking their car to district or council racing to forego this unofficial racing opportunity, though. Too much risk of damaging their car!)

Pre-race "tune-up". I am open to heats with a racer's entry from a prior year, but I would not want races between this year's entries.

[Nooby]

As far as I can tell, these tracks are identical - probably built at the same time. They are definitely of the homemade variety.

I'm sure that whenever one track was selected over the other, some effort was made to select the "better" track.

I like the idea of a challenge track to keep everyone having fun.

[Stan Pope]

The beauty of challenge races is that you don't have to have an "official winner." The participants can be relied upon to call the winner! So, you only really need a starting gate!