Keith and all. What I was referring to in my comment on driver awareness was a
point that I would reach each year after a few runs in the fueler. The first
run each season would feel like I was going faster than God meant man to go on
earth and it would usually be like an 8. something at 160! Subsequent runs
would sequentially become "slower" in feel until on a 7 second 200+ mph run I
would wonder if I would ever get to the end.. It was here that I could analyze
every move, noise,shake and rpm change of the car, read the gages and steer
the dragster exactly where I want it. Weird but true. I expect that that can
happen on the salt and cement. Maybe if there are drag racers out there we can
discuss this phenomenon in more detai as I do not have Louise Ann Noeth's
writing skills. Actually, she, having some experience in jet cars may lend
some comment. But as Grib said at the PRI show, accellerating 200 is different
than sustaining 200, I agree.....but.
John Backus NHRA 309 A/FD, ECTA C/MP record holder
----- Original Message -----
From: Keith Turk
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 6:02 AM
To: Dave Dahlgren; john backus
Cc: Nt788; RTMACK@pop3.concentric.net; joetimney; land-speed
Subject: uRe: Tire reliability, and traction control
I have to agree with both of you actually.... The Driver has a Great
ability to process information.... BUT at some point Task Saturation
occurs.... I don't' know if it's at a particular speed or something.... but
it really happens when several things are happening at one time...
In our case while we progress down the course...not only do we have the
task of physically aiming the car but trying to control wheel spin in
conjunction with applying 700hp to the salt through a skinny set of
tires... Keep in mind your focused on your shift points... Egt's... mile
markers and style points.... ( it's highly unfashionable to spin a car at
200mph ) The whole situation really comes to bear at Maxton where all of
this has to occur in a Mile.... I remember the first time I didn't check
the gages while I was going down the course.... When we progressed from 145
to 165.... the course just got real short.... the step between 180 and 200
is Just absolutely enormous....at Maxton.... On the salt it isn't near the
problem... I can actually check the gages.... What I can't do is tell you
where they are without concentrating on a particular set of values.... and
if I do that all the other information I might possible be capable of
providing is lost.... Hence the term task saturation and in our case the
desire to log the data.
John Goodman and I were chatting one day and his comments about racing in
general was Quantify Quantify Quantify..... if you know what you did before
and the Parameters with which you did it.... there is a very strong
likelihood that you can do it again.... or improve apon it... based on that
set of values... Well after our first year of logging data on the salt... I
can tell you that I had no clue what the car was actually doing going down
the course.... I had the gist of it.... but I couldn't dream of providing
us with Real information to truly quantify all that happened in a single
pass.... I am tickled Dave Stuck the Quick Data in the car this year... I
decided it was so cool that I'm not letting him have it back... in other
words I'm buying the system. If it means I can't run in the Classic
category it's worth it to me....
Keith
----------
> From: Dave Dahlgren <ddahlgren@snet.net>
> To: john backus <34ford@msn.com>
> Cc: Nt788 <Nt788@aol.com>; RTMACK@pop3.concentric.net; joetimney
<joetimney@dol.net>; land-speed <land-speed@autox.team.net>
> Subject: Re: Tire reliabilty, and traction control
> Date: Thursday, December 06, 2001 4:11 AM
>
> The brain being a wonderful computer is poetic and a nice thought, but
> unfortunately pretty optimistic in the bigger picture of things. The
brain cannot
> process what it is not aware of. If you think you can feel the onset of
wheel spin
> in the 5% or 10% range I think you are kidding yourself, especially while
driving
> 250 mph on the salt with everything else going on.. Go ask a pilot that
is flying
> a difficult aircraft and things start going bad about pilot overload.
> Dave Dahlgren
>
> john backus wrote:
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