Saturday - a drive in the country
...or rather, a day marshalling at the Rally of the Midlands.
A week and a half back november_girl got in touch with a number of people to see if we were free to help marshall at the MIRA stages of the Rally of the Midlands. My diary was free, it was pretty local, and it sounded fun, so I said yes.
A number of emails later I had my instructions - to sign in at MIRA between 07:00 and 07:30 on Saturday, and the technical instructions on how to operate timing gear, from which I inferred that I'd be on the finish line. Apart from that, I knew where MIRA was, I'd read up that it was a tarmac-only rally with nearly 90 entrants, and that was about it.
SSo it was that after an early night I was up bright and early, the roads were quiet, and even with a stop at McD's for breakfast I was on site too early, as the signing in crew were themselves being signed in by MIRA security.
MIRA - the Motor Industry Research Association - is a former airfield on the A5 just outside Nuneaton. It's a pretty high security place, so no cameras (without permission (not that I'd have had a chance to use one when the cars were around), no spectators, no facilities. It was also the main special stage location for that rally that day. There were two stages there - Highham, which I had nothing to do with, and Lindley. Lindley was an 8.90 mile drive around on all sorts and shapes of hard surfaces - partly on the MIRA high speed track and partly on various internal routes. Lindley was to be used for six special stages that day. The day for the competitors started with stage 7 at Bramcote, Lindley was stage 12 & 13, before a trip out, then again stages 19 and 20, out again, and back to finish the day with stages 23 & 24.
I was issued with the paperwork for the finish line, and a little map showing how to get to each marshalling point - basically a map showing how to get on to the route, and instructions to drive around, following the numbered arrow markers until I got to the finish markers, and to wait there for the rest of the timing crew to arrive. So, I drove down to the route, turned on to the course, and drove very sedately around until I passed corner 40, the last one, saw the chequered flag markers, and turned off the course - onto the area of hard standing I'd turned onto the course a good few minutes before. Ah well, at least I'd had a chance to take a look at the route.
A little while later november_girl turned up, puzzled. The signing in crew had forgotten to tick me off on one list so didn't know I was there. She went off for a quick drive around the route as there was time to spare, and by the time she was back the rest of the finish line crew had arrived.
We were split into two groups - the flying finish crew, who had the timing equipment, and the stop line crew, a few hundred yards further on, who had to tell the crews their timings. We ended up on the flying finish line
for the whole day, others swapped around between the pairs of runnings of the stage. We decided to drive down to the flying finish line and park up there so we would have shelter when it rained, and rather than drive a few hundred yards the wrong way along the route took a quick trip around the route to get there. I didn't time it. I did keep my eyes open, Lets just say it was closer to competition times than my gentle stroll around earlier.
Rally timing at this level has moved on since I last took an interest in it. A timing box synced to a real world clock is stopped every time a car breaks a light beam. The operator types in the car number against that stop time. In the mean time the clock keeps running and is stopped each time something breaks the beam. A second clock is worked manually with a stop button, in case the beam break fails (e.g. if the battery dies, or the wind blows the reflector out of line). I operated the spare clock all day. Someone else (november_girl in this case) spots the car numbers and calls them out, and the fourth crew member radios the car numbers and timings through to the stop line crew, so that the crew there can pass them on to the cars.
The day started easily. Cars were despatched at one minute intervals, the leaders first, and so, depending on how they performed, they would arrive roughly (in theory) a minute apart. However, this stage was being run twice per session, so after the first cars had completed it as stage 12, at one minute intervals, they were sent round again, interlaced between the other cars, taking the theoretical gap down to 30 seconds. Obviously, at times, cars caught up with the cars in front, and it got a lot busier. During the day we only had one occasion where the beam only got broken once, by two overlapping cars as they finished, but we had a number of times when there was a 1 second gap.
Half way through the first session, the automatic clock stopped working, so the rest was carried out on the manual clock. We also had a brief period when the process of feeding the guy operating the radio with results got behind, and instead of telling the stop line crew there was a delay he froze while we sorted out the order. As we sorted it out they started calling on a mobile to find out what was happening causing more interruptions, and of course the cars kept coming. It took about ten minutes before we were fully running back to time though - time during which cars were delayed at the stop line before heading off to stage 14.
After the first pair of sessions (130 cars timed (66 + 62 being recorded as finishing) - so quite heavy attrition already) we had a quick break, a slight swap around of crew, and then did it all over again. This time the numbers were down further (54 and 52 recorded) the crew was more efficient, and again the beam breaker failed part way through. This time though we knew that we could take manual readings on that timer as well, so we had two timers being worked manually for the whole session, except for the first few seconds when the gear failed. The crew worked far better for this session despite having to hop in and out of cars as the weather changed.
There wasn't much spare time before the final session, 46 cars each time, and 18:00 and stage closure came around very quickly. This stage we did the timing entirely on manual, and it ran pretty smoothly. The course had been shortened for this run, down to 8 miles, but from our point of view, interested only in 'real world' timings, the last few bends and the final straight were unchanged, and it made no real difference knowing that the cars had been driven down a shorter stage. Quite a few cars gave us a flash of the headlights, or a beep of the horn on the way past for their last time - probably in thanks, although november_girl sitting on the bonnet of her car clipboard in hand may have encouraged them!. By 18:10 everything at the finish was closed down, and by 18:30 I was on my way home.
So a fun day, poorly organised in quite a few ways. Apparently it's quite often the practice to have the display for the timing system at the stop line, down a cable from the flying finish - this would have made life much easier until the equipment failed, at which point we'd have been back to calling in the timings by radio anyway, and probably less prepared to do so mid-stage. It was good to catch up with november_girl and a pleasant enough way to spend a day sitting in a field watching the cars go by.
