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Shaun Bootsma
Joined: 07 Nov 2007
Posts: 225
Location: petaluma, ca
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 Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 9:42 am Post subject: 2010 comments |
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suggestions already made:
Originally Posted by karstic
A suggestion for next year. Make up "Checkpoint Boxes" Clipboard, pens/pencils, time sheets, CAUTION tape, the STOP sign, CHECKPOINT signs, safety vests, etc.
although these are basic supplies, Other than the caution tape, i think we had this covered resonably ok. I do agree that 50' of caution tape of banners would have been helpfull for each checkpoint. last year, i'd driven to each checkpoint and done some setup work for just that.... this year, i never made it farther outta camp than backdoor.
also, having pre-printed checkpoint logs would be my next mission. i had some printed out for me, but, never used it at the race ops. having a simple sheet with boxes for car numbers and times would have 1)gave every check a piece of paper to work on and 2) standardized it so Dave can check the spits later easier.
Last edited by Shaun Bootsma on Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:58 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Shaun Bootsma
Joined: 07 Nov 2007
Posts: 225
Location: petaluma, ca
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 9:48 am Post subject: |
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would it be possible to keep race ops on a channel nobody knows? to combat the stuck mikes and the random people i heard answering questions that i needed from specific people?
that may be a pipe dream.
overall, i think the scoring program you wrote Dave was working.. just a few tweaks and it would be perfect. maybe if i would have brought my laptop and an aircard i could have seen the scoring directly to see the progression of cars and helped keep Bill from having to stop and look for people instead of entering the times.
i think having Bill up there doing the scoring was a killer idea and overall worked well. |
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Shaun Bootsma
Joined: 07 Nov 2007
Posts: 225
Location: petaluma, ca
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 9:56 am Post subject: |
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race ops radio/workspace....
eh, it wasn't the best, but, not the worst. i could have made it 100x's better for myself if i had decided too. small things like having a battery to power the radio instead of the second generator would have been easy for me to do.
the location.... well, personally, i feel i need to visible for the teams and stuff. if i was in a nice quite place, i don't think i could have gotten as much info as i did or nearly as easy as i did. being where i was allowed crews to find me quickly to let me know they were out of the race and working thier way back... or if i needed to hop on the mike and get someones team to see me so they knew where their driver was...
its a double edge sword... being near the action and dealing with the loudness and the action.
overall, i've got no real complaint about the base. |
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mrblaine
Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Posts: 96
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Shaun Bootsma wrote: | would it be possible to keep race ops on a channel nobody knows? to combat the stuck mikes and the random people i heard answering questions that i needed from specific people?
that may be a pipe dream.
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If you don't want stuck mikes, quit using hand held radios. I guarantee every stuck mike incident was from someone sticking a radio in their pocket and leaning against it, sitting on it, or the pocket was too tight.
Hollering at folks with stuck mikes that can't hear you because their mike is stuck was mildly amusing though.
My best suggestion for the radio situation is to monitor two frequencies on two different radios far enough apart that they can be heard clearly. If that requires another volunteer to sit there near you, so be it.
Me having to send one of my guys from the road crossing to have someone contact us on the radio was sorta BS. I had tried to get through several times previous and failed or was ignored. I think there was just too much race ops traffic and even though I waited for a break in traffic, it didn't work.
Not that we minded, but we were there a good hour and a half after the last race car came through. That hour and a half would have been useful when we had enough energy to tear down the crossing and not leave the mess for someone else. |
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mrblaine
Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Posts: 96
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:08 pm Post subject: |
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Sticker cards- Spend some time running a class for the checkpoint workers and show them how to do it. Based on feedback from our crew working the check, it was obvious that even the basics like counting to 5 were impossible for some. 
Also, it looks like a bingo card. Even if you don't know how many checkpoints you're going to wind up with, you can still do a 5 x 5 and then number each box across until you get to 25 or even a 5 x 4 for 20 boxes as long as they print the numbers in the boxes.
Check point 1 puts their little sticker in the box with a 1 in it, so on and so forth. |
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mrblaine
Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Posts: 96
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:11 pm Post subject: |
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Vests- Once again, my favorite bandwagon and I even know the rule about not complaining without offering a solution.
You need extra vests, You need at least 2 different colors.
We offered to purchase and supply any quantity and color needed. We were turned down. |
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mrblaine
Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Posts: 96
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:38 pm Post subject: |
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Give us the tools to do our job and sometimes that tool is is as simple as information.
