Sand Blast Post Rally debrief and adventures.

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Perry
On the way home we had a little trouble with the excursion shortly after leaving. see the pic. But we managed to fix it on the roadside with a few new bolts from the local autozone and drove it home to Pittsburgh.. It was a bit shaky though with a bent driveshaft.

Um...

Wanna commiserate? I had a '99 F250 Diesel. Loved the truck, but when a front u-joint blew on the highway (not being driven by me) and exploded the transfer case and nearly threw the crew off the road...

Or when the tranny blew up cause of some plastic clip, rendering the truck useless...

Or when on the "new" transfer case decided to let itself loose on a cross continent trip outside of Rapid Falls SD... (road side repair to the rescue, I got to Seattle, and met JVL...)

A set of "fresh" pads installed by dealer, on multi million dollar front rotors left the building 4 days into ownership...

Here's my car. Made it through the rally. I was out of the country and let my friends drive it. Hope to re-do the cage and make it to ESPR.

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rallyfreak202
Here's my car. Made it through the rally. I was out of the country and let my friends drive it. Hope to re-do the cage and make it to ESPR.

Hey _______________?

Is that model Audi still a strut car? Curious cuase today I am working on Audi struts (for road race..Yeah short travel.. I'll make anything for the right price)

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

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john vanlandingham
OK Boys sounds like yet another fun event came off, congratulations to especially the organsing committee: Chair of the Rally Andrew Frick; Deputy Organizer Sarah Frick; the ever tireless man of a thousand ideas and general nice guy NASA Rally Sport Championship Director Anders Green,
and to our own Rally Anarchista Volunteer Coordinator Matt Smith...and all the voluteers. Seems like a whole buncha Volvo Turbobrickers showed up to help..Sounds like some good cross-pollination

WORD up to that! It was an awesome event! Awesome folks all around. Got to meet some more people I know via my lurking on here

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john vanlandingham
How did James Bass go--was the car finally in proper spec with a turbo like it should have been all along?

Yup. I haven't been in that non-turbo-debacle since my last RA event (100AW 2015) thankfully.

Foot to the floor... ...a lot! Lots of sidewards action, for sure. Definitely feeling more comfortable with things (I'm still gunshy since we hit that tree in 2014 heh - probably set back any hope of progress significantly). We came in roughly mid-pack. I can't complain.

Finished, without any major incidents, except another toasted rear subframe which I will be reinforcing before Magnum Opus (with thanks to Mark Hillie for hooking me up with the bits so I could templatise them).

I'll definitely be back next year! My next event is Magnum Opus, but I'll be working 100AW.

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turoc
The whole thing started by other competitors who were extremely pissed off at one competitor who was slow and did not allow other cars in front of him that caught them on earlier stages. I didnt even bother talking to that guy as i was told it was no use and jumped 10 cars.

Yeah, we caught him on stage and tried to pass like 20 times, but kept getting cockblocked until the successful attempt. Hey, at least I can say we passed a non-broken STi on stage, right???

I think he just didn't "get" that you should let someone go by. Possibly a language barrier; I talked with him for a minute while waiting on one stage, and he seemed nice enough, it was just very hard to communicate with him.

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rallyfreak202
Here's my car. Made it through the rally. I was out of the country and let my friends drive it. Hope to re-do the cage and make it to ESPR.

I was digging that car. I love Audis.



The wife and I were actually behind scenes on this rally. Helping with prep and catering. Felt good to be a part in pulling off a rally. She did a bunch of last minute details the day of and I was captain of Campbells Lake, Stages 2/5 and worked finish of stage 7. Loooooooong day. I learned a lot from Perry, learned a lot from my first solo captain gig. Hopefully my end will go more smoothly next year. Wife and I are fully on board again.

