2013 Speed Week

[DLRA]

Cled has been talking to Mt Ive today.
"The road in has been graded and is extremely dusty"

For those coming up for the first time, what this means is the road will be good early and then as more cars and trucks travel over it you will get more ruts and bull dust.
Watch out for the washouts they can be hard to pick up and are usually deep.
Also there are a number of cattle grids to negotiate so watch your speed.

The dust gets into everything and as discussed else where on the forum positive pressure in vehicles and trailers can reduce the amount of dust.

Are we having fun yet

[ASH]

Hi All...new forum member, thought I better sign up after keeping up to date for the last 3 years. Planned our first trip to the lake 3 years ago, had to pull the pin at the last minute! 2011 all ready to go...spewing , 2012 here we come...devastated Non racers but car heads all the same...bring it on! had my own crapper and shower ready for years! See you all there...

[momec3]

Welcome aboard Ash.
See you on the Salt.

Chris

[DLRA]

Alright then, this will possibly be my last post until at least the 24th-25th.
It is unlikely that there will be any updates during the week unless I can get on to a forum member from the DLRA camp.
If I can, I will.

For those that don't know or unaware, there is very little in the way of communication to the outside world from Lake Gairdner.
There is a low grade land line at the DLRA Camp and a phone at Mt. Ive and that's it.
Certainly no possibility to do updates to the web site. Having said that I will have the opportunity to do updates to the pages so that as soon as I can I will be posting results.
Over the years people have tried Sat phones with varying degrees of success, but they are expensive.
And mobile phones will stop working by the time you hit the first corner on the dirt, just out of Iron Knob.
See you on the other side

[Lynchy]

Greg

I can do updates for you if you like. I planned on a nightly phone call to the shed to see how the Jag is performng. Let me know...

Lynchy

[internetscooter]

Certainly no possibility to do updates to the web site. Having said that I will have the opportunity to do updates to the pages so that as soon as I can I will be posting results.

Greg - I am not planning on gong in 2014 - I'd be keen to set up a live feed of results (e.g. twice a day). A quick Google and it looks like it could be done for a few hundred bucks through a satellite service. I think it would draw a lot of attention so I think it could easily be sponsored (I'd even do if it is as cheap as I think it would be). Just a thought - see you in a few days

[IN2VWS]

Updates can be done to Facebook with one of these:
http://satphoneshop.com/products/handhe ... reach.html

Minimum of a 4 month contract, + 75 cents per message. Messages are created via an app on your iphone.

[internetscooter]

yeah something like that - you can also get ones that you hire for a week and are $1.50 a message. Done right you could get the entire speed list in a single message and covert it to something readable on dlra.org.au. I'll chat with Greg.

[internetscooter]

ok... yes I am bored and pissed off that I am missing all the fun so I have worked it out...

For ~$200 we can get one a Spot Connect http://www.findmespot.net.au/

A service plan is US$115 per year and the cost of 500 x 41 character messages is US$50. Being tricky we could get ~20 race results per message.

http://www.findmespot.net.au/Type-n-Sen ... -Cost.html

It says that it will do facebook but I think that is the wrong vibe for the DLRA I can either set up something to automatically post here or work with Greg to have a special page which is updated automatically.

[Lynchy]

Paul

Looks like a good solution and at a very good price. Between you and Greg you could develop a code to transmit a lot of results with very few characters...

Lynchy - (Yes, It's killing me as well. I was giving progress updates over the weekend as to where Gaz and the Jag were at until they went off the grid Sunday morning. Now I'm hoping for a phone call tonight...)

[Dreamliner 200]

Looks like the short term answer Paul, maybe the club will stump up the $$'s!

Cheers

Graham

[DLRA]

2013 Speed Week provisional results are now available online.

http://www.dlra.org.au/2013.htm

I still have to sort out some classes for a couple of vehicles.
Plus there are some cases where I have to identify which driver was driving a certain vehicle.
Have a look if there is anything you see that you know is wrong please let me know ASAP drylakesracersau@hotmail.com

Then I can start to look at records, personal bests etc.

There will be a number of new blue hats (200mph achievers) and red hats (over 200mph and a record) to be presented.

There is lots that we can do to make next time bigger and better, many of us were making lists as we were working during the week. So look for ample opportunity to be involved in this.

(Got home at 5am this morning after leaving Lake Gairdner at 11am yesterday, Animal drove all night. Just had a couple of hours sleep.)

[DON NOBLE]

Thanks for putting up the results , much appreciated by those not at the lake .

[DLRA]

Just posted version 2 of the results.
Changes for;
873 Steven Moore
832 Stew Ross
692 Tharon Hart, 623 John Dickson
371 Grant Schlein
875 Kurt Dunn
379 Greg Watters
805 Shane Gaghan
921 John Davey
861 John Coleman
140 Ronnie Stayt
904 John Weninger
928 Dave Bolger
975 Herb Wuersch

Problems were results missing, wrong rider/driver.

Sorry for the errors.
I've only just received the electronic version of the speeds from Tony today and that has helped a lot. (Thanks Tony)
To generate the results in a timely manner I had to transcribe each one of the 641 runs manually . Which I did on the Thursday and Friday when ever I had a chance.
The main track was a printout each day and the GPS track were handwritten sheets. (Well that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it)

There are a number of improvements I would like to see, but we had to get that first one out of the way with the new timing system and overall I think the new timing system worked pretty well.
I'm sure we had less down time than 2010.
We have learnt heaps and were busy making note as we went.

Once I get all these changes nailed down I will then turn my attention to identifying records.
Probably go through the same process giving entrants the opportunity to make comment before I lock them away.

[DLRA]

Hmmm...
Just thought I compare this year with previous years.
Makes for some interesting reading.

Did you know we had 32 fewer actual entrants this year than in 2010?
(There were 309 pre-entered, but this included carry over from the 2 rained out years)
Also we had 58 more timed runs than 2010 and 160 more GPS runs!
So any one who was complaining about queuing up and lack of runs this year, certainly would not have liked 2010.

Looking at the number of runs per day on the timed track it averaged out to about 63 per day over the week. Now this year we put in some big hours some days running for 8.5 to 9 hours. So this averages out to 8-8.5 minutes per run, compare this to the time per run from some years ago of around 9 minutes per run. So you may say we really haven't improved. But amazing when you consider on 3 of the 5 days we had an incident where the track was out of action for some time.

What it does show is that if we want to get more runs per day, its not technology that's going to provide the answers, it's not the officials or the emergency crews. It's the entrants themselves! They have to be prepared at the start line to go as soon as the starter calls them to the line and when they have completed their run they have to get off the track and onto the return roads as quickly and safely as possible. Figure it out for your self, it only takes a vehicle a couple of minutes to make a pass, where is the other 7 minutes wasted?

Looking at the graph it's also obvious that all the growth has come in the last 4 years with about double the numbers since 2006. Now this may sound like a long time but in competitive years it only 3 meetings.

(Oh, prior to 2005 I don't have records of how many runs were made.)