I asked what we should do on Friday morning since it would be awhile before we were needed at the Sledge road crossing.
We were informed we were needed at the start line for crowd control and then would be released to get to our crossing.
We were never told we were needed where the course crossed Boone at the pits. When we were asked to get over there, it was said to go to where the course crosses Boone. In my mind, Boone Road proper ends where it drops down the little hill onto the lakebed, and without intimate knowledge of the course, we were lost. I sent guys out scouting looking for a sign that said Resume Race Speed that we were told to look for.
I had no idea it was behind the trailer where we finally found it after being stressed to the max that we were going to be late.
Had we been informed ahead of time we were going to transfer to that spot, I would have had guys find it, get staged and get ready. We made it, but Jeff shouldn't have had to hand lead us over there.
Getting someone to show us exactly where the road crossing was at Sledge would have helped a bit. We figured it out finally with a lot of input from Jeff, but some legwork ahead of time would have been easier.
Lesson learned- I had previously thought that having Security would help with stopping us from getting abused by those impatient to cross.
That was until the Rangers showed up and then pulled someone over for Open Container. That caused all the nice folks up on the hill headed towards us to scatter like cockroaches in a cheap motel when the lights go on because they were convinced it was a DUI checkpoint.
That scattering lead to multiple routes down the hill away from us to avoid the flashing red and blue lights on the Ranger vehicles and really compounded the difficulties we had there.
Lastly on the road crossings- Our biggest offenders trying to blow the crossing were folks from Pit Crews. They would drive around everyone once we stopped them for a hot course, almost run over us, and then scream at us to let them through because they had needed to get to the Wrecking Ball pit.
Suggestion- Either hand out display passes for official pit vehicles and tell us they can do that, or tell the Race Teams that their crews have to get in the same lines as everyone else. Then tell the road crossing workers what the protocol is. We don't care either way, but anyone can scream they are on a pit crew and deserve special treatment.
You all can give some more thought to security at any road crossing like that because if the promise I got last year about ejecting folks for running into me and my crew had of been lived up to, at least 15 folks would have been gone.
I had to physically restrain a drunk on a dirt bike trying to blow the crossing with a racer less than 50 yards out and he was a real dick about it.
Finally, I swear by all that is holy if one more idiot on a dirt bike roosts me because I stopped him, I will hunt him down and use him for traction.
My chair was sitting right at the edge of the crossing because my back had finally had enough and I would sit for a few moments when I could and when the traffic was light enough the others could handle it. There was a solid 1/2" of dirt in it from all the dirt bikes roosting us because we stopped them.
Sorry, that last part is just me sniveling and not really a suggestion.  |
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mrblaine
Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Posts: 96
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 9:05 pm Post subject: |
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Timing for the LCQ-
3 working timers checked out ahead of time would have been nice. We got it done, but not without stressing Dave a bit. The reason that's important to me is I viewed my function as a volunteer as that of taking stress away from Dave, Jeff, and Shaun, not adding to it. Having to inform Dave and Jeff that we only had two working timers was way down on my list of favorite things to do.
Again, it worked fine, but the second day having to start the timers based on purely a radio signal was too haphazard in my opinion and should not be counted on as a 100% reliable method due to all the STUCK MIKE BS.
We missed one racer because we never heard the start countdown.
Two things saved us. One was my boredom which I used to mentally take split times at the first sighting of a racer out on the course. Every time I checked, the racer would invariably be at that turn at 32 seconds give or take 1 second. So, when I heard the call that the racer was away and down the course, I started looking for the 32 second mark and when he got there, I started the timer and made a note to add 32 seconds.
The second thing was Jess who was our back-up timer using times on a digital watch was late to the finish line and actually was at the start line and was able to get the start time.
When she got to our station, I explained the situation and then told her what I thought the time should be based on how far our timers had counted down and me adding the 32 seconds. We were within 1 second of each other.  We did it again when the racer crossed the finish and were still within 1 second, so I was confident we had an accurate time beyond question. |
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Shaun Bootsma
Joined: 07 Nov 2007
Posts: 225
Location: petaluma, ca
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| Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:40 am Post subject: |
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| mrblaine wrote: | | Shaun Bootsma wrote: | would it be possible to keep race ops on a channel nobody knows? to combat the stuck mikes and the random people i heard answering questions that i needed from specific people?
that may be a pipe dream.
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If you don't want stuck mikes, quit using hand held radios. I guarantee every stuck mike incident was from someone sticking a radio in their pocket and leaning against it, sitting on it, or the pocket was too tight.
