Disaster – What NOT to do
Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 2:53 pm
I just finished my 3rd derby as chairman and it was a disaster. My first two were flawlessly executed. As you know, in running one of these events, a tremendous amount of time, effort, blood, sweat and tears are invested. To fail on the execution is beyond disappointing. Today, I had a series of hardware, software, and (lack of) planning failures that made for a very stressful day. For reference, I’m running a 4 lane, 42’ Best Track with Champ timer, solenoid start, and GPRM software.
Do NOT assume that because everything worked yesterday, that it will today, and therefore think it is not necessary to test every component. I know, it’s a no-brainer. I tested the solenoid and passed, so thought I was good to go.
Heat 1 – Everything works fine, but – the finish order was reversed. Yesterday during test, I had to select the Reverse Lane order. I thought maybe I had unselected it today by accident, but that was not the case. Decided to re-run the heat. Hit READY TIMER and got a Timer Port error. Checked the timer and solenoid and both were set to the correct COM port( BTW- Ditch the serial data, it’s 2013. I haven’t had to mess with com ports since Windows 95). Solenoid test worked but not the timer test. I ended up having to run the whole race in Solenoid Test mode and record results manually. The timer worked for that, but the display was only shown long enough to record finishing place but not time.
Do NOT think you do not need a back-up plan. Again, another no-brainer.
Thankfully, I had printed a master score sheet and also exported it to excel. Unfortunately, that was the extent of my back-up plan. I had no plan for dealing with ties and had no clue how to generate a Grand Finals schedule. We had calculated the standings based on points and determined the winners of each rank. For the ties, best we could come up with was a runoff. Fortunately, no-one complained their son had the “slow” lane. The top 4 of each rank were to advance to the grand finals. I tried to create a new race file just to generate a schedule. When creating a new race file, it prompts you for the file name. When I tried to type in the new file name, nothing would type into the field, and therefore, no new file could be created. So, instead of having a grand finals, we had to determine the overall winners based of the points earned in Round 1. And then deal with another tiebreaker.
On a positive note though, the boys had no idea the race didn’t go exactly as planned and they had a blast. Wish I could say the same about the parents.
FB
Longwood,FL
Do NOT assume that because everything worked yesterday, that it will today, and therefore think it is not necessary to test every component. I know, it’s a no-brainer. I tested the solenoid and passed, so thought I was good to go.
Heat 1 – Everything works fine, but – the finish order was reversed. Yesterday during test, I had to select the Reverse Lane order. I thought maybe I had unselected it today by accident, but that was not the case. Decided to re-run the heat. Hit READY TIMER and got a Timer Port error. Checked the timer and solenoid and both were set to the correct COM port( BTW- Ditch the serial data, it’s 2013. I haven’t had to mess with com ports since Windows 95). Solenoid test worked but not the timer test. I ended up having to run the whole race in Solenoid Test mode and record results manually. The timer worked for that, but the display was only shown long enough to record finishing place but not time.
Do NOT think you do not need a back-up plan. Again, another no-brainer.
Thankfully, I had printed a master score sheet and also exported it to excel. Unfortunately, that was the extent of my back-up plan. I had no plan for dealing with ties and had no clue how to generate a Grand Finals schedule. We had calculated the standings based on points and determined the winners of each rank. For the ties, best we could come up with was a runoff. Fortunately, no-one complained their son had the “slow” lane. The top 4 of each rank were to advance to the grand finals. I tried to create a new race file just to generate a schedule. When creating a new race file, it prompts you for the file name. When I tried to type in the new file name, nothing would type into the field, and therefore, no new file could be created. So, instead of having a grand finals, we had to determine the overall winners based of the points earned in Round 1. And then deal with another tiebreaker.
On a positive note though, the boys had no idea the race didn’t go exactly as planned and they had a blast. Wish I could say the same about the parents.
FB
Longwood,FL