Well.. as I take yet another big sigh of relief, I find that the plusses outweighed the minuses. Last night we had our Pack Meeting, with the Pinewood Derby being performed on Saturday. At the onset of the planning of this event, the idea was forwarded from last years event ( I was not here for that ) that the trophies would not be given out day-of, but at the Pack Meeting. I was adamant about not doing this, but in hindsight I can tell you that having your Derby on a Saturday and then having the time to get all the trophies engraved properly and awarded at a Pack meeting two days later really is the way to go. We did announce the winners of each race group immediately after the round was completed, so the boys knew who did well, as well as who was in the finals. That resulted in double payoff for the boys, as they were recognized both at the event as well as the Pack Meeting. We did certificates for places 4th through ( last ), and also did a bunch of certificates with non specific awards ( most likely to burn rubber, faster than a speeding ticket, etc ) for the siblings with Trophies for 1st through 3rd speed standings. Our Pack has 6 dens, with at least 7 - 8 boys each. We the top three boys from each Den to the Pack Finals, and ran 18 boys in the finals... 54 kids ( including the siblings ), then 18 Pack Finalists, then a single Adult Race. 72 races in all.
Now for a breakdown of the good, the bad and the ugly:
Our "plan" was to arrive at the Church at 8am, load up the Track Gear, and be at the School by 9am. Registration was planned to be open at 10am, with first races at 11am. That, of course, was the "plan". Here is how that panned out:
8am - I am still breaking down my PC, as I stayed up till 2:30am prepping wheels and axles that didn't get prepped during the previous week - bad dad
. I break off loading to go open the Garage and load the Track, then I came back to the house to finish loading. I realize that I do not possess an extension cord for the timer, which will be out in the middle of the cafeteria. I knew we had a giant ext cord in the Garage, so I now have to go BACK to the Garage to get it. Unfortunately, I forgot that I personally threw that cord in the back of the Trailer when we loaded the Track. After 5 minutes of frantic rummaging through the Garage, I give up and leave it to a higher power to make a Ext Cord appear out of thin air. It's about 9am at this point and I am not at the School. In my possession is the box of Drivers Licenses, Scale, Pitpasses, Racerchiefs, and all the signage. ugh....Rob calls me on the way to the School for an update and lets me know the extension cord is in the trailer, and I let him know I was on my way. I get to the School about 9:15am, and begin loading in the items for Registration, which is already full of people registering early to avoid the rush at 10:30. I quickly give the instructions for how to register the kids, and what to give them when they do register. I move over to Weigh-In station and set that up, and leave the clipboard with the official Weigh-In sheets.
I then turn my attention to the fencing assembly, which I configured in my head out of PVC irrigation fittings and 3/4 pipe. I cannot accurately express to you just how useful this wonderful material is. I originally made Den Flag stands out of them, with the feet made from T connectors and 2 one foot pieces sticking out, then a 4 foot vertical support, L connector, and a 2 foot horizontal bar to hang the BSA Den flag from ( vertically ). I realized that if you swap the 4 foot legs with the 2 foot crossbar, you create a 2 foot high "fence" that could be set up in minutes without glue and sturdy enough to withstand the rigors of the event. We had a big roll of "Ford Racing" vinyl that they wrapped the fencing in, so it really looked slick. I think the total expense of PVC was about $30 bucks MAX - probably less.
( Full set of photos to come shortly )
Our pack just got a 49ft BESTTRACK with K3 Timer and GPRM software. I could not get support (initially) from the Pack to pop for a PC to run the event, so my personal PC served as Scorer's Station and sound effects generator. ( on that note.. the standard soundeffects that come with GPRM absolutely were a huge hit with the kids.... added allot of excitement and fun to the racing to hear engines revving and cars "flying by") Our Cafeteria has a 3 step-up stage at one end, so we set up the starting line against the first step, using the steps to elevate the Starter's vantage point - it really seemed to make it easier to stage the cars. If you don't have the advantage of such a setup, build a simple "stage" maybe 3' x 4' to ease staging of cars. Being able to stand directly behind the cars at lower-than-eye-level allows the Starter to see the race and watch for interference issues. The other thing I recommend you do is to get the Riser Kit that they make for the Track. Having the track elevated SAFELY helps with visibility and prevents kids or adults from being tempted to step over the track and injure either themselves or the track.
