Quote
alkun
oh come on John, without suffering with the crappy for a while, how can you really appreciate the good stuff?


Chris, glad to see you made it all the way through in good shape, it was fun servicing next to you and your crack commando all-star crew.

Yeah yeah, you're right... but really, what's the point of not bolting the stuff in? I made huge effort to get it done and deliever upon only a 1/4 deposit thinking dough is tight and times are rough, I feel really kinda well odd...


And with your thoughts above: you extra motivated to get the nice 240 going again? You appreciate the nice balance in that more?

---

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.

Here's the video: [url=

]

[/url]


Missed turn is at 1:30. Totally 100% my fault for missing the turn. The notes were good, and there was an arrow corresponding to a routebook instruction. I can't explain now why I missed it except that I thought at the moment that the turn was just a little bit further up that road. We figured it out pretty quick, but not quick enough to back up. So then I included the video of us trying to figure out what to do next. We're lucky that Mike Goodwin behind us also recognized that they were off the stage and slowed down a bit.

Hopefully, someone will learn something from this video.

Doug

Ew. Wow. Yuck.

"I'm not liking this." That's about the understatiest understatement I've heard in awhile. You guys handled that well, keeping cool heads.

I'd've probably tried to raise the stage hams on the radio, or maybe stopped at the next radio control to do the same, but it's certainly a tricky situation.

I think you would've been within your rights to Red Cross the stage. That'd probably've caused a huge firestorm (and probably will here), but the situation is somewhat akin to having unexpected stage traffic. The security of the racing road has been lost and the potential for a serious accident is high. The NRS GRR's don't cover this situation specifically, but they do call for throwing the Red Cross if there's "confirmed non-rally traffic".

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Self-righteous douche canoe

Thanks for posting that. I can see it would be easy to make the mistake. All this mayhem because the first car (Tingwu Song/Martin Brady) shortcut the course, arguably intentionally. How do you drive through not one, but two sets of banner tape and not know what you are doing?

We blew the corner. No excuses as our notes were spot on, just missed the arrow and second guessed the note accuracy. Then we took to long to figure out we were not on the stage road anymore, by then we had seen dust and followed it back to the stage road. Still non the wiser where we went wrong. For educational purposes I will post the corner in question.
After review I would say the arrow was a little close to the corner, and in a bush. BUT we don't drive on arrows. This is not the reason we blew through the corner. We made a mistake in our notes. Should have had a distance or describe the corner as a Jct. Maybe "Into !R4 at Jct..." We learn from our mistakes.

---

Intercom and electronics dude. www.zerodegreec.ca



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2013 08:16AM by zerodegreec.

Quote
alkun
oh come on John, without suffering with the crappy for a while, how can you really appreciate the good stuff?


Chris, glad to see you made it all the way through in good shape, it was fun servicing next to you and your crack commando all-star crew.

Thank you, and it was good to meet you. We had a blast! Looking forward to MT. Hood.

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john vanlandingham

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ChrisKobi
Thank you everyone who volunteered and helped make this happen! Big thank you to Robert Colbertson and Arnode (sp?) for servicing for us. You guys did awesome! And Huge thank you to Max's lovely wife for having delicious sandwiches and treats ready for us at service. We'd have starved to death without her! I had a great time, learned a lot and found plenty more things that I need to work on one of them would be the acute corners. My car loves to plow.


Found some great pictures by Mike Shaw of Nameless...
Piccies

Might not plow as bad if you bothered to spin off the 3 nuts at the top of the strut, and the ONE pinch bolt at the bottom and installed the struts you had weeks beforehand, and the ONE bolt at the bottom and the ONE nut at the top for the rear shocks which you decided not to install....

I am confused with how, with all the willing and able people, that you could not get the struts and shocks on with weeks available to do it.

Nothing against you John. I brought everything with me. We had a team meeting and discussed putting them on and the desision was to hold off. I will be putting the struts on very soon and Robert said when he had time he could weld in the Channel for the rear coil overs. Then I just need to find a experienced driver and a strip with an acute and get some driving tips!

Wow. I bet we'da missed it too. "Specially if we happened to be the next car back, and saw tracks going that way. It rather does look like the path of least resistance..
Prolly can't prove that whoever blew through there first did it on purpose. You'd have to be some kind of truly sincere sociopathic asshole to endanger everyone behind you and fuck with the stage, rally and organizers just to cheat with a shortcut. I'd much prefer to think no one in this game would be that low. If it could be proven that someone did this deliberately, I'd want to see them pay for the damages to the cars behind, and then banned from competing, maybe permanently. Maybe the way to block off future shortcuts like this one would be with something more consequential than banner tape.

---

Jay Woodward
Snohomish, WA
'90 Mazdog Frankenprotege
Chronologically, 46...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2013 10:51AM by Jay.