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Racinkid13

The wife and I were actually behind scenes on this rally. Helping with prep and catering. Felt good to be a part in pulling off a rally. She did a bunch of last minute details the day of and I was captain of Campbells Lake, Stages 2/5 and worked finish of stage 7. Loooooooong day. I learned a lot from Perry, learned a lot from my first solo captain gig. Hopefully my end will go more smoothly next year. Wife and I are fully on board again.

Thanks for helping out Max and Wifey! It was great to work with you, we need an army of committed folks like you to keep these things rolling. I guess now we know what that noise was in the excursion..

See ya at the next one,
Perry

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Perry

FE570s course bike
KTM 950 ADV
74 Beetle turbo-efi etc..
72 Beetle stage rally project WRX powered
Attended about 15 rallies, usually a volunteer in a course car.

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Racinkid13

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rallyfreak202
Here's my car. Made it through the rally. I was out of the country and let my friends drive it. Hope to re-do the cage and make it to ESPR.

I was digging that car. I love Audis.



The wife and I were actually behind scenes on this rally. Helping with prep and catering. Felt good to be a part in pulling off a rally. She did a bunch of last minute details the day of and I was captain of Campbells Lake, Stages 2/5 and worked finish of stage 7. Loooooooong day. I learned a lot from Perry, learned a lot from my first solo captain gig. Hopefully my end will go more smoothly next year. Wife and I are fully on board again.

Thanks for all your help Max. as others mentioned it takes an army of volunteers to make these events happen.

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Matt Smith

Racing in glorious black and red

My daily life is a Saab story (sold!)

The event went very smoothly again this year. I think we ran all the stages on schedule and ended up transiting cars on one stage. Bikes raced all stages.

Andrew did a great job of putting on his first event. The course set up and course car team did a great job of keeping the event on schedule. The best group of stage captains that we have had at this event made the course cars job easier. Already starting to think about improvements for next years event.

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Matt Smith

Racing in glorious black and red

My daily life is a Saab story (sold!)

Hi everyone! Just wanted to stop in here and say that I had great time at Sandblast. This was my first time at a stage rally event, I was a stage marshal on Max's team.

I can't get over how friendly the NASA crew and racers are, this was easily the best experience I've had at any car related event.

I've always had an interest in rally and now after being at an event I'm totally hooked. Will be gladly helping out with future events. I also just signed up to do my first local Rallycross event with my Volvo. Would love to be out racing with you guys some day, maybe in a few years

Also, I had a GoPro running in my area for the rally moto on Campbell's lake and for the cars on Campbell's lake reverse, and a bunch of still pictures I took. I'll post those here once I get them processed

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Rabbit.Matt
Hi everyone! Just wanted to stop in here and say that I had great time at Sandblast. This was my first time at a stage rally event, I was a stage marshal on Max's team.

I can't get over how friendly the NASA crew and racers are, this was easily the best experience I've had at any car related event.

I've always had an interest in rally and now after being at an event I'm totally hooked. Will be gladly helping out with future events. I also just signed up to do my first local Rallycross event with my Volvo. Would love to be out racing with you guys some day, maybe in a few years

Also, I had a GoPro running in my area for the rally moto on Campbell's lake and for the cars on Campbell's lake reverse, and a bunch of still pictures I took. I'll post those here once I get them processed

Hello Matt,

Thanks for coming out and volunteering. The event does not happen without lots of people willing to give up their time to make the event happen.

Andrew

I had a great time! This was my first rally, and really my first motorsports event. I got along with everybody I met and talked to, and will definitely be volunteering again!

I got to drive my Volvo 960 on the stage for a while, and as a result I'm now resigned to the fact that I'll be building a rally car one day (as soon as possible )

Also, I got gopro footage of my spot in stage 3, and then again from a spectator spot on stage 7. I'll try to have the clips posted somewhere in a week or two.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2016 03:53PM by McAdams Christopher.

Andrew: thanks for taking over the event!

