TSD Rally Home of the Pacific Northwest
Results of this year’s Friday Nighter series are compiled and trophies awarded.
See it all here.
2nd Place NOV trophy winners Kalindra and Todd – it was an administrative oversight that despite the unbroken tie, you’ll be the recipients of the trophies.
Although postponed from its initial May date, RASC conducted the 2023 Raindrop “Trees to Seas” Rally this past Sunday. RASC had only a skeleton crew at the event, as many members were volunteering at the Tour de Forest stage rally. First time rallymaster Bill Walsh deserves credit for an ambitious undertaking. The route was a great collection of roads, and the weather held little indication of it being October. Some last-minute changes to the route book created some hiccups in the scores seen on competitors’ phones while running the legs. Marvin Crippen wrangled the spreadsheet and Richta database to have things fixed by the time all cars arrived at the finish. Thank You to Bill, Marvin, and the others who contributed to putting on this fun event.
If you find yourself in Oak Harbor, check out Orlando’s Bar and Southern BBQ!
Results:
(pictures courtesy of N. Hightower)
Rallymaster (and NWRC President) John Humphrey writes:
First, I would like to thank Mike Daily, our NWRC Vice President for all his help in measuring, pace assistance, scoring, and trophy making. Secondly, the world is an imperfect place, which brings us to rally night. I had a premonition the night before that there would be a ‘road closed’ on the rally. I attribute this to my Native American ancestry. I was so taken by this thought that I wanted to drive the course on Friday before the event but didn’t have the time due to other priorities. And, finding an impaled dead bat (most likely collected during our rally checkout) in the grille of my X3 at rally registration was confirmation of an imperfect night ahead.
My premonition was right as there was an emergency road closure for a bridge repair on SE 156th ST which was announced late Thursday 9/7 and effective Friday 8AM 9/8!! The Leg 1 Checkpoint was on that road. This forced us to throw Leg 1. Mike, on the fly, figured out how we could potentially save Leg 2, but several cars were already beyond the selected restart point. Hence, Leg 2 was thrown also!!
We did send out Broadcast Messages however at the end found out, that due to the differences in Android/iPhone functionality/behavior and the issue of gaps in cellular coverage for the variety of open vs. wooded vs. commercial areas we drove through, not everyone received the messages in a timely manner or at all.
I hope you were able to view all the wildlife that SE King County has to offer – a small posse of Elk (12?) between NRI 35 and 36 (258 AVE SE); a jogging coyote after NRI 56; and ‘observing raccoons’ watching us near NRI 69 and NRI 72!! Fortunately, the suicidal deer encountered on checkout just after NRI 56 were no shows!!
Anyway, despite the turn of bad luck for Legs 1 and 2, I hope you enjoyed the balance of the rally.
Greg Hightower is the Rally Master for October and I know he will have an entertaining rally for all of us!!
Again, thank you all for attending and understanding that life happens.
JRH III
Car 9 here. We encountered some curious GPS trouble at the July Friday Nighter.
First, this is not a general problem with the Richta GPS Checkpoints system. It was a combination of a conflict with another app and maybe (IMO) some limitations of any Android device.
Second, there were clues that there could be trouble brewing. No big red flags, but some indications. When you open the Competitor app into an event, the GPS coordinates begin refreshing and should do so very often. I noticed they didn’t seem to be changing quickly or steadily. Wish I had given that more thought. I dismissed my concern because I’ve mostly been staring at the Rallymaster app this year.
Third, I have an app called MileIQ installed on my phone. It is an automated mileage logger for keeping track of reimbursable business travel. This app updated earlier that day. Five days later, I discovered it had no data captured for those five days. I’ve had small problems with MileIQ reliability, but never found it to interfere with Richta. Restarting the phone made no difference. I ended up having to uninstall and reinstall MileIQ to get it working again.
Next clue was found about two miles down the road. At the Drivers Meeting, they announced the crew working the OUTCONE would be checking each car had gotten their Out Time in the app. The crew did not do this. Knowing our intended Out Time was 1930 + 9, I had already entered that into the rally computer and didn’t notice Competitor hadn’t detected the Restart location (CP1).
The final clue was the laggy checkpoint detection. Yes, there is a slight delay between passing the checkpoint coordinates and Competitor announcing it. As we arrived at one checkpoint (location unknown) we could see a line of cars idling. There were two posts between us and the stopped cars. 2nd post was pretty close to the cars, so seemed likely that the checkpoint would be at the 1st post. We were one or two seconds beyond the 1st post but not yet to the 2nd post when the app sounded. If the GPS data stream reaching the app was refreshing slowly or erratically, I would expect exactly this result.
We made no off-course excursions and arrived at the finish location having detected only CP2, CP3, and CP4. Somewhere along the way we passed the CP5 location without detecting it.
The event critique distributed at the finish described a leg 6 but there is no CP6 in the results. We didn’t hear anything about it being dropped or explaining the mismatch.
There were three other cars that did not detect CP5. A rally official was monitoring the map view of the course in the Rallymaster app and says those cars were off-course missing the checkpoint location entirely. It makes sense these three didn’t detect CP5. What doesn’t make sense is 30% of the SOP and NOV cars missing a checkpoint. When that many cars are getting lost at the same place there is a problem, and the leg probably should have been tossed. It’s not the competitors’ fault that the route or instructions were difficult to follow without local knowledge or more experience.
After the remove/install cycle with MileIQ, I’ve had no further issues with any GPS app. I’ll be making a few verification tests with Competitor and see if things are working smoothly again with it. Just looking at the GPS data refresh, it seems to be fine now.