Hollering at folks with stuck mikes that can't hear you because their mike is stuck was mildly amusing though.
My best suggestion for the radio situation is to monitor two frequencies on two different radios far enough apart that they can be heard clearly. If that requires another volunteer to sit there near you, so be it.
Me having to send one of my guys from the road crossing to have someone contact us on the radio was sorta BS. I had tried to get through several times previous and failed or was ignored. I think there was just too much race ops traffic and even though I waited for a break in traffic, it didn't work.
Not that we minded, but we were there a good hour and a half after the last race car came through. That hour and a half would have been useful when we had enough energy to tear down the crossing and not leave the mess for someone else. |
many if not all of the stuck mikes were not from the volunteers. they were from people monitoring their personal radios.
more than once did i get on or have someone get on the loud speakers to have people check thier mikes..... i it usually worked.... same with during the LCQ... i would yell from the bottom of the canyon for everyone to check thier mikes and it usually cleared the channel.
we can't stop them from having thier own hand helds.
as for when we got to release you, well, we were trying to find the scoring to verify where cars were on the course. IIRC the road crossing was after checkpoint 14 and should have been released around 6pm.. however, i'm not sure when the last car passed. i know the last car thru that checkpoint was at 5:28 and without his co-driver who was running from the pits to the car so they could make the cut off. i don't know when they got moving again. |
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Shaun Bootsma
Joined: 07 Nov 2007
Posts: 225
Location: petaluma, ca
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| Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:50 am Post subject: |
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| mrblaine wrote: | Give us the tools to do our job and sometimes that tool is is as simple as information.
I asked what we should do on Friday morning since it would be awhile before we were needed at the Sledge road crossing.
We were informed we were needed at the start line for crowd control and then would be released to get to our crossing.
We were never told we were needed where the course crossed Boone at the pits. When we were asked to get over there, it was said to go to where the course crosses Boone. In my mind, Boone Road proper ends where it drops down the little hill onto the lakebed, and without intimate knowledge of the course, we were lost. I sent guys out scouting looking for a sign that said Resume Race Speed that we were told to look for.
I had no idea it was behind the trailer where we finally found it after being stressed to the max that we were going to be late.
Had we been informed ahead of time we were going to transfer to that spot, I would have had guys find it, get staged and get ready. We made it, but Jeff shouldn't have had to hand lead us over there.
Getting someone to show us exactly where the road crossing was at Sledge would have helped a bit. We figured it out finally with a lot of input from Jeff, but some legwork ahead of time would have been easier.
Lesson learned- I had previously thought that having Security would help with stopping us from getting abused by those impatient to cross.
That was until the Rangers showed up and then pulled someone over for Open Container. That caused all the nice folks up on the hill headed towards us to scatter like cockroaches in a cheap motel when the lights go on because they were convinced it was a DUI checkpoint.
That scattering lead to multiple routes down the hill away from us to avoid the flashing red and blue lights on the Ranger vehicles and really compounded the difficulties we had there.
Lastly on the road crossings- Our biggest offenders trying to blow the crossing were folks from Pit Crews. They would drive around everyone once we stopped them for a hot course, almost run over us, and then scream at us to let them through because they had needed to get to the Wrecking Ball pit.
Suggestion- Either hand out display passes for official pit vehicles and tell us they can do that, or tell the Race Teams that their crews have to get in the same lines as everyone else. Then tell the road crossing workers what the protocol is. We don't care either way, but anyone can scream they are on a pit crew and deserve special treatment.
You all can give some more thought to security at any road crossing like that because if the promise I got last year about ejecting folks for running into me and my crew had of been lived up to, at least 15 folks would have been gone.
I had to physically restrain a drunk on a dirt bike trying to blow the crossing with a racer less than 50 yards out and he was a real dick about it.
Finally, I swear by all that is holy if one more idiot on a dirt bike roosts me because I stopped him, I will hunt him down and use him for traction.
My chair was sitting right at the edge of the crossing because my back had finally had enough and I would sit for a few moments when I could and when the traffic was light enough the others could handle it. There was a solid 1/2" of dirt in it from all the dirt bikes roosting us because we stopped them.
Sorry, that last part is just me sniveling and not really a suggestion. |
Blaine, you know as well as I its a fluid situation. we had to known areas of concern, the start of the race, and the road crossing you were on. it caught me personally by suprise about the issue by check 5/14 at the edge of camp. as soon as we found the issue, we dispatched people to the problem. we did what we could.
as far as the location of the road crossing at sledge, i only made 1 trip all week that direction and found it in 30 seconds...... its the road going to sledge.... its 1 area.... i saw all the race makers as i crossed it. there's not a whole lot of options where that would be.