A week and a half back november_girl got in touch with a number of people to see if we were free to help marshall at the MIRA stages of the Rally of the Midlands. My diary was free, it was pretty local, and it sounded fun, so I said yes.
A number of emails later I had my instructions - to sign in at MIRA between 07:00 and 07:30 on Saturday, and the technical instructions on how to operate timing gear, from which I inferred that I'd be on the finish line. Apart from that, I knew where MIRA was, I'd read up that it was a tarmac-only rally with nearly 90 entrants, and that was about it.
SSo it was that after an early night I was up bright and early, the roads were quiet, and even with a stop at McD's for breakfast I was on site too early, as the signing in crew were themselves being signed in by MIRA security.
MIRA - the Motor Industry Research Association - is a former airfield on the A5 just outside Nuneaton. It's a pretty high security place, so no cameras (without permission (not that I'd have had a chance to use one when the cars were around), no spectators, no facilities. It was also the main special stage location for that rally that day. There were two stages there - Highham, which I had nothing to do with, and Lindley. Lindley was an 8.90 mile drive around on all sorts and shapes of hard surfaces - partly on the MIRA high speed track and partly on various internal routes. Lindley was to be used for six special stages that day. The day for the competitors started with stage 7 at Bramcote, Lindley was stage 12 & 13, before a trip out, then again stages 19 and 20, out again, and back to finish the day with stages 23 & 24.
I was issued with the paperwork for the finish line, and a little map showing how to get to each marshalling point - basically a map showing how to get on to the route, and instructions to drive around, following the numbered arrow markers until I got to the finish markers, and to wait there for the rest of the timing crew to arrive. So, I drove down to the route, turned on to the course, and drove very sedately around until I passed corner 40, the last one, saw the chequered flag markers, and turned off the course - onto the area of hard standing I'd turned onto the course a good few minutes before. Ah well, at least I'd had a chance to take a look at the route.
A little while later november_girl turned up, puzzled. The signing in crew had forgotten to tick me off on one list so didn't know I was there. She went off for a quick drive around the route as there was time to spare, and by the time she was back the rest of the finish line crew had arrived.
We were split into two groups - the flying finish crew, who had the timing equipment, and the stop line crew, a few hundred yards further on, who had to tell the crews their timings. We ended up on the flying finish line
for the whole day, others swapped around between the pairs of runnings of the stage. We decided to drive down to the flying finish line and park up there so we would have shelter when it rained, and rather than drive a few hundred yards the wrong way along the route took a quick trip around the route to get there. I didn't time it. I did keep my eyes open, Lets just say it was closer to competition times than my gentle stroll around earlier.
Rally timing at this level has moved on since I last took an interest in it. A timing box synced to a real world clock is stopped every time a car breaks a light beam. The operator types in the car number against that stop time. In the mean time the clock keeps running and is stopped each time something breaks the beam. A second clock is worked manually with a stop button, in case the beam break fails (e.g. if the battery dies, or the wind blows the reflector out of line). I operated the spare clock all day. Someone else (november_girl in this case) spots the car numbers and calls them out, and the fourth crew member radios the car numbers and timings through to the stop line crew, so that the crew there can pass them on to the cars.
The day started easily. Cars were despatched at one minute intervals, the leaders first, and so, depending on how they performed, they would arrive roughly (in theory) a minute apart. However, this stage was being run twice per session, so after the first cars had completed it as stage 12, at one minute intervals, they were sent round again, interlaced between the other cars, taking the theoretical gap down to 30 seconds. Obviously, at times, cars caught up with the cars in front, and it got a lot busier. During the day we only had one occasion where the beam only got broken once, by two overlapping cars as they finished, but we had a number of times when there was a 1 second gap.
Half way through the first session, the automatic clock stopped working, so the rest was carried out on the manual clock. We also had a brief period when the process of feeding the guy operating the radio with results got behind, and instead of telling the stop line crew there was a delay he froze while we sorted out the order. As we sorted it out they started calling on a mobile to find out what was happening causing more interruptions, and of course the cars kept coming. It took about ten minutes before we were fully running back to time though - time during which cars were delayed at the stop line before heading off to stage 14.
After the first pair of sessions (130 cars timed (66 + 62 being recorded as finishing) - so quite heavy attrition already) we had a quick break, a slight swap around of crew, and then did it all over again. This time the numbers were down further (54 and 52 recorded) the crew was more efficient, and again the beam breaker failed part way through. This time though we knew that we could take manual readings on that timer as well, so we had two timers being worked manually for the whole session, except for the first few seconds when the gear failed. The crew worked far better for this session despite having to hop in and out of cars as the weather changed.
There wasn't much spare time before the final session, 46 cars each time, and 18:00 and stage closure came around very quickly. This stage we did the timing entirely on manual, and it ran pretty smoothly. The course had been shortened for this run, down to 8 miles, but from our point of view, interested only in 'real world' timings, the last few bends and the final straight were unchanged, and it made no real difference knowing that the cars had been driven down a shorter stage. Quite a few cars gave us a flash of the headlights, or a beep of the horn on the way past for their last time - probably in thanks, although november_girl sitting on the bonnet of her car clipboard in hand may have encouraged them!. By 18:10 everything at the finish was closed down, and by 18:30 I was on my way home.
So a fun day, poorly organised in quite a few ways. Apparently it's quite often the practice to have the display for the timing system at the stop line, down a cable from the flying finish - this would have made life much easier until the equipment failed, at which point we'd have been back to calling in the timings by radio anyway, and probably less prepared to do so mid-stage. It was good to catch up with november_girl and a pleasant enough way to spend a day sitting in a field watching the cars go by.