Derby Wizard,
First off, I don’t think a pwd car should be raced without the owner of the car present. I know that things can happen that can prevent a boy from attending but I also would not want our derby turn into an unattended activity. It’s hard enough to get parents to come to meetings as it is… Our District rules state that "the Scout must register" and upon questioning I have found out that he has to be there at least at the start of the race - to register his car.
I say stick to the rules as the car belongs to just another Cub Scout. If the parents have significant rank in the pack as you state, than they should understand that all Cub Scout competitions are to be run in a fair manner. They are 'Trained' leaders aren't they?
I also agree that the rules should be clear and precise on any matter that could give a performance edge. As Stan stated: “It helps if the rules clearly differentiate legal from not legal.”
We also write our Pack rules (which I have to finish today…) based on our District rules as we don’t want to have a Cub Scout face the possibility getting his pwd car DQ’d if he didn’t rebuild it between races.
I also feel your pain with the rules as we are racing under the following District rule this year: “Wheels may not be altered in any way. Mold projection defects on wheel treads may be removed by sanding lightly. The decorative dots on the wheel treads may not be removed.” I asked the following question: “Can the wheel tread be removed so that the outer diameter of the wheel is concentric (round) with the wheel bore (as long as the simulated tread – “decorative dots” are still visible)?”. The answer I got was “NO”. So now we face the decision of either hand sanding the molding gate off our wheels (flat spot time!) or taking the chance that we are allowed to chuck the wheels up in a drill and "sanding lightly" until the molding gate is gone. I’m afraid that the later will get us DQ’d. Although I had e-mailed this and other questions to the District Chairman a week ago, it took a phone call, as Stan directed someone else to do, to get an answer sent back to me.
We are also racing under a rule that states that "All four wheels must contact the track at the same time". I can just see one of the officials pushing down on some poor Cub Scouts pwd car until the axles bend and all four wheels touch at the same time.
Makes me sick to think about it...
I am also taking the initiative and have already volunteered to the District Executive to run next years District race. I also made the offer of equipment use (Track, Timer, Software, Scales,…) for this year’s District race but have yet to receive an answer. Again, this has been more than a week ago.
By the way Terryep, nice picture but I’m thinking that they would DQ the car that wheel was on at our District race. Personally if a Scout showed up at our Pack race I would tell him what a great job he did.
Da Graphite Kid