We built the crates from the BESTTRACK plans with some modifications that I personally recommend - use 2x1 poplar as a perimeter reinforcement for the lid and base. use angle brackets in the inside corners of the sides of the box, as well as T brackets along the bottom outside of the box, and you will have a sturdy case. The benefit of the 1" perimeter support on the lid is that you can use the cases with their lids as impound areas, since the cars cannot roll off the cases. We ran 3 runs of white tape down the length of the boxes ( 96" ) to divide it into three rows, and then labeled the tape in sections for each den. Kept the cars organized and safe. The coolest part was there were these 18" tables for the kids on the stage, and setting the crates on them brought them to a good height for us old men.
At this point ( probably 10:40am ) I turned my attention to the Scorers Table, and begin the process of unloading my gear from the car... TIP #234 - unload everything the minute you get to your venue - this way you will know if anything is missing. Such as the keyboard to your PC. Yea... that was a bad moment in my life
.... Fortunately I am married to a wonderful woman who grabbed the keys from me and went to the house to retrieve said keyboard / lynchpin of entire PC system.This had two effects - I could not boot up the computer, and that meant I could not set up and troubleshoot the signal going to the Projector ( which had never been connected to my PC before that day ). TIP #456 I recommend that you incorporate a raffle/silent auction/door prizes type component to your event... because it is SO EASY to say " we have a minor glitch we are sorting out... get out your tickets we are giving away another prize!"... it really saved my bacon about 5 times during the event when quirky things popped up.
We did not do a presentation of the colors, opting to have the flags already set up so as not to have to clear a path for the processional that typically comes with flag ceremony. We said the Pledge, and then had some singers from the local High School Choir sing the national anthem - I highly recommend that you coordinate with your local HS to do the same - it makes a nice connection between the Elementary kids and the HS kids, as well as provide FREE added value to your event. Plus the HS kids love to sing and get to add your event to their resume. Everyone was surprised and enjoyed the treat.
UNFINISHED PROJECT FOR NEXT YEAR - my master plan had kids with toy planes on sticks above their heads run through the gym while I played a sound effect of a Jet Fighter flyby... but my construction of the apparatus that held the planes was not really up to snuff, and the last thing I wanted was a crash and burn during the flyby....
We still could not get the signal up on the projector, and it was likely to be a resolution error ( most projectors cannot handle high resolution screen sized signals ), so we moved forward with racing. Software - PERFECT , Track - PERFECT, Timer - PERFECT... no issues and racing went very well... UNTIL....
Prior to beginning the racing, I asked for the official check in sheets to "pass" those cars that would actually be racing. Well.. the weighin station didn't even look at the clipboard I gave them, so they gave me the Registration Sheets instead. Unfortunately, 3 different kids that were NOT checked in went to the weighin table and had their cars in the mix. This only presented a minor delay as I went back and passed the additional racers in the system and re-ran the race schedule, but the point here would be to check about 2-3 times that everyone in the system as "passed" has a car in the race and everything is truly correct. Then you can run off the race schedules all at once and be done with it. TIP #765 - Use WHITE or LIGHT colored stickers for the race numbers... our unfortunate situation came with dark blue stickers and blue ink... ugh... again.. MINOR delays in staging cars, but our average turnaround was about 1:45 , and I think with easier to see stickers it would have been much faster. Additionally, I failed to inform the starters/stagers about my brilliant system of numbering the cars... I numbered them by den # as the first digit of a 3 digit number, and then sequentially as the last two digits. ( example - den 1 = 101, 102, 103, etc ). This way if you had to add people to a Den, you wouldn't have issues with available numbers, and all the cars in a particular race group ( Den in our case ) would be easy to group together by the first digit - BUT MAKE SURE YOU LET YOUR STARTER KNOW!...lol
Then came the issue of the 3-wheel railrider....... sigh
During the races for a particular den, the starter commented that one of the cars had a wheel off the track, and that our official rules that we sent out stated " all 4 wheels must touch the track ". TIP #44567 - Clearly define whether or not 3 wheel railriders would be allowed in your event, state so in your official rules, make sure those rules are published prior to the event, and most importantly - BRING THE RULES TO THE EVENT. We went back and forth in emails prior to the event about rules, and this was discussed, but we DID NOT have a copy on hand of what was officially sent out to the Pack. Since I didn't include that aspect on the weigh-in checklist ( which wasn't used anyways ), it wasn't "judged" as part of the official "pass/fail" station, so those cars that were RR were passed and cleared for racing. Because of that, I recommended that instead of disqualifying cars that we cleared for racing, that the drivers should be allowed to get all 4 wheels down on the Track. It only took about 3 minutes to get that squared away after the decision, but that led to my dysfunction with trying to get the GPRM software to "start over" with that group of racers. I had trouble figuring out how to delete the existing racing, as the software was unwilling to delete an incomplete round. We were at heat 4 of 6, so I had to have the starter simulate the start and finish of the other three heats, then it would allow me to delete and restart. We got underway, but the "non-used" heats, plus the deliberation, plus the reset of the track definitely killed the schedule... OF COURSE, we just switched to raffle ticket announcements and such so the delay was not 'dead air" at all....
