Running my first Derby

[jtslj]

I am taking over as CubMaster in my pack and get to run my first ever PWD race.

Our pack has a track it is a basic track. Built by a former leader of the pack.. it is an older track and there is NO timers or devices to determine the winner.

It has a Manual start gate with 4 lanes and a finish line and that is about it ( I would like to see a better "Stopping" area but there is not time to do that now)

I am looking for ideas as to how to track what cars do what.
our Weblows den has 4 kids at most (3 will show)
our Bear den has 10 kids most will probably show.
our Wolf den has 4-6 kids I think.

I need to come up with a way to run the race so each car races every one to determine which car would be considered the "winner" of the racing.

I am going to run the dens against each other to come up with the first place in the dens. .then for fun run the winning den cars against each other to come up with an overall winner.

what can I use to Track the cars..

I have paper / pen and ready to take down ideas.
I have till Tuesday 3/27 to come up with a plan.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you..

Jeff.

[Stan Pope]

The situation that you describe has some limitations, but we can work within them to run a fair and reasonably accurate competition.

First, the track probably has some significant differences between lanes.
Secondly, you will have to depend on visual judging to assess heat results.

Regarding the lane differences, it may be appropriate to use only 2 or 3 of the lanes. Find the lanes that pairwise are most equal. Sometimes, but not always, it is the middle two lanes or the outer two lanes. Assess by running a couple of similar cars (or just make a couple of quicky test cars) and observe the separation at the finish line and how it changes as the cars swap lanes. Running 2 cars at a time, triple or quad elimination on a reaonably well matched pair of lanes will give satisfactory results and lots of racing. Quad elim assures each racer of at least 4 heats in each of the competitions.

Because you must depend on visual judging at the finish line, the best you should hope to accomplish is to identify the winner of each heat. Some folks try to identify finish place in the heat for 3 or 4 racers, but this is difficult to accomplish with consistent accuracy. Finish place allows "final standings - points" to be totaled based on heat points. PPN charts can provide a heat schedule that is reasonably balanced.

If your pack's traditions dictate use of all of the lanes, then you can use a variant of "final standings - points" in which only the heat winner get any points. It is less accurate in ranking cars and I don't recommend it. Or you can accept lapses in heat finish place accuracy to do award points based on heat finish place. I don't recommend that, either.

Bring back some estimates of how long you would like the racing to last and how many heats you would like each racer to run. Also tell us the pack traditions regarding operation ... who stages the cars, the owner/driver or the track staff? What methods have been used in the past? How many place trophies do you want to award in each of the categories? Then we can get really serious about offering alternatives for you to work with,

[jtslj]

I am not aware of any "pack traditions" I have talked with the den leaders and presented the idea of adults handling the cars after they are "checked in" to ensure that boy 1 doesn't complain that boy 2 goofed up their car. ( I suggested this as I was an assistant cub master previously and this is similar to how it was run there and I liked the idea)

I also want to have 4 "judges" at the end of the track to pick up the cars as they are finished. judge 1 always picks up the first car across the lane etc.

I want the judges to be neutral people without any children in the race. (Again so boy 2 can't say that boy 3's dad picked up his son's car so they would be considered a winner when they didn't win)

As far as time we would like to not have it run more than an hour or so..
We are starting at 7 pm and we don't want to keep the kids up to late as the nexd day is a school day. ( I am going to be there at 6:00 to setup track and start "check in" at 6:30)

What is a PPN sheet and where can I find one.

[Stan Pope]

PPN: http://members.aol.com/standcmr/ppngen.html

The algorithm is also embedded in some race management software such as GPRM.

Our area traditions are that only the owner/driver touches his car during racing. This includes careful monitoring during staging to assure that adjacent cars are not touched. I like it that way, because it keeps the boys involved more. But traditions vary. Breaking from tradition isn't easy! And it must be done with lots of careful planning and cooperation with lots of people!

You can probably get more heats per hour and more total car runs on the track with simple nochart quad elim procedure, because the decision process is simpler. But that also works best when boys race their own cars.

I think you have time to do all your racing as you describe in an hour and a half, so long as you don't get bogged down in reruns because the judges couldn't call the race. You need to look carefully at how quickly and accurately your judges can detect and communicate the finish order. The judges need to be able to do that without asking for the heat to be rerun or to, for instance, do an "instant replay" of a video tape. Those will kill your schedule!

[jtslj]

I have seriously considered getting a Video camera and set it up on the finish line recording so if there is any doubt refer to the tape as the tape doesn't lie.

[gpraceman]

I have seriously considered getting a Video camera and set it up on the finish line recording so if there is any doubt refer to the tape as the tape doesn't lie.

Depends on the resolution of the video. It may be too fuzzy to tell in a very close race. Anyways, as Stan was trying to point out, doing replays will add tons of time to your race.

[gpraceman]

I also want to have 4 "judges" at the end of the track to pick up the cars as they are finished. judge 1 always picks up the first car across the lane etc.

I think you have the right idea. Assign each judge to determine a certain place, like one judge is responsible for determining which car came in 1st, another for 2nd, etc.. Hopefully, they will each have selected a different car. That is much easier than asking them to all determine 1-2-3-4 and then compare. You can do this with only 3 judges, since the car not selected will be 4th place.

You also may want to consider running 3 lanes instead of 4. It is much easier to determine 1-2-3 with eyeball judging than 1-2-3-4.

[TAL]

First I think I would take time (maybe this weekend) and make sure what lanes on the track are functional and also see if there are any big lane differences,and you may have a general idea of what to expect when you have only 30 minutes Tuesday evening to assemble the track and then the lanes may be different again...Be prepaired for the unexpected...


Personnaly, I prefer a 3 lane track when not useing a timer and eyeballing the finish, but a 4 lane can be used in this process...