Pit crews shouldn't have done that. we all know that.
bikes shouldn't have done that... we know that.
I handed out another 60 vests during the volunteer meeting. I can only think of a few people who asked for them and we didn't have any... but that was because the rest of thier crew had them. |
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Shaun Bootsma
Joined: 07 Nov 2007
Posts: 225
Location: petaluma, ca
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| Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:55 am Post subject: |
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| mrblaine wrote: | Sticker cards- Spend some time running a class for the checkpoint workers and show them how to do it. Based on feedback from our crew working the check, it was obvious that even the basics like counting to 5 were impossible for some.
Also, it looks like a bingo card. Even if you don't know how many checkpoints you're going to wind up with, you can still do a 5 x 5 and then number each box across until you get to 25 or even a 5 x 4 for 20 boxes as long as they print the numbers in the boxes.
Check point 1 puts their little sticker in the box with a 1 in it, so on and so forth. |
yes, numbers in the boxes may have helped. I honestly had no idea there were any issues with the cards/stickers. not a single soul complained or commented to me directly about having issues. |
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mrblaine
Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Posts: 96
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| Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 11:20 am Post subject: |
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| Shaun Bootsma wrote: | | mrblaine wrote: | Give us the tools to do our job and sometimes that tool is is as simple as information.
I asked what we should do on Friday morning since it would be awhile before we were needed at the Sledge road crossing.
We were informed we were needed at the start line for crowd control and then would be released to get to our crossing.
We were never told we were needed where the course crossed Boone at the pits. When we were asked to get over there, it was said to go to where the course crosses Boone. In my mind, Boone Road proper ends where it drops down the little hill onto the lakebed, and without intimate knowledge of the course, we were lost. I sent guys out scouting looking for a sign that said Resume Race Speed that we were told to look for.
I had no idea it was behind the trailer where we finally found it after being stressed to the max that we were going to be late.
Had we been informed ahead of time we were going to transfer to that spot, I would have had guys find it, get staged and get ready. We made it, but Jeff shouldn't have had to hand lead us over there.
Getting someone to show us exactly where the road crossing was at Sledge would have helped a bit. We figured it out finally with a lot of input from Jeff, but some legwork ahead of time would have been easier.
Lesson learned- I had previously thought that having Security would help with stopping us from getting abused by those impatient to cross.
That was until the Rangers showed up and then pulled someone over for Open Container. That caused all the nice folks up on the hill headed towards us to scatter like cockroaches in a cheap motel when the lights go on because they were convinced it was a DUI checkpoint.
That scattering lead to multiple routes down the hill away from us to avoid the flashing red and blue lights on the Ranger vehicles and really compounded the difficulties we had there.
Lastly on the road crossings- Our biggest offenders trying to blow the crossing were folks from Pit Crews. They would drive around everyone once we stopped them for a hot course, almost run over us, and then scream at us to let them through because they had needed to get to the Wrecking Ball pit.
Suggestion- Either hand out display passes for official pit vehicles and tell us they can do that, or tell the Race Teams that their crews have to get in the same lines as everyone else. Then tell the road crossing workers what the protocol is. We don't care either way, but anyone can scream they are on a pit crew and deserve special treatment.
You all can give some more thought to security at any road crossing like that because if the promise I got last year about ejecting folks for running into me and my crew had of been lived up to, at least 15 folks would have been gone.
I had to physically restrain a drunk on a dirt bike trying to blow the crossing with a racer less than 50 yards out and he was a real dick about it.
Finally, I swear by all that is holy if one more idiot on a dirt bike roosts me because I stopped him, I will hunt him down and use him for traction.
My chair was sitting right at the edge of the crossing because my back had finally had enough and I would sit for a few moments when I could and when the traffic was light enough the others could handle it. There was a solid 1/2" of dirt in it from all the dirt bikes roosting us because we stopped them.
Sorry, that last part is just me sniveling and not really a suggestion. |
Blaine, you know as well as I its a fluid situation. we had to known areas of concern, the start of the race, and the road crossing you were on. it caught me personally by suprise about the issue by check 5/14 at the edge of camp. as soon as we found the issue, we dispatched people to the problem. we did what we could. |
Let's take this a different direction because it's appearing that my dry writing style is making it sound different than I mean it. I'm not complaining, just pointing out that more knowledge as to where we are needed would be better. We got it done, you got it done and no one got hurt and that's all the really matters.
