Elbert Chin writes:
>
>Here's my suggestion: why not have the starter and card sorter use FRS
>radios to communicate with each other?
We were trying to do something effectively like that, but with the
walkie-talkies. The plan was to have all the course workers on one
channel, and the starter and card sorter on a separate channel.
Unfortunately, as we discovered in the trailer in group 5, some course
workers were on one channel and some were on a different channel. It
was pretty confusing, and it might explain a few missing cone calls.
Katie's suggesting of station markers is a good one. I think I might
have suggested it last year when I had just started autocrossing and
had been to one SFR event and one SAC event. I noticed that in the
3rd or 4th group, there was nobody stationed near the finish, and
several people were taking out the apex cone of the turn after the
finish without it being reset or called it (someone would eventually
notice and reset it). Communication with the trailer is key. The
two-channel scheme is a good idea, we just have to make sure that all
the workers are on the same frequency and as many stations as possible
have radios.
As scorer in the 5th group, I'll say that being able to see the finish
is also very important. It would be nice to be able to trust that the
cards are coming to you in order and that you're not making any
mistakes yourself, but I had to keep running outside to make sure I
was still synched up with who was finishing.
Which brings up one more thing: masking tape numbers on the windows.
This absolutely does not work. The numbers are effectively
invisible. If people want to tape numbers to their windows, they
should use numbers printed on paper. If they want to make numbers out
of masking tape, it has to go on something with a solid and
contrasting background -- the side of the car would do nicely. I had
a heck of a time telling apart the black Honda Civics numbered 511 and 611
in masking tape on their windows and running one after the other...
john@idsfa.net John Stimson
http://www.idsfa.net/~john/ HMC Physics '94
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