OUTDOOR OFFROAD RACING UPDATE

Just finishing up a great weekend of outdoor offroad racing. We had 50 cars split among 5 classes racing on Friday night and 30 cars split among 4 classes on Saturday for our first points event of the season. The track was in great shape both days. I need to thank Chad Parks, Brian Stiffler, Nick Gibson, Jeremy Cathlina and probably a few others for their hard work on getting the track race ready on race day. Of course, thanks to all who came out and raced and marshalled on both days.

However, we are facing a bit of problem. We've received some complaints about the noise; especially when we run past 11 PM. If we're going to stay out of trouble with the county and our neighbors we're going to have to make some adjustments. We're going to attack the problem in 2 ways and we're going to need some help from our racers to be successful.

First, we need to make some adjustments in the race program. We need to speed up the race program especially when we run at night. It often takes an average of 80 - 90 minutes to run a round which only has 25 or 30 minutes of actual racing.

A lot of that time is spent waiting on racers and marshalls. We need your help in getting back on the track quickly to marshall after your heat. We also need to eliminate "racer minutes" during qualifying rounds. As soon as we have marshalls and the warm up period has expired; we need to start the race whether an individual racer is ready or not.

Another reason for the long average time per round is the time spent watering the track. We've ordered some different equipment to speed up watering (new fire hoses, piping, pump and related equipment). But it's going to take a couple of weeks to get that all set up. In the meantime, we may need to limit how long and how often we take a break to water.

We will also run all nitro heats first on Wednesday and Friday nights. That will allow us to complete the loudest portion of the program earlier.


The second approach to the problem will be some revisions in the PA system. We purchased a sound level meter and I spent a good bit of time on Saturday taking baseline measurements. Unfortunately the county ordinances related to noise don't give a specific decibel level and only refer to unusually loud noise (leaving it open to interpretation). But the sound level meter will let us see how some planned changes affect noise levels on and off the property (it already confirms that Sam is louder than Chris when announcing and we know Garrison would peg the meter). We've already ordered some different types of speakers to try to limit the range of the broadcast and we'll try some different placements on speakers.

You'll notice I mentioned several times purchases we've already made or planned. We will obviously need your continued support of Fastlane through racing and parts purchases in order to pay for those purchases. It's going to take some investment by us, cooperation from our racers and support of our business by the RC community but I think we can successfully deal with the noise issue and continue the night time outdoor racing programs at Fastlane.

(sticky) May 11th, 2014 (10:38 AM)