Bay Area AX's: this saturday, GGR AX#5 @ Alameda Options

[nebreitling]

get your cars ready now and come out to play!

http://www.pca-ggr.org/archive.html#msg436

who's in?

demick? howard? grant? trekkor? birgit? andrew? steve? gwen? ANDY (back from vacation?)? jenny (tranny?)? anthony? greg? mueller (bring the tail dragger?)? albert? chris? randal? ken? rob?

let's make a showing...

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/beerchug.gif) n

[anthony]

To Doug and Dana, if you are reading, I would echo most of what has been said. I've experienced all of the following over the last 5 or 6 GGR AXes I've attended:

I've experienced not being relieved on time.

I've also experienced situations where there didn't seem to be enough workers on the course. I keep asking myself where is everybody that was just running?

I've experienced the lack of numbers on cars when I was working and not being able to radio in accurate info. A tiny shoe polish number on the windshield doesn't do it. Cars shouldn't pass tech without at least big tape numbers on the doors.

Almost every time I relieve someone on the course they seem to be very inexperienced at flagging and radioing information. I think that working the course properly should be taught at the autocross school. People should rotate jobs at the AX school so they get a feel for the whole operation. On real AX days my suggestion is that someone needs to check in everybody who just ran, pair experienced workers with newbies and direct them to an exact worker location. If you don't show up for work, all your times should be scratched and you should be suspended from the next two or three events. There's no excuse for skipping work. If there truely aren't enough workers for the course then the run groups need to be larger.

When I was working the course I had a guy with a PCA badge trying to take pictures too close on the outside of a turn. One spin and he would have been running for his life. He took offense when I told him to back off.

I have a suggestion for the AX school and maybe regular AXes. I was handing out time slips at the AX school as my worker assignment. Frequently new drivers were racing past the timing light even as the instructor was giving them the slow down signal. The drivers were completly unaware that they had passed the finish line. I think adequate run-off after the timing light needs to be designed into each course and I think a stop sign would be a very helpful visual clue for drivers to make a full stop or at least a hollywood stop a good distance from the person giving out the slips. When I was passing out slips on both the short course and long course there were many times when I didn't feel safe working that position.