Dry Lakes Racers Australia

If the short course start line was moved right next to where the long course start line was this year that would also move the return road further onto good salt. It would also help tidy up our procedures, especially if the timing van comes to the start line. Separation of the two courses would still be OK at speed.

Cheers
Dave

David Leikvold wrote:If the short course start line was moved right next to where the long course start line was this year that would also move the return road further onto good salt. It would also help tidy up our procedures, especially if the timing van comes to the start line. Separation of the two courses would still be OK at speed.

Cheers
Dave

Good idea Dave ,Mark Dunn and I spoke last week if the track was moved as you suggest would we have enough room for 2 full size 9 mile tracks, a bike track and a car track ? Just a thought

Lynchy wrote:Had a weird experience on the Sunday when we were setting up later in the day. We were heading back to the timing van from the 5 mile timing setup and at some point we could see a colour change on the lake surface and I thought it was cloud but the wheel noise changed as soon as we transitioned to the different coloured surface. At the time I wondered if it was the transition zone in the images???

I didn't notice it at all on the Monday and I was gone on Tuesday.

Lynchy

OK - that is a good clue (and Greg's comment on the wet entry not showing up)...

investigating further based on this I have been using "Band 8" as that is best resolution(15m), however that is not including thermal data as I initially thought. So what we are probably seeing is how the salt reflects straight up. That would explain why we see the track as white after it has been flattened out and a wet area showed up white.

There is thermal data in Band 10 and 11 but this is much lower resolution (100m). I will play about with that now and I have also booked a meeting with the Remote Sensing prof at Monash

Here is some NASA info on Bands http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/?page_id=5377

Cheers,

Not sure when the results of this new NASA mission will be available, but it will no doubt will be of benefit to many including DLRA. Seems to be in test and calibration mode at the moment but the outcome is promising: 'SMAP to map the entire globe with high-resolution ([edit: soil] moisture) radar data every two to three days".
https://www.facebook.com/DryLakesRacers ... 4815943824
http://www.nasa.gov/smap/

Norm,
Thanks for your input. Two long courses would be very interesting. Whether we could do it or not just depends on how good the salt is. There's certainly no reason not to try. A bike only course would be so easy to run and would get through a kazillion runs every day. If the bikes ran a long course on what was the short course on the western side of the salt this year they could use the return road even if the salt was soft. I also thought that if the return road was a bog we could have a "parking lot" way down the end and well off line so that when maybe 30 or so bikes were down there racing could stop and they could all come back up the track together. For the short course bikes we would just have to find another bit of half decent salt for their "parking lot" and they could come back with the long course competitors. That way we could continue to use the western track even with a useless return road. I thought it was a shame not to do that this year.

Another advantage to two long courses would be the reduced damage to the salt later in the week. I noticed on my track inspection in the Model A (thanks Pete) late in the week that it looked like lots of salt was being ripped up in small patches, presumably by high speed wheel spin.

Mark was often at the start line, he's a keen competitor and not afraid to say what needs to be said. I value his opinion. I really should sit down for a daily debrief with you two and anyone else interested.

Maybe we should have an official daily debrief in the pits at the end of each day before people head off the salt. That could be a big help in making quick changes in how we improve the running of Speedweek. Just a half an hour or so would be enough.

This year we did 522 runs over three and a half days. That's just on 150 runs per day. On Thursday we did 101 runs on the long course and 123 on the short. On Friday we did 49 runs before we finished up. If we can minimise disruptions next year and improve our procedures too, I think we're on track to finally get over 1,000 runs in 2016.

Cheers
Dave

Dave

The timers don't finish until around 8:00pm each day - do you want a meeting after that?

Paul

Agreed Norm,
2 long tracks, Bikes guys run that side, car guys run this side.
Can only see advantages. Tilt both tracks a few degrees and it might fit just nice.

internetscooter wrote:

Lynchy wrote:Had a weird experience on the Sunday when we were setting up later in the day. We were heading back to the timing van from the 5 mile timing setup and at some point we could see a colour change on the lake surface and I thought it was cloud but the wheel noise changed as soon as we transitioned to the different coloured surface. At the time I wondered if it was the transition zone in the images???

I didn't notice it at all on the Monday and I was gone on Tuesday.

Lynchy

OK - that is a good clue (and Greg's comment on the wet entry not showing up)...

investigating further based on this I have been using "Band 8" as that is best resolution(15m), however that is not including thermal data as I initially thought. So what we are probably seeing is how the salt reflects straight up. That would explain why we see the track as white after it has been flattened out and a wet area showed up white.

There is thermal data in Band 10 and 11 but this is much lower resolution (100m). I will play about with that now and I have also booked a meeting with the Remote Sensing prof at Monash

Here is some NASA info on Bands http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/?page_id=5377

Cheers,

Further to this I have had the discussion with the Senor Lecturer @ Monash School of Geography & Environmental Science...

basically treat the Band 8 images I have sent as a "view from a plane", this is just visible light as the satellite sees it. I need to work on the thermal data (Bands 10 and 11) and I should be able to translate those images into a map of temperature on the lake surface... once I get my head around the maths

I'll be documenting how I do everything here:
http://www.vespalabs.org/projects/lake- ... te-imaging

I'll also process all the history of Lake Gairdner once I have confirmed the above provides something useful

Once again, WELL DONE PAUL

Yep many thanks Paul. I am slowly learning how to access this stuff ....

Pete

David Leikvold wrote:Norm,


This year we did 522 runs over three and a half days. That's just on 150 runs per day. On Thursday we did 101 runs on the long course and 123 on the short. On Friday we did 49 runs before we finished up. If we can minimise disruptions next year and improve our procedures too, I think we're on track to finally get over 1,000 runs in 2016.

Cheers
Dave

when you say long course and short course, do you mean Course 1 and course 2
or do you mean Course 1 "long course" and course 1 "short course"?

G

I mean both courses, 101 on track 1 (the long track closest to the pits) and 123 on track 2 (the short course on the western side of the salt). Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the short track got more runs because their runs don't take as long.

Cat Herder Dave

Sorry David
The point I'm trying to make is that to avoid confusion, we call the tracks course 1 and course 2.
Now I know I'm not confused and you're not confused, however, standing in the "drivers" meeting there were a number of people who asked
me WTF was Animal talking about. Long course, short course. running short on the long course.
as their entry forms showed it as track 1 and track 2
G

It took me a while to remember which was which. If we get two long courses next year will they both be Track 1? It's a bit like that Monty Python skit about the Aussies in safari suits and cork hats "we should call everyone Bruce just to avoid confusion".

If we do get the two long courses with one for bikes and one for cars I think the problem will resolve itself nicely. Or will that be track B and Track C? But what happened to Track A?

I blame my medication

That would be great. Track for bikes and a track for cars. YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO