Garden Canyon Run Fall Classic

Nice track. Are you ok with us using your footage for the DSPN weekly reports?

So I ran into a technical glitch this morning and had to go to work before I could post Group 2 qualifying. I should have that up tonight. Among the other things I've learned from my first video is I didn't explain the points system and the tournament as a whole very well. I'm fixing that in future videos, but in the meantime here's the lowdown if you're interested.

Qualifying round has all 16 cars hitting the track once in each lane. There are 5 checkpoints to collect points on during qualifying. The last two checkpoints come after the finish on an open track with no sidewalls to contain the cars, so running in a straight line is paramount to collect those last two bonus points. There are four groups of 4 cars each, meaning 4 videos. Only the first has been posted so far.

Following qualifying we'll have FourCross, with four cars at a time hitting the track, 2 cars per lane. We'll have 4 runs for each group, with cars rotating positions in each run. We'll use the last three check points only on these runs. The first car across the finish line earns a point, then the two checkpoints after the finish on the open section are available as bonus points to all cars. 3 possible points to the winner, 2 possible points to everyone else. There will be four groups of four cars each posted in 4 upcoming videos.

Finally the last round will be a bracket tournament with all points collected thus far used to seed the race cars. each bracket is best 2 out of three races, with the winner moving on. The same three possible points on offer to the winner as in the FourCross round, but points will count for the drivers' classification only, for the cars themselves it's only crossing the finish line first that counts. 

(Since we have 8 drivers in 16 cars, the Drivers' Classification is separate from the overall tournament winner.)

Eventually I'll get some photos taken and post the track properly in the track section of RLDR site. Thanks for bearing with me and please check us out on youtube at Alley Cat Race Club and let us know what you think of our work in progrress!

Hey race fans! I filmed the first round of this 16 car elimination bracket this past weekend and am diligently working on getting it up on my channel by this weekend. When it's over we will be down to the four finalists!

Thanks to those of you who've subscribed and been following along. There's so many different little things to learn about in the process, everything from modding cars, tuning the track, shooting and editing video, not to mention audio. I just so much appreciate having something healthy to obsess over a little bit. Thanks to all of you who encourage me and whose videos have inspired me. That's all, happy racing folks!

Good morning folks! Well, the GCR Fall Classic is about to wrap up. This past weekend I shot the championship, and will have the edit ready to post in the next couple days. The evolution of the track, and the videos has been a game of frustration and reward. I've learned a ton, and I will post a short video on its own where I go over a couple of the major issues I had and my solution(s). A few notes:

The transition from Bluetrak to Crash Racers open track is the bane of my existence! Garden Canyon Run is a portable track which I set up and break down for each event. In getting the transition figured out I've laid the open track on top of Bluetrack and used a thin styrene ramp between them both, which was OK. (I was trying to keep from cutting the Bluetrak still). Then I cut the Blue track and laid it on top of the open track for the cars to just fly over. As the air temperature changes, the Bluetrak wants to curl and it requires a ton of tape. Then I used an exterior wood screw to fasten the transition (both track types) down to the deck they sit on. This creates a little well at that screw, which can be lessened with more tape. Most recently I've put the two ends of track butted right up to each other with tape as the connector. This works pretty well, but the guardrails on the open track and the BlueTrak don't line up perfectly, so that creates a challenge. The evolution continues.

I've decided to be ok with the fact that the transition bump is a feature of Garden Canyon Run, and that it's fine. The track as a whole isn't the smoothest, and I'm ok with that. I like watching the footage of cars getting thrown around a bit like they are right on the edge of their abilities. (Transition is pictured below attempting to show how the guardrails interact.)

My filmaking vision has outpaced my abilities with the technology at my disposal. I'm a bit of a dinosaur with computer technology. I realize that all that needs to happen is to prove a race happened. But that's not what excites me, I'm into the theater of this, of the story. This has lead to some frustrating sound issues, and video footage losses, simply because I don't know what I'm doing a lot of the time! I'm ok with this. It's all fun. Even the frustration is fun.

Over the course of the GCR Fall Classic, our channel has grown beyond what I expected, and I already have drivers and cars signed up for the Winter Classic! Thanks so much to all of you who've been watching and supporting what we are doing. See you out on the track!