We started out with a 3 lane track with eyeball finish and this is how we did it with 17 cars...

We numbered the cars in order 1- 17 and grouped them in threes in number order 123, 456, 789, etc. or you could use the odd number even number method always start with the lowest number in the group in lane one and rotate to the right each of the group of runs....

We then run the group of three cars starting with the lowest number in lane one, and run the same three cars rotating over a lane each run for a total of three runs each for that group...This could also work with four cars on a 4 lane track but you would need to run each group of 4 4 times to give all a chance in each of the four lanes...

In the first round, any car in their group that has a single first place finish in their group of their (3 or 4 ) runs advances to round 3... any car in their group that did'nt have a first place finish is then regrouped in groups of three (groups of 4 on a 4 lane track) and form round 2 where you have to have at least 1 first place finish to advance to round 3 where the winners from round 1 are waiting ...

The main reason I prefer a three lane is so in round three you have to have 2 first place finishes in your group of runs to advance or be determined the winner...With a four lane you could have a 2-2 tie, where as on a three lane track it is rear for all three cars to have a first place finish in the group of three runs on a three lane track...

When you have only 2 cars on a 3 lane track (or 3 cars on a 4 lane track ) rotate them over 1 lane as if the lanes are full across all the lanes...If you have 1 odd car advance it to the next round with second and third place cars...

With your wolf and weblows being such a small group each of those 2 classes could be resolved in 2 or 3 quik rounds and I would do those 2 classes last...

Personnally if it were me I would put all estimated 20 cars together and give one first place trophey for speed and the rest would receive a participation award ,trophey,medal or something of somekind....

With the 17 cars we had and we also did a 32', 40' , and a 48' race with all 17 cars in each race in under 1 hour...

Remember, with this method 2 and 3 cars can get bumped down in a group of runs if a single car wins all the runs in their group...

We used a tournament type schedule and you could determine in the tournament tree which was the fastest wolve ,weblow,and bear...

That way you could have 3 first place announcements at once and all attendance will remain until the final race to see who won the different classes...

[Stan Pope]

I also want to have 4 "judges" at the end of the track to pick up the cars as they are finished. judge 1 always picks up the first car across the lane etc.

Okay. Here are some cases for you to consider. What was the actual finish order in the each case?

Case 1:
Judge 1 says car in lane 1 finished first.
Judge 2 says car in lane 2 finished second.
Judge 3 says car in lane 3 finished third.
Judge 4 says car in lane 3 finished fourth.

Case 2:
Judge 1 says car in lane 1 finished first.
Judge 2 says car in lane 1 finished second.
Judge 3 says car in lane 3 finished third.
Judge 4 says car in lane 3 finished fourth.

Case 3:
Judge 1 says car in lane 1 finished first.
Judge 2 says car in lane 1 finished second.
Judge 3 says car in lane 1 finished third.
Judge 4 says car in lane 4 finished fourth.

[TAL]

I also want to have 4 "judges" at the end of the track to pick up the cars as they are finished. judge 1 always picks up the first car across the lane etc.

With the method we used in our race we had 2 judges at the finish line and if the 2 judges announce a tie for first ,those 2 cars are considered to have a first place win in that group of runs and both cars will advance as winners to the next round eventually being mixed into another group...

For the last and final round of a group of cars in a class you would have to have 2 wins in that group of runs to be determined the winner...

I would use the other 2 of the 4 judges to help keep the cars in group and lane order...

[TAL]

I also want to have 4 "judges" at the end of the track to pick up the cars as they are finished. judge 1 always picks up the first car across the lane etc.

Okay. Here are some cases for you to consider. What was the actual finish order in the each case?

Case 1:
Judge 1 says car in lane 1 finished first.
Judge 2 says car in lane 2 finished second.
Judge 3 says car in lane 3 finished third.
Judge 4 says car in lane 3 finished fourth.

Case 2:
Judge 1 says car in lane 1 finished first.
Judge 2 says car in lane 1 finished second.
Judge 3 says car in lane 3 finished third.
Judge 4 says car in lane 3 finished fourth.

Case 3:
Judge 1 says car in lane 1 finished first.
Judge 2 says car in lane 1 finished second.
Judge 3 says car in lane 1 finished third.
Judge 4 says car in lane 4 finished fourth.

With the method I would use or we still use case #1 would be
Judge 1 says lane 1 finished first
Judge 2 would name what lane finished first and not worrying about who came in second ,third or forth
Judge 3 and 4 would be organizing cars from the previous and for the next race...

Case #2
Judges 1 and 2 would announce what lane came in first and judges 3 and 4 would be organizing cars...

Case #3 Again judges 1 and 2 would announce what lane finished first and judges 3 and 4 should again be organizing cars...

[Stan Pope]

I also want to have 4 "judges" at the end of the track to pick up the cars as they are finished. judge 1 always picks up the first car across the lane etc.

With the method we used in our race we had 2 judges at the finish line and if the 2 judges announce a tie for first ,those 2 cars are considered to have a first place win in that group of runs and both cars will advance as winners to the next round eventually being mixed into another group...

For the last and final round of a group of cars in a class you would have to have 2 wins in that group of runs to be determined the winner...

I would use the other 2 of the 4 judges to help keep the cars in group and lane order...

That is okay for "elimination style" judging, but the context of jtslj's question was "heat points" based competition in which all 4 places need to be identified by the judges.

My "case" questions, therefore, remain unanswered.

[jtslj]

I got my hands on a 4 lane track Spreadsheet that tracks the cars and winners and assigns points ( I am going to have my father in law imput the results into his laptop)

The track builder states the track only takes about 15 to set it up and he will help do this..

We shall see how it all goes..