Northwest Rally Council

TSD Rally Home of the Pacific Northwest

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Nine teams turned out for the season opener “Sprung Spring”. This is encouraging for event organizers, as it is the largest turnout for the first rally of the season that we’ve seen in several years.

PSRC Rallymaster Dave Treen sent competitors out to Issaquah and then south toward Renton to end the odometer transit on Wax Road. Leg 1 continued along Wax, then zig-zagged over to Lake Francis briefly, before running the length of Maxwell to the checkpoint just before Norvydan. Car 9 missed a turn (either Lake Francis or Maxwell) and had a little adventure but found their way back to the course.

Leg 2 wound through the Taylor Creek area and crisscrossed Hobart before coming back to SR169 to reach Witte Road. Cars followed Witte to its next encounter with SR169, where the route took them to Belmont Woods and along the Pipeline to the next checkpoint in an area you probably didn’t know is called Noble.

Leg 3 headed toward Landsburg, then south, past the Ravensdale Market (which is in Georgetown, not Ravensdale). It looped around Ravensdale Park (exactly where you’d expect it to be), back through Georgetown and almost to Landsburg before teams turned on Summit-Landsburg Road, eventually reaching the final checkpoint very close to the finish location in Four Corners.

Scoring was completed quickly and awards presented as pizzas were being served.

There was a question at the finish about Time Allowance behavior observed in the Competitor app. Teams attempting to take a 0:10 or 0:20 T/A could not do so, getting 0:30 instead. This was traced to a parameter in the event settings. For future rallymasters, please check that you have the minimum T/A value set to 0:10, maximum set to 19:30, and the increments set to 0:10, 0:20, 0:30, 1:30, … These are established in section 9.5.1 of the NWRC General Instructions. Using other values requires that a supplemental instruction be issued.

Puget Sound Rally Club gives Dave a big thank you for stepping up as rallymaster, and also gives recognition to PSRC members Kevin, Mike, and Vasco as well as non-members Jack and Charles for their assistance.

https://nwrally.org/1613-2/

Deja Vu Recap

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<from the rallymaster>

First, I hope everyone enjoyed the rally.  The rally started with a twist by the NOTE: To Find Outcone.  The note contained the old first opp/secondopp trap.  I was extremely encouraged that everyone executed the note correctly and found the on-course route control on the way to the outcone!  Very good everyone!!

I apologize for the editing errors with respect to leg two.  An NRI introduced NOTE: “Skinny Roads” but the note was “Skinny Road”.  A nice trap, since there is no note called Skinny Roads.  The Note:  “Skinny Roads” cannot be introduced.  Unfortunately, I did not plan this to be a trap Note instruction.  Maybe I’ll plan for that trap next year.  Second, NOTE: Harbinger was deleted from the rally as the sign references were too hard to see at night.  However, no matter how many times I edited the note out, it showed up again on the Final rally version of the instructions.  Due to these unplanned editing errors, I decided to simply drop the second leg scores.

Thank you to Kelly Smith for his support of reading and editing of the rally instructions; to my wife Derris for her help with measuring the rally, TSD calculations and physical checkout of the rally.  I want to thank Mike Daily for the help with the Dash Plaques and trophies for the rally and the championship trophies for the Novice & SOP classes.

For next year, monitor the NWRC website for updates to the General Instructions and the 2025 Rally Schedule.

John Humphrey
NWRC President

13th Place

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First, I would like to thank Mike Daily, Charles Aggenbach and Derris Humphrey for all their help with writing, measuring, calculating, and checking out the rally.  Second, I want to thank all the contestants who came out to rally on a rainy-drippy night.

The route explored a couple of old rally roads that haven’t been used in a while as the course meandered around the Maple Valley area.  To keep the navigators engaged, we had three notes in effect looking for double-headed arrows, horse & rider signs and small children pedestrian signs.  Now, the “little walkers” were found at school crossing signs, but were also found on the graphic signs of school bus stop ahead.  To help cut down on any uncertainty with the “sign accounting” at the checkpoints, I provided an “official count” of the active notes sign counts.

When I was planning the rally, I did not realize how quickly darkness would arrive on rally night.  Hence, the hunting for signs was much more challenging than what I had planned.

I hope everyone who participated had fun and hope to see all of you back for the last rally of the year, in October.

John Humphrey – Rallymaster