The projector came to life about 14/ way through the racing, by disconnecting my second monitor and directly connecting there, and after adjusting resolution, we were golden TIP #857 - Use a dark RED background for the projected "race" screen, as the blue default screen washes out several of the colors if you are color coding the lane labels - blue and red really seemed to be harder to read. Experiment with different background colors day-of to find a good setting - I didn't even know I had choices till AFTER the event....
After the last race group, we announced the drivers that were in the finals, printed the race schedule, and were ready for the finals series. Since we had 18 cars in the finals, that added 18 more races to the schedule, which I know for a fact the kids loved.... the more chances they have to see their cars run down the track, the better ( I already have participated in a 12 forum page debate about points vs. times elsewhere, so I won't do that here. Suffice to say, everyone LOVED that there was so much racing, and the parents were in our GYm from 9-10 am till 4pm and not a SINGLE person felt like the event was slow or took too long. That is a testament, in my opinion, to the raffle/side event that we integrated that allowed SOMETHING to be happening all the time. There were so very many small delays that added up to that total event time, but because there was something to "turn to" during the issues that arose from a NEW track, NEW timer, NEW software, NEW setup, NEW leaders running the event, and so on, the vent went very well all told.
In the end we raised enough money during the side event to offset about 75% of the cost of the track, which was paid for out of pack funds. This means that for a small net expense, our event was top flight and will stay that way with our investment in quality hardware and software.
Another big benefit of GPRM is that we can really see what was happening with the race schedule, time of the event, and the performance of the system. Here is the data we captured during our event for those wondering about how long their events might take:
# Completed Turnaround Round Den Heat
1 11:40:59 AM 1 Den 4 Tigers 1
2 11:43:27 AM 00:02:28 1 Den 4 Tigers 2
3 11:45:06 AM 00:01:39 1 Den 4 Tigers 3
4 11:46:56 AM 00:01:50 1 Den 4 Tigers 4
5 11:48:19 AM 00:01:23 1 Den 4 Tigers 5
6 11:49:45 AM 00:01:26 1 Den 4 Tigers 6
7 11:54:47 AM 00:05:02 1 Den 2 Wolves 1
8 11:57:14 AM 00:02:27 1 Den 2 Wolves 2
9 11:58:49 AM 00:01:35 1 Den 2 Wolves 3
10 11:59:51 AM 00:01:02 1 Den 2 Wolves 4
11 12:01:29 PM 00:01:38 1 Den 2 Wolves 5
12 12:02:47 PM 00:01:18 1 Den 2 Wolves 6