After that, it's just a fine tuning process.
| Quote: | | as far as the location of the road crossing at sledge, i only made 1 trip all week that direction and found it in 30 seconds...... its the road going to sledge.... its 1 area.... i saw all the race makers as i crossed it. there's not a whole lot of options where that would be. |
We had no issue finding it. It was just trying to predict what was needed and get that done while we had time. As you said, it was fluid and kept changing on us. We knew it was going to be a mess which is why we asked for it.
| Quote: | | Pit crews shouldn't have done that. we all know that. |
Yes, but perhaps a more stern warning in the driver's meeting MAY have more impact. Don't know, but if you don't ask, you don't get.
| Quote: | | bikes shouldn't have done that... we know that. |
Does that mean I can just kill them all now? 
| Quote: | | I handed out another 60 vests during the volunteer meeting. I can only think of a few people who asked for them and we didn't have any... but that was because the rest of thier crew had them. |
As far as the 60 vests go though, I'm pretty sure you had to send someone into town to buy some because you were short that amount, no?
I keep pointing out that vests for media and course workers should be different colors IMO, it keeps getting shot down, so obviously it's an idea not worth implementing so I won't bring it up any more.
Shaun, you did an awesome job and one that I strongly believe that very few if any others can do, so please don't ever forget that while we're discussing this stuff. I mean exactly nothing negative with these suggestions. |
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mrblaine
Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Posts: 96
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| Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 11:23 am Post subject: |
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| Shaun Bootsma wrote: | | mrblaine wrote: | | Shaun Bootsma wrote: | would it be possible to keep race ops on a channel nobody knows? to combat the stuck mikes and the random people i heard answering questions that i needed from specific people?
that may be a pipe dream.
|
If you don't want stuck mikes, quit using hand held radios. I guarantee every stuck mike incident was from someone sticking a radio in their pocket and leaning against it, sitting on it, or the pocket was too tight.
Hollering at folks with stuck mikes that can't hear you because their mike is stuck was mildly amusing though.
My best suggestion for the radio situation is to monitor two frequencies on two different radios far enough apart that they can be heard clearly. If that requires another volunteer to sit there near you, so be it.
Me having to send one of my guys from the road crossing to have someone contact us on the radio was sorta BS. I had tried to get through several times previous and failed or was ignored. I think there was just too much race ops traffic and even though I waited for a break in traffic, it didn't work.
Not that we minded, but we were there a good hour and a half after the last race car came through. That hour and a half would have been useful when we had enough energy to tear down the crossing and not leave the mess for someone else. |
many if not all of the stuck mikes were not from the volunteers. they were from people monitoring their personal radios.
more than once did i get on or have someone get on the loud speakers to have people check thier mikes..... i it usually worked.... same with during the LCQ... i would yell from the bottom of the canyon for everyone to check thier mikes and it usually cleared the channel.
we can't stop them from having thier own hand helds.
as for when we got to release you, well, we were trying to find the scoring to verify where cars were on the course. IIRC the road crossing was after checkpoint 14 and should have been released around 6pm.. however, i'm not sure when the last car passed. i know the last car thru that checkpoint was at 5:28 and without his co-driver who was running from the pits to the car so they could make the cut off. i don't know when they got moving again. |
Shaun, it wasn't about when we got released, we were prepared to be there until 10 pm. It was our inability to get updated and we worked through it. |
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Shaun Bootsma
Joined: 07 Nov 2007
Posts: 225
Location: petaluma, ca
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| Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 12:12 pm Post subject: |
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| copy that Blaine. |
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Stephan Regenfuss
Joined: 04 Jan 2008
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 12:00 am Post subject: |
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PITS
Checkpoint 8 quickly turned into Check 8 and Road crossing. The pit access road to Master's Pit basically funneled head-on traffic onto the race course. As soon as we hear there was traffic on Aftershock, we took CAUTION tape (that we supplied ourself) and taped off the acces road. We then became Road Crossing workers also. We were also directing pitcrews on where they could pit. The remote pits need to laid out with "Begin Pits Here" and "End Pits Here" or "No Pits Beyond This Point" or something to that affect.
If there are Checkpoints near pits, the Checkpoint areas need to flagged off. When we arrived to set up the checkpoint there was a pit directly across from us and one right next to us. Things were kinda tight. |
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