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Doivi Clarkinen
Thanks for posting that. I can see it would be easy to make the mistake. All this mayhem because the first car (Tingwu Song/Martin Brady) shortcut the course, arguably intentionally. How do you drive through not one, but two sets of banner tape and not know what you are doing?

Good point.

In the previous incidents of pro-Jemba note people taking a wrong road and happily driving 5-6 miles, presumably with co-driver chattering away merrily and driver with that silly look of boyish concentration, eventually those bright souls so happy for so many miles EVENTUALLY realised they had fucked up when they came up to banner guard blocking the road they were on---

The case in Oregon of the Polish guy, he knew too but obviously flat didn't give a shit when he saw people looking the "wrong way"--ie not at him but at the STAGE, ----when he drove thru the tape---and in some random direction...because there's no way he knew which way to go...


I

Maybe we have to start vetting these vistors better.. First there was Crazy Leo that caused 45+ competitors to lose LOTS of miles they paid for, and now at least reasonable grounds to for somebody to really sit down and do like Bush did with that guy Pootin, and look in his eyes and see if he's a man we can trust.....

Yeah, get him down here for a little post rally tete-a-tete like dis:


Keep th squeeze on him and ask So OK youse only had 2 pass recce and you wanted 4, and OK sos dere was an arrow but somehowz ya missed every and didn't notice the banner guard cause youse guys were distracted....so how'd miss the second time ya plowed right thru it?
What did you do when you discovered you did, PUNK!

That doesn't work? It might not, those Chinese are tricky--and tough...

Well, then, about 50% of Americans believe this is perfectly OK:



We need to get to the TRUTH!

2 cars are banged up, and it could have been a lot more serious...

Lots more.

---

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.

Wow, I can see how this happened pretty easily.
Without being there it is really hard to be definitive with suggestions, and I'm not being accusatory, so take the following with a grain of salt.

FWIW I don't buy it as a planned short-cutting since I would never have assumed both ends of that road would have been un-manned.

- When taping a road that would be the route according to priorities, run two or more rows of tape. (1 at the road, 1 10 yards back, 1 30 yards back) More work but more clarity and less chance that the tape will be broken accidentally.(hiker/quadder/animals)
Maybe tape at two heights? One high enough to not get broken by most antennas on cars? Maybe another run along the ground? Maybe A-frame signs at unmanned junctions (we did similar at Big White were we couldn't place people but where sleds could get into.


- Connectors in the notes. Anyone who's listened to me speak on notes knows I stress the importance of consistent connecting distances. (as in I don't care if your 30 is my 50 as long as your 30 is always 30.) In this case a connector indicating the relative immediacy of the corner should have had the driver looking for the road.

Tip... at 25 mph, you're running at about 12 yards (11m) per second. At 20 mph you're at just under 10 yards per second. accuracy is less important than consistancy so if you make an effort to stay at 25mph and count the distances in seconds, get pretty reliable connectors.

- This corner really needs a 'deceptive' or 'hidden' modifier on it as well.

Again, it is easy to do this in retrospect and without being on the ground, but the note should have probably been...

L5 20 Deceptive, Narrow Turn R4
Maybe it's something other than 20, that part is really tough to tell from video, but you get the idea.
(and before anyone suggests otherwise, it isn't too much to spit out or take in)

- finally, once I saw the stage continuing ahead I wouldn't have turned around but would have gone to the junction and waited for the next car to come along to get a better idea of where we were in the stage and I would have taken the penalty for short-cutting (but probably would have written paper to get rid of the penalty based on circumstances.)
But that's an after the fact, in the calm of my home, call.

- In the case of the same thing but with a dead-end... co-driver out with a triangle, walking well ahead and around the corners ... it'd take forever, but probably not as long as sitting and waiting for someone to show up, or not.
But that's another after the fact, in the calm of my home, call. (and one that would have been tough to actually do since you KNOW you're bleeding time by doing it)

- A critical incident between cars three corners off the route on that road could have taken forever to figure out/find

(edited to add Turn to the suggested note)

---

First Rally: 2001
Driver (7), Co-Driver (44)
Drivers (16)
Clerk (10), Official (7), Volunteer (4)
Cars Built (1), Engines Built (0) Cages Built (0)
Last Updated, January 4, 2015

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john vanlandingham
Blame is for idiots. losers.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2013 01:04PM by Morison.

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Doug Heredos

I'm sorry- but no matter how many events you have under your belt... You simply cannot know this without being there and seeing the exact situation.

If you're notes are not adequate to get you down the stage without additional cues, you (this is the general you) are not doing it right. Note accordingly. This is my opinion, and I can and will say it. After reviewing both videos, even with the tape in place, my notes would have been different. I'm not "calling you out" or "blaming" you by saying this, it is what it is. Shit happens. If you were running on notes, it's a valuable lesson that you've learned (and again, one of the reasons I am a big proponent of proper, well written notes). I would have said the same thing irregardless of having saw the videos (it's what I came to post, just had a 5 hour nap after 24 hours of fixing a broken trailer heading out to Baie!)

