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Blue Ridge Mountain Sports Car Club

Presents:

It’s about Time ?

(the umpteenth)

When: Sunday, January 24th, 2010.

Start:  We'll be starting at the Pool City Parking Lot, on Rt. 22 at the border of Monroeville & Murrysville, Pennsylvania. (coordinates: N 40°25’ 38.0” W 79° 42’ 23.3”) Flash earth version.

Registration:  Registration is at Noon (12:00 PM) with the First Car Off (FCO) at 1:01PM.

Cost: $10 per car (driver & navigator)

Description:   Rallymaster Chuck Larouere will open the 2010 rally season with another of his classic “It’s about time” series of rallies, in which he tests out traps and tricks to use on the upcoming National Rally.  This is not a novice-oriented rally, but traps will be well fail-safed, so everyone should be able to make it thru the rally. Bring your maps, GPS and sense of adventure! 

Chuck’s description:

1. about 60 miles with Protection and SAP as the main road rules.  Each leg will have a Restricted List.  The words in the list do not exist and if they are the name or number of a road, that road does not exit either.  There are OPEN and DIYC controls.  There are some good unpaved roads.
   

Less experienced ralliests are encouraged to review the tutorial on following the Main Road, as well as reviewing the common traps.

What beginners should bring with them:

For starters - there should be two of you in the car: a driver, and a navigator (who isn't inclined to get car-sick reading while moving, or has an antidote for it).

Bring a mechanically sound car* that has a tenths -reading odometer (a resettable trip odometer can be a help), a clipboard, a four function calculator, several working pens, a set of highlighters (for marking up the route instructions) and post-it notes. 

If you can choose between a mechanical odometer that "rolls" and a digital display, the mechanical will enable you to interpolate to the hundredths. If you only have the digital tenths, then you'll have to do a lot more "guessing" in between the numbers clicking over. We have folks who have gotten good at this with practice!

While every team has their own procedure, it's useful to be able to highlight things like speed changes, and free zones (remember - there is a tutorial to get you started!) so that "on the road" it helps you remember them better.  The post-its are to stick on your dashboard to remind the driver of the assigned speeds and what the active course following priorities are. 

Also - having a good map of the area that includes secondary (and tertiary roads) can be very helpful if you get lost and can't regain the rally course.

*While a cell phone and a AAA membership can't hurt, a lot of the time, we'll be traveling on roads that are well off the beaten track, and you may not have much of a description of where you are!  "Well - we got here by turning left after "Snodgrass", then right at T, and left by protection... "  While a GPS unit probably won’t help you very much while running the rally, it may be very useful for telling AAA where you are if you break down.