Shooting Star Club Rally

MATCHBX · 02-29-2004

That's right. It's 99.99999% official. We now have another MN club rally this year (and hopefully for years to come)!!! This will be a Coefficient 2 (I believe) club rally covering a little over 50 special stage miles. You can go to the Shooting Star Club Rally page for more details. It is headquartered out of the Shooting Star Casino in Mahnomen, MN. When you go to the website you will find the tentative schedule, registration info (coming very soon) and hotel reservation info. If you plan on attending, please reserve your hotel room ASAP!!! We negotiated an awesome room rate.

It will be a single day event (like Headwaters) covering 4 stages. We need alot of workers!!!! I am actually doing the chief of controls duty on this rally. Basically that means I am in charge of the workers. I am the one who places the workers at their positions. We have a bunch of different positions for people to do. As always, there is absolutely NO EXPERIENCE necessary.

We will need people for:

Start/finish controls-
Starts the competitors down the stage or records the time they finish the stage. This position you get to meet the driver's and co-driver's up close and chat with each of them for a minute before they leave. It's an awesome site watching a 300+hp rally car dig into the dirt and tear off down the stage right in front of you. Or watch the competitor come flying thru the finish trying to get thru it that split second faster than anyone else.

Road Marshalls-
These are the people that are out in the woods at the major intersections. Their primary responsibility is to keep civilian traffic off of the hot stage roads. This is one of the most popular positions. These people get to see the cars going thru the woods at speed. You need to sign up asap to insure that you will get one of these positions.

Radio Operators-
Anybody with a ham radio license (amatuer radio operator with any class of license) are who we are looking for for these positions. These people relay messages to the safety Net Control from competitors, start/finish control captains, service locations, etc to make sure that they (The net cotrol) know what's going on out there.

Timing/Scoring-
Basically these people take the timecards and figure out who had the fastest times. These are the first people to know who really won the race before anyone else. If you have a knack for numbers, this is the position for you.

Medical-
This position helps aid in any medical emergencies that come up. People that sign up for this must be approved by chief of medical before the event. If you are qualified for this position, you can contact me and I'll get you in contact with who you need to talk to. Or you can go to the webstie and contact them through the rallymaster.

Sweep-
These people will drive behind the rally and pull out any competitor that has gone off the road. One of the requirements is a good 4x4 pickup or SUV.

Course setup/takedown-
These are the banner guys. They go out in the morning (around 10am) of the event and banner off the course. It's a fun job. You actually get to drive down the stages that the competitors will be racing on later that day! Then you get to go out the day after the event and take all of the banner down. This is the job I am in charge of for the other 2 rallies that are put on. This rally, though, I am trying something different.

Just remember, there is NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY. You will be out there with experienced rally workers that will teach you how to do it. It takes an incredible amount of help to put on a successful rally. We need all the help we can get. If you have any questions whatsoever, post here or PM me. I'll get the answers for you or will get you in contact with the person that can give you the answers. I hope to see a bunch of us out there.

:rally:

Jacek · 03-01-2004

sounds cool. who knows yet if ill be able to go (job wise)

Jakey · 03-01-2004

Quote:

Originally posted by Jacek@Mar 1 2004, 09:16 PM
sounds cool. who knows yet if ill be able to go (job wise)

Same here...
I would love to help you out Erik but I'm not sure of my work schedule for the summer. I'll try to get some dates hammered out as soon as possible and see if you still need help cause this sounds this would be an awesome weekend.

MATCHBX · 03-02-2004

We will accept any help we can get. I hope you guys can make it up there. The room rates are very reasonable. $55 for the first nite and $75 for the second. Plus you get coupons for the casino. All the info is on the webpage above. I have to make my reservations here soon. I'm planning on getting a larger room so i have space for people on the floor if they want to stay with us. That would dramatically drop the room cost per person!!!

I will reserve my room and if there is anyone at the last minute that decides to go, let me know. We will probably have space for you in our room.

MATCHBX · 03-07-2004

I found this site a few years ago and just ran across it again. It has alot of info on it about getting ready to go out and work a rally. There is alot of info on it but there are some very specific details about certain positions.

It also has some basic checklists of things that you should probably take out in the forest with you when you work the rally. I wish I would've read these before I went out the first time.

