Derby Talk

Hong Kong Phooey! Wow, this is a spectacular car! How tall is this car? We have a three inch limit due to our finish gate clearance. I'm thinking of introducing a "design only" competition next year and eliminating performance related restrictions (other than weight and other restrictions ...

(pm sent) We don't have a design competition at Districts either. It would be a nice event to add, but someone else will have to spearhead that effort! I'm content to just be a dad for once, so don't get involved at the district level. Also, since my son's cars are designed for speed and not design,...

Thank you all for your nice thoughts! The orange car managed to break all our track records this year. While there could be variability year to year depending how the track is setup, our pack average times are statistically the same as always, so I think this holds up! Really we just tweaked the ora...

the plates were done on the computer, and printed on a color printer, on a cardstock or label paper. I find it to be a nice little creative "cherry on the top" for the cars. We have one for a police car, which we have not done yet, NCARSR8, takes awhile for some to get that one. they are ...

I recently discovered a circa 2004 article in the local paper's archives about the local Pack's Pinewood Derby, and all that went into it. Only 2-3 years before my involvement, they used different locations, different awards, had a huge (and quite different) production, etc. I had NO idea they used ...

We used to have a block cutting session where two parents would bring their bandsaws, all of the boys would sketch their car shapes and a parent would "rough cut" the block on a bandsaw... then the boys would all start sanding and shaping. This worked well until (predictably) the parents w...

good tips - we use "the judge" and have always used it battery powered, so I think it will stay that way due to power isolation issues. We intentionally have the finish line in the middle of the room with absolutely no computer around. Thanks to the batteries we have three lines running ba...

good tips - we use "the judge" and have always used it battery powered, so I think it will stay that way due to power isolation issues. We intentionally have the finish line in the middle of the room with absolutely no computer around. Thanks to the batteries we have three lines running ba...

good tips - we use "the judge" and have always used it battery powered, so I think it will stay that way due to power isolation issues. We intentionally have the finish line in the middle of the room with absolutely no computer around. Thanks to the batteries we have three lines running ba...

We ran two events - the main races - with 71 racers using dens and GPRM's master scheduling so racers mostly faced other cubs from the same den. We used to run dens separately but discovered due to down time between dens the event took an extra 2+ hours. We then do "grand finale" races wit...

I meant to ask - how did you do the license plates? were those purchased, or somehow printed? or painted (gasp!)?

Fascinating! I've brought up the idea of a dad/sibling race every year, but always get push back due to the length of the event - it used to be ridiculously long and everyone is happy to get it shorter. We've typically done den level clinics, nothing open to the entire pack. However we do a kick-off...

Hi Bob- I guess I missed that in your first post. I may try the "local network" setup next year. Since RR was only causing GPRM to stop handsfree racing, and not to actually crash, I may just leave it alone. If RR crashes and I don't notice and racing just continues on we will be missing m...

This was the final year for Pinewood Derby for my son. Yes, these cars were all built for speed and were a true father son project; he did work at every step of the way and completely understands the physics behind why these cars did so well. We figured that there are roughly 15 "speed secrets&...

We use the peel and stick aluminum tape made for patching holes in duckwork. It is obscenely light, very strong, and makes everyone wonder why (and how) we stuck aluminum foil to the underside! It also hides any handiwork, and while flexible is far more rigid than packing tape.