13 12:04:57 PM 00:02:10 1 Den 2 Wolves 7
14 12:28:45 PM 00:23:48 1 Den 1 Bears 1
15 12:28:45 PM 00:23:48 1 Den 1 Bears 2
16 12:28:45 PM 00:23:48 1 Den 1 Bears 3
17 12:28:45 PM 00:23:48 1 Den 1 Bears 4
18 12:28:45 PM 00:23:48 1 Den 1 Bears 5
19 12:34:43 PM 00:05:58 1 Den 7 Wolves 1
20 12:35:41 PM 00:00:58 1 Den 7 Wolves 2
21 12:36:49 PM 00:01:08 1 Den 7 Wolves 3
22 12:37:53 PM 00:01:04 1 Den 7 Wolves 4
23 12:38:51 PM 00:00:58 1 Den 7 Wolves 5
24 12:40:01 PM 00:01:10 1 Den 7 Wolves 6
25 12:42:55 PM 00:02:54 1 Den 1 Bears 1
26 12:44:00 PM 00:01:05 1 Den 1 Bears 2
27 12:45:04 PM 00:01:04 1 Den 1 Bears 3
28 12:46:04 PM 00:01:00 1 Den 1 Bears 4
29 12:47:03 PM 00:00:59 1 Den 1 Bears 5
30 12:54:38 PM 00:07:35 1 Den 5 WEBELOS I 1
31 12:58:17 PM 00:03:39 1 Den 5 WEBELOS I 2
32 12:59:39 PM 00:01:22 1 Den 5 WEBELOS I 3
33 1:00:41 PM 00:01:02 1 Den 5 WEBELOS I 4
34 1:02:19 PM 00:01:38 1 Den 5 WEBELOS I 5
35 1:03:37 PM 00:01:18 1 Den 5 WEBELOS I 6
36 1:04:55 PM 00:01:18 1 Den 5 WEBELOS I 7
37 1:06:11 PM 00:01:16 1 Den 5 WEBELOS I 8
38 1:07:25 PM 00:01:14 1 Den 5 WEBELOS I 9
39 1:15:51 PM 00:08:26 1 Den6 WEBELOS II 1
40 1:16:58 PM 00:01:07 1 Den6 WEBELOS II 2
41 1:17:59 PM 00:01:01 1 Den6 WEBELOS II 3
42 1:21:31 PM 00:03:32 1 Den6 WEBELOS II 4
43 1:22:36 PM 00:01:05 1 Den6 WEBELOS II 5
44 1:23:36 PM 00:01:00 1 Den6 WEBELOS II 6
45 1:26:13 PM 00:02:37 1 Den6 WEBELOS II 7
46 1:33:13 PM 00:07:00 1 Grand Finals 1
47 1:35:21 PM 00:02:08 1 Grand Finals 2
48 1:38:54 PM 00:03:33 1 Grand Finals 3
49 1:40:45 PM 00:01:51 1 Grand Finals 4
50 1:42:29 PM 00:01:44 1 Grand Finals 5
51 1:44:22 PM 00:01:53 1 Grand Finals 6
52 1:46:02 PM 00:01:40 1 Grand Finals 7
53 1:47:42 PM 00:01:40 1 Grand Finals 8
54 1:50:30 PM 00:02:48 1 Grand Finals 9
55 1:52:16 PM 00:01:46 1 Grand Finals 10
56 1:54:02 PM 00:01:46 1 Grand Finals 11
57 1:56:07 PM 00:02:05 1 Grand Finals 12
58 1:57:40 PM 00:01:33 1 Grand Finals 13
59 1:59:00 PM 00:01:20 1 Grand Finals 14
60 2:00:47 PM 00:01:47 1 Grand Finals 15
61 2:02:22 PM 00:01:35 1 Grand Finals 16
62 2:03:48 PM 00:01:26 1 Grand Finals 17
63 2:05:10 PM 00:01:22 1 Grand Finals 18
64 2:36:47 PM 00:31:37 1 Siblings 1
65 2:38:39 PM 00:01:52 1 Siblings 2
66 2:41:21 PM 00:02:42 1 Siblings 3
67 2:43:14 PM 00:01:53 1 Siblings 4
68 2:44:54 PM 00:01:40 1 Siblings 5
69 2:46:34 PM 00:01:40 1 Siblings 6
70 2:47:55 PM 00:01:21 1 Siblings 7
71 2:49:10 PM 00:01:15 1 Siblings 8
72 2:50:54 PM 00:01:44 1 Siblings 9
73 2:52:24 PM 00:01:30 1 Siblings 10
74 2:53:50 PM 00:01:26 1 Siblings 11
75 2:55:19 PM 00:01:29 1 Siblings 12
76 2:56:34 PM 00:01:15 1 Siblings 13
77 3:05:39 PM 00:09:05 1 Adult Legal 3[/img]