It mostly seemed to go pretty well. A couple of comments:

* Please, please, please redo your routebook - at least the transit section (I didn't use it on stage). In some places it's really good, but there seem to be quite a few places where signs have disappeared or changed since the book was written. Also, it seems like the book was done on incrementals instead of cumulative mileage, which makes it really hard to get back in sync if you miss (or can't find) a checkpoint.

As a side note, the reroute in McBee was pretty hilarious. So many rallycars going in so many different directions. The teams that knew where the stage was just ignored the reroute, and everyone else just seemed to wander around randomly until figuring out to go SE on 151. Kinda reminded me of the old "Targ" video game.

* If there's going to be a regroup, make it clear where it's supposed to be even if you don't end up using it. I never did figure out where the 6-min regroup was. Marcel just sort of showed up and took care of it at the start of the next stage.

* The bass player for the band was good.

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Self-righteous douche canoe

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hoche
Andrew: thanks for taking over the event!

It mostly seemed to go pretty well. A couple of comments:

* Please, please, please redo your routebook - at least the transit section (I didn't use it on stage). In some places it's really good, but there seem to be quite a few places where signs have disappeared or changed since the book was written. Also, it seems like the book was done on incrementals instead of cumulative mileage, which makes it really hard to get back in sync if you miss (or can't find) a checkpoint.

As a side note, the reroute in McBee was pretty hilarious. So many rallycars going in so many different directions. The teams that knew where the stage was just ignored the reroute, and everyone else just seemed to wander around randomly until figuring out to go SE on 151. Kinda reminded me of the old "Targ" video game.

* If there's going to be a regroup, make it clear where it's supposed to be even if you don't end up using it. I never did figure out where the 6-min regroup was. Marcel just sort of showed up and took care of it at the start of the next stage.

* The bass player for the band was good.

Thank you for the feed back on routebook. The routebook was built on deltas which is actually how most NASA routebooks are built. I will see if can work out a way to make the overall mileages line up better. Were there actual errors like wrong tulips in the routebook?

The reroute was a complete pain in the butt. Two days before the rally the rail road had completely closed that RR crossing with big road closed and detour signs. Then after the reroute had been printed and posted when the course setup teams were out there Friday afternoon while you were running shakedown the RR had completely cleared the closure and detour signs. So that is likely why everyone was going different directions.

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Andrew_Frick
Thank you for the feed back on routebook. The routebook was built on deltas which is actually how most NASA routebooks are built.

East Coast NASA, maybe. West Coast ones are not, though I'm not sure about HDT. My suggestion would be to talk to Mark Williams about tips for fixing it up.

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Andrew_Frick
I will see if can work out a way to make the overall mileages line up better. Were there actual errors like wrong tulips in the routebook?

I can't remember there being any tulips themselves being drawn wrong. It was mostly that the descriptions were for signs that'd changed or were missing, or could be better.

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Andrew_Frick
The reroute was a complete pain in the butt. Two days before the rally the rail road had completely closed that RR crossing with big road closed and detour signs. Then after the reroute had been printed and posted when the course setup teams were out there Friday afternoon while you were running shakedown the RR had completely cleared the closure and detour signs. So that is likely why everyone was going different directions.

You have my sympathies there. I fully understand when situations like that come up.

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Self-righteous douche canoe

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McAdams Christopher
I had a great time! This was my first rally, and really my first motorsports event. I got along with everybody I met and talked to, and will definitely be volunteering again!

I got to drive my Volvo 960 on the stage for a while, and as a result I'm now resigned to the fact that I'll be building a rally car one day (as soon as possible )

Also, I got gopro footage of my spot in stage 3, and then again from a spectator spot on stage 7. I'll try to have the clips posted somewhere in a week or two.

Hello Christopher,

Thanks for coming out an volunteering and welcome to the sport. I see that you are located in Greenville, SC. That is where I am as well. Let me know if you want to come over and check out my rally car or talk about the sport. Or you can see the disaster area that makes up Sandblast Rally World Headquarters

Phone number 864.735.5301

Andrew