Minor weight question...

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Noskills
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Re: Minor weight question...

Post by Noskills »

Give it some good steer (4-5 in over 4 ft) with that COM. Best of luck...looking good.
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Gtdhw
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Re: Minor weight question...

Post by Gtdhw »

Will that just steer it into the outer rail (we have no center rails on our Pack track)? Same concept as RR, but just using an outer rail instead? Would we be better off to do that or try for straight?
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Stan Pope
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Re: Minor weight question...

Post by Stan Pope »

Gtdhw wrote: Last year at District, he would've had a solid 2nd place finish, but as chance would have it, he had to face the eventual winner twice in early competition (2 lane track, double elimination based on random draw per round), and both races were "too close to call" with the eye, and he was "just" on the wrong side both times. Those two cars, were at least a car length ahead of the competition, in every other round of racing.
That sounds strange. If the eventual winner went undefeated, your son should not have raced him again until very near the end! Can you acquire and post the specific version of DE that they used? Or, email it to me?
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Gtdhw
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Re: Minor weight question...

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They start with a large dry erase board with all competitors #'s on it in horizontal columns. Each car has their # wrote down on a piece of paper, and all put into a bucket. Each round, two car #'s drawn. First drawn # put in lane 1, second # drawn, put in lane two. Winner get's a check mark, loser gets an X. At the end of each round, all #'s put back into bucket. As the rounds progress, 2 X/loss cars and their paper removed after loss. Wash, rinse, repeat, until two remain.

He was drawn & paired to eventual winner 2nd round, then again 6th round, of the 9 round race.

The camera man had a bad day, as he missed getting the 2nd round loss, and then screwed up the ending of this vid, so we fired him. This was his 2nd loss/6th round (black car far lane), and I swear he was ahead. I was standing right next to the other cars Dad, and he was like "Man, I feel bad, I could've swore you crossed the line first.", but being a "Scouting" event, we took the high road, and congratulated him & his son on his win, and told my son, that if we want this to be a non issue next year, we just need to build a faster car.



https://youtu.be/
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Re: Minor weight question...

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As bad as Double Elimination has always been, someone has finally come up with a way to make it worse. Did you race only one lane and you either Lost or Won that Heat? I was also sorry to see the Starter touching the cars. It appeared the track is equipped with a "Judge" timer. I have found ours to be quite accurate. Is your set-up hooked up to a computer to record Elapsed time?

I would like to send you an easy to follow Flow Chart your leaders might adopt if they choose to score using Double Elimination.
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Gtdhw
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Re: Minor weight question...

Post by Gtdhw »

Raced only one lane, and you either Lost or Won that heat, and the Starter was the only one who was allowed to touch the cars (beside the couple of Scouts that brought the cars from the table to the Starter, once it's # was called). No timing system, just a Win light.

IM sent.
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Stan Pope
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Re: Minor weight question...

Post by Stan Pope »

Major flaw in that it allows the two fastest cars to race the second time prior to the "final".

Easy fix: Label 4 buckets Run, 0, 1 and Out.
Collect number slips into bucket 0 (0 losses).

Round 1: Empty bucket 0 into bucket Run. Proceed as before from bucket "Run" except that each heat winner goes back into bucket 0 and each heat loser goes into bucket 1.

Round 2, 3, ... until both buckets 0 and 1 contain one number slip. (Those are two finalists).
Empty bucket 1 into bucket Run. Proceed as before from bucket "Run" except that each heat winner goes back into bucket 1 and each heat loser goes into bucket Out.
Empty bucket 0 into bucket Run. Proceed as before from bucket "Run" except that each heat winner goes back into bucket 0 and each heat loser goes into bucket 1.
(Order of processing buckets is important ... work from highest to lowest in each round.)

Finals: Since the last racer in bucket 1 already has a loss, he need lose only once to the unbeaten occupant of bucket 0 to be eliminated and be awarded 2nd place. The last racer in bucket 0 has no losses yet, so he needs to lose two times to the once beaten occupant of bucket 1 to be eliminated and be awarded 2nd place.

The above scheme does not provide for 3rd or lower place trophies. With some sacrifice in accuracy, you can modify the disposition of racers into bucket "Out" as follows: At the end of each round, see if there are as many slips in buckets 0 and 1 (in total) than you have trophies to award. If so, discard the slips in bucket "Out". Once the total number of slips in buckets 0 and 1 reaches that critical value, stop discarding the contents of bucket "Out." Then when bucket 0 and 1 both contain 1 slip, have the occupants of bucket "Out" compete until you have one racer with 2 losses, one with 3 losses, etc. These then form a ladder that you work from the bottom up, with each pairing identifying the recipient of the lowest place not yet awarded trophy. At each stage the lower ranked racer must win twice and the higher ranked racer must win once to advance. For each finals heat, assign lanes by lot. (Requiring the lower ranked racer to win in alternating lanes is not correct since if lane assignment determines the winner between closely matched racers, alternating lanes simply moves the deciding race back to the first time those racers met each other!)

Note that additional elimination counts can be added to obtain additional accuracy by adding more buckets and always starting each round with the bucket containing the racers with the most losses. We ran a similar scheme for a number of years with the equivalent of five numbered buckets.

I don't think that DE is great, but it is often best to evolve in baby steps!
Stan
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