bumpity bump bump
I hope you can make it out to our next autocross on September 24th. It will be the third of our three mirrorcross events this season. If you haven't been to a mirrorcross you are missing out. Mirror image courses are laid out with a drag style start at the Christmas Tree. After a short straight the courses peel off and turn into autocross to the finish. The competitors then swap sides and send it again. The timer starts on green so your reaction time matters but don't jump the start or you will trigger the red light. As usual we offer online registration until Friday at midnight before the event as well as on site registration from 8AM-9AM the morning of the event. Entries are $40. You can find out more on our website www.autocross.com
Andy Cost
Humble Servant - Equipe Rapide
bumpity bump bump
Andy Cost
Humble Servant - Equipe Rapide
Map?
Brad McCann
GS Genesis Coupe
Korean Camaro Racing
The models in the poster have been invited to sign autographs. If they can't attend then we have a prominent person available to sign autographs instead.
Andy Cost
Humble Servant - Equipe Rapide
Brad McCann
GS Genesis Coupe
Korean Camaro Racing
Results are posted. Still haven't figured out what was causing the false triggers.
https://axwaresystems.com/axorm/file...up%208_fin.htm
https://axwaresystems.com/axorm/file...up%208_pax.htm
Andy Cost
Humble Servant - Equipe Rapide
Results still look kinda fubar to me. Hero runs everywhere, timing SW people gotta get their shit together before the next event.
Is this a problem with the ProSolo software or Axware in general? These events are going to be awful if there is a rerun every 5 drivers.
In addition, how can we have faith in the timing system when 1-out-of-6 runs are wrong?
Brad McCann
GS Genesis Coupe
Korean Camaro Racing
I think the percentage of bad times was even higher. It was possible to spot a good number of the faster times but not the slower ones. Also for a lot of people it was pretty hard to tell. There were probably a few runs deleted that were legit and a lot of non legit runs that were kept.
FYI - I deleted all of my faster runs. Since I was the person in the trailer during the second heat making the call of what to delete I didn't think it was fair for me to keep any time that was even remotely questionable.
That's definitely possible. Another possibility is having 3 cars on course at a time. I've never been to a ProSolo where there are more than two cars on course.
In addition, I know its fun to have massive courses at MW but perhaps we should tone it down a bit for these mirrorcrosses, especially when we only have 73 drivers. Corner workers get stretched really thin.
Brad McCann
GS Genesis Coupe
Korean Camaro Racing
I was watching during the second heat. Aside from the first few cars, there were never 3 cars on course simultaneously, so if the second heat was still having issues with timing, it wasn't caused by that.
The other thing I saw that could have messed it up was perhaps people staging before the green light on the tree went out from the previous start. If that wasn't the problem either, maybe it really was just false reports from the timing light.
It does get tough on the big courses. If the starter had been pushing 3 cars out instead of just 2, I would have had trouble on corner 1 since the previous car wouldn't have cleared my section before the next one started. It was trouble enough just trying to see cones from the start, all the way to the back corner of the lot. I had that issue at the Lone Star event, though it was easier to see the cones.
I would suggest for the next mirrorcross to make the run work order ABAB. Then consider the morning session to be practice with non-guaranteed timing. Times don't count for anything and no reruns (even for downed cones). That would make the morning session super speedy and provide a test of the timing system. Then run with times in the afternoon. But if the timing system didn't work in the morning just shut it down and only time one side.
The timer in the trailer has a bell that dings when the car crosses the finish line. The bell would ding at the appropriate time but it took several seconds for the time to show up on the computer screen. When the time would show up it would be a 49 or some other ridiculous time. A bunch of times it would be both left and right give bogus times at the same time. If it was false triggering then the times should have been way off but that wasn't the case. They were all right around 49-51 seconds.
I did a research project and found that most seasoned competitors were within 1% from their fastest time to their next fastest time. Less experienced competitors would have big jumps but it was usually a "finally figured out the course" type of jump and it was usually from a really bad time to a still bad but respectable time.
Andy Cost
Humble Servant - Equipe Rapide
I managed to get a 32s time on one side and a 36s time on the other, so they could get pretty crazy, though that was in the first heat and the cars were being spaced pretty closely. I sometimes beat the hell out of SW for my day job, and it's almost always unexpected inputs that make it go stupid, either unexpected values or unexpected timing. I would bet that it has something to do with having Car#3 tripping the staging lights while car #2 is mid-course and car#1 hasn't finished yet.
Statistical analysis of runs would be pretty interesting, though I wouldn't want to rely on it. For us less seasoned folks hero runs really do exist. You could probably PAX rank us by the inconsistency in our clean runs, rather than
by the actual time and get pretty good results. I know that I never raw time David Whitner though, I am having a good day when I can finish less than a second behind him so it makes me suspicious of my right side time. It was a good run, and solostorm agrees that it was my fastest, but I would be surprised if it was THAT good.
I like this. Having people stand out on course for 2+ hours is pretty brutal. I definitely heard some novices talking about how track days were better because they didn't have to stand around so much. Events like this last one (out of anyone's control, I believe) will push new people away rather quickly if it becomes the norm.
Brad McCann
GS Genesis Coupe
Korean Camaro Racing
Rest assured that we are working on it. It does suck to have long work assignments. The other option was to add an hour to the day by changing workers three times. We did the best we could with what we had. We are looking diligently at the timing problems and will have a solution before the next mirrorcross. We use separate hardware and software for the mirrorcross. The problems this time won't continue at our regular autocrosses.
Andy Cost
Humble Servant - Equipe Rapide