Hello again from Arizona

[CaveGimp]

Its been a few years since I was active on this forum, mainly because my track was working just fine and I didn't have the time (or wife hall pass) to tinker with it, but that has changed. My son in now a Tiger and my wife and I are spending more time on Scouts. I had the first race of the season for another Pack I support this past weekend and it was a stressful one in a whole new way. For 5 years I brought my soldering iron and miscellaneous electronic stuff "just in case" but never needed it, until this weekend. While the track was being brought in off my trailer the power circuit board to my finish line IR leds was ribbed off and my start gate sensor switch had been snapped off. All in all I was able to get everything reattached and the race ran fine but a bit of stress. The good news is now my wife really wants to help me redo the start gate, so I am moving to a solenoid start. Anyway the specs on my track are below and I will try to get some pictures up soon as well.

*6 lane wooden track in 6 6foot sections (plans based off of http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/derby/track/ and modified for 6 lanes)
*Ardunio based finishline timer and displayed with the initial code form "Jason Scholten" and heavily modified. I now display 1-6 on large 4 inch custom LED 7-segment displays, the time or each lane on smaller 4 digit displays all perched above each lane
*GPRM software to run the track and schedules
I of course had plenty of help from multiple forums to do the modifications to expand the basic designs to 6 lanes.

One thing we did different this year is we had a Pre Registration night a few days before. We spent about 2 hours checking cars in at an offsite location. About 35 cars were checked in early so we only had 22 to check in on the day of the race. I built storage containers for the cars and wrapped them in bubble wrap and had no issues with any of them on race day. It was time very well spent and I will be doing it for the next Pack as well.

[whodathunkit]

CaveGrimp!
Your wooden track sounds like it would be a fun track.. there's nothing like racing on one from time to time.

I have an old home made wooden track:
I'v been slowly working on restoring.. the timer is a an old lane brain 123456 number system.
I haven't got around to making the stop section for it but it's not a fun one to set up and tare down.

[rcmoeur]

Greetings back from another part of the Valley.

Hope you can get your track and timer issues worked out. A 6-lane track seems like fun (although I'm still recovering from the impressive sight of Pack 134's 12-lane track up in Cave Creek last Saturday.)

A few folks from some Districts are trying to get a Council-level Pinewood Derby re-established. It probably won't happen this season, but hoping for one in the 2016-17 season. If you're interested or want to be in the planning group, let me know.

[rcmoeur]

And I can certainly empathize with your "wanting to be prepared" approach. Last year, we set up for the Four Peaks District Derby the night before, and a critical connector on Pack 918's track (our main competition track) broke. Fortunately, they were able to fix it late that night before racing the next morning.

Our Pack is just implementing its first electronic timing system this year, and we're hoping it goes well. We've had a MicroWizard K1 for 1st-2nd-3rd for several years, but are just this year adding the interface, start switch, and GPRM. We'll test it the week before the event.