Just remember, we won't just dump you out in the woods and hope you can figure out what to do. We will have you teamed up with experienced workers that can help you and teach you what you need to do. Some jobs have more responsibilities than others, they are almost all things that you can learn before things start. The more the responsibility that is involved, the more experienced the person we will team you up with.

Hope to see you guys out there.

MATCHBX · 06-01-2004

Just a few weeks left. If you are planning on going, you better make your reservations quick. Use the code "ClubRally04" to get the discounted rates.

We went up and checked the roads last weekend and they are cool as hell!! If you want to check what the rallies are like, this one is the one to come out to. It will be more laid back then the one in August. It will be a smaller field of cars so it won't be so hectic as it gets at a pro event.

Are any of the rally guys on the board here going to be running? We need more entries!!!! I hope if you guys are going to be running that you don't wait until the last minute to register.

I can't wait!!!!

06-01-2004

i turned down an offer to drive the porsche 911 because i have a f@^%ing family reunion that weekend. :headache:

MATCHBX · 06-01-2004

Oh man that sucks!!!! Sorry to hear that. Bob actually wanted you to drive the Porsche this time? That would've been awesome!!!!!!

sideways motorsports · 06-02-2004

I might be going up but have decided against running the event. Not enough time to get the car where I want it before the event. I am a bit dissapointed with the actuall stage miles vs. stages though. I think it would be fun but the cost per stage is very high. If you look at Ojib for example and run both club events you are almost paying half per stage compared to the shooting star. Add in the cost of preperation and getting to the event....yikes. No offense to you Erick but I think a little more time in preperation of the event could have come out in the organisers favor. Unfortunatally I wouldnt expect a huge turn out for this one.

2.5 cents

Dan

MATCHBX · 06-02-2004

We were kicking around a 4 stage rally but settled on the 3 stage deal. It has one long stage then a shorter stage, then the long stage repeated. We drove the course this past weekend and it was great!!! It is actually a really cool idea when you look at it. Plus the entry fee is really cheap compared to others. If we added one more small stage in there we would be at a Coeff. 3 rally so it's not really that bad.

On a side note, we are looking for workers and I'm looking for a co-driver for me for 000.

I know what you mean about the time crunch thing trying to get your car back together. How's it going with that anyways?

sideways motorsports · 06-03-2004

slower than I would like. But that is more up to my budget than anything else.

Dan

sideways motorsports · 07-02-2004

So how did the event turn out ??? Storys.........

Dan

MATCHBX · 07-07-2004

Actually the event was really good. We were desparately short of workers but we pulled it off. I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out what to do.

As for the course, it held up real well. Of course we only had 13 cars running it. 10 of which finished. We had 2 electrical failures and one high centered off.

I got to see 3 deer, 2 rabbits, one beaver (that was sitting in the middle of the road gnawing on a branch and never moved when we drove past it) and one half-grown black bear. And that was all before the end of stage 1!!!!!! I was running 00 car for the first stage. Then Mark Larson (Rallymaster and 0 car) had to be pulled off the road to become a marshal at the end of stage 1. That meant I got to run 0 car for stage 2!!!! We made it thru stage 2 without incident. At that point the rally was only a few minutes behind schedule. Stage 3 ended up starting 10 minutes late and we were back to driving 00 car. Unfortunately the long stages took it's toll on my co-driver who started to feel a little woozy at about the middle of stage 3. She never got sick though. I was pretty much flying by the seat of my pants to finish the stage as she couldn't read every instruction to me, only the marshal points and the hazards were all I needed. We were about 1.5 miles from the end of stage one when we heard over the net that start of 3 had released it's first competitor car!!!!!! We weren't the finish yet and there were rally cars in the stage. Thankfully though, the stage was nearly 25 miles long so we had a good 30 minutes to get set up before the first car got there. We got set up quick and had about 10 minutes to spare before the first car reached the finish. Oh yeah, forgot to say, the lead cars (000, 00 and 0) were the finish control for stage 3. You think that's funny, the sweep team was the start control for stage 1. Try to remember a time when both of those things happened at the same rally and were pulled off flawlessly!!!

All in all it was a good rally. There were things that could've been improved and things that were just fine the way they were. Most of the competitors were happy with the course and the accomodations. Some complained about too much of the stages run in the dark but they just need to grow a hairy set!!!! One and a half stages were in the day light so half the rally was during light hours. We are looking into running it again next year so stay tuned for further details.