If an individual was running on the routebook only, they have less of an excuse IMO, as the co-driver would have had time to check every turn against odo distance (unless the odo was broken, this falls into the shit happens column again).

The best thing is nobody was hurt!

To your point keith, Wim prefers to not have a distance or use an "And" when the next instruction is immediate. We always have "Into" or a distance with the exception next instruction is right at the end of the last. Its not deceptive but the use of Junction or Road or Turn should have been added to the notes. I was not looking up and did not see that turn. We obviously missed it, and unless a driver 150% trusts the notes a co-driver is delivering, doubt enters your mind before "we fucked up" does. By then you are 300meters down the road trying to figure out where you went wrong in the notes. Just so happened that this is when we started seeing residual dust and just following the route from someone ahead of us who we thought were on the right road.

Hind sight and replaying in-car makes the mistake obvious. At the time of running at speed, MANY cars made the same mistake. Adam can say what he wants, but his co-driving carrier with Hardy was not perfect and without error. This happened so fast it was not detected. These roads were also littered with junctions and intersections. If I had to make an off the cuff guess, this stage had at least 50 intersections. I have never done a stage with as many options. Say what you want, but when top teams blow the same corner, its not a rookie "you should know better" or have done x y z type situation.

Driving counter course on teh other hand, this is the crux of the issue. unless your backing up or doubling back 100' you are in trouble. My biggest fear after realizing the mistake was the "what if" scenario of spectators or volunteers using that road. Even bigger was the logging activity in the area, sure we did not see any trucks on Saturday, but could you imagine coming around a corner even 80% speed and a piece of equipment was on the road? or how about a pile of lumber? How long would it take for someone to find you?

---

Intercom and electronics dude. www.zerodegreec.ca

As part of the course opening crew that day I would like to put in my two cents worth.

All 3 course opening cars are manned by experienced rally individuals who have competed and/or are stage rally instructors. I am definitely the newby in the crew with only 2 stage events competed but I have 7+ course opening jobs and a number of other volunteer . Our primary responsibility is safety. If we don't think the stage is safe with all tape up and all instruction markers in place then we won't call the stage hot. In the past we've had to delay or cancel a stage running due to unruly spectators or locals barging on or inadequate signage or unconfirmed comms through the stage.

The turn was not deceptive with the tape up. The instruction marker was there and when all three course opening cars went by none of us flagged it as a problem. Neither did advance. We did at many points stop during our runs and raise tape or modify tape as needed. If tape was not visible adequately, we raised is as best we could. If it was on the ground it was fixed. If it was missing (and we ran into this a few times on Sunday morning as the locals had vandalized the course overnight, pulling down tape and removing instruction markers) we replaced it.

I will definitely grant you that running the couse at a slower speed does not give you the same impression when at full speed but also remember that car 0 is going near full blast down the roads and was posting competitive stage times, even "scoring" a fastest overall on one stage that weekend. Car 0 did not see this corner as a problem.

With tape missing... I can understand the request to have two levels of tape in case someone runs the turn but it's hard enough in some places to find a way to fix the tape in place. Having one higher would require the advance cars to bring ladders and even then in many places it can't be done. The right thing to do would have been to post a corner marshall at that location. This was done on the second running of the stage. If we had more volunteers then this location would have had a marshall on the first running as well. A volunteer had to be repositioned for the second running from their location to here, thus making somewhere else unmonitored.

Everyone at the rally "enjoyed" Jim's call for volunteers at the Saturday dinner. It is very true that without volunteers we can't have fun in the forest. With some volunteers we can run a rally. With enough volunteers we can man every turn and chances are this would not have happened.

I am very glad no one was hurt. A head-on is terrifying and believe me we in 000 were very distressed when it came on the radio. Thankfully only metal was impacted.

Did song shortcut the course? Or did he blow through it, on the brakes then go the way he's supposed to.

I can see taking out the tape then maybe on the way out not noticing he ripped all the tape down causing chaos behind him.

I don't understand how you can fly through the caution tape while not noticing you just blew through caution tape at a junction, then conveniently ending up back on the road and short cutting the course.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2013 12:04PM by czwalga.

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alkun

Chris, glad to see you made it all the way through in good shape, it was fun servicing next to you and your crack commando all-star crew.

I didn't think my crack was hanging out that much, and I definitely wasn't going commando!
Al, it was great seeing you again.... Even if the lack if mustache through me for a loop. Glad you and the car made it though, now get back to a car that has the correct wheels pushing it.

Chris and Max, I had a great time servicing for you. Thanks for the great weekend!