The Abecedarian Proxy- From Sea to shining Sea

[VenturaAlfa]

:text-welcomewave: Well, the driver's are exhausted but the cars arrived last night in great shape. I hear the drivers couldn't wait to walk out the back door and touch their toes in the Pacific and wiggle them around in the sand(Okay, I sound a little too much like Dundee Denny right now).

The cars made a 2646 mile journey across the United States from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico in Florida to the Pacific in Ventura, CA. All appear to have arrived in good shape although I have yet to finish unpacking them. They came in last night. :clap:

It's an 85 degree day here on the coast and C street in Ventura is breaking 3 to 5 with an inconsistent West swell but no wind. :music-rockout: perfect long board day if your a surfer. (need to add spicoli's theme song here and a clip from Fast Times at Ridgemont High)

I hope to get time tonight after work to take some pictures of the cars and get them out on the track for a shakedown. :banana-dance:

I will post pictures in the next few days. I plan to run them this weekend, maybe sooner, if time permits and the work schedule lets up a little bit.

I am not up to the computer abilities of the last few proxy racers so it will be simple pics and times for the cars. Hopefully that will work for everyone. In preparation for this race I have now learned how to post picture on HRW and will get some up.

Ember, you, in particular, have a very well travelled car. 2 continents and I don't know how many miles but it's a lot. I think I want to crawl into the box when this race is done and go with them to their next destination.
Ventura Alfa

[TuscoTodd]

Glad to hear that they made it there safely and look forward to seeing how they do, out there soaking up that Pacific air! :D

[Ember]

Glad to hear they've arrived safely. I should've thought to sign my Audi up for frequent flier miles before I sent it off. :D

[arroldn]

Glad to know my car get around more than I do. Looking forward to seeing the results. Have fun.


Arrold

[TuscoTodd]

Any luck getting those driver's feet out of the sand and back into their cars? ;)

[VenturaAlfa]

Sorry fellow racers. Life intervened for a few days. The cars will be getting qualified tonight and raced over the next two days. I apologize again for taking so long, hate it when life gets in the way of slot car racing.

I'm sure everyone is anxious, I know I would be. Hopefully the great mug Ember did will go to the bottom of the draw then I might have a chance for it. It looks really great Ember, nice job.

Ventura Alfa

[Czar]

Don't worry about it. I, for one, enjoy the suspense. When you post results it will be like finding a pearl in the sand.

[VenturaAlfa]

OK, well, both suspense and surprise after qualifying here. My son saw the cars coming out of the box and couldn't believe how great looking they all are. I would be happy to take any of them. They all ran great on the plastic Revell track; actually quite a bit better than I expected.

The set up went like this: cleaned the track, checked the cars, fluffed the braids, used a slightly damp towel on the tires of each car. All cars arrived in very good shape.

Qualified them in the order they came out of the box. Looked at the qualifying times and decided that there must have been something with the track (you'll understand why I say that in a second) so ran a second round of qualifying which is the order they will start the race in tonight.

Qualifying was set up as three laps to get used to the car then 10 laps with fastest time of the ten laps being the time for that round. After looking at that round I decided to run a second round of 5 laps starting with the bottom cars first and ending with the top.

so here we go.

Qualifier fastest 10 lap time fastest 5 lap time

1st up ..... #61 arroldn ..... .....8.70 ..... 7.65 ..... really smooth car nicely prepared
2nd up .....#71 Tusco Todd ......9.17 ..... 7.67 ..... another great car
3rd up .....#106 Ember .. .........8.28 .....7.62 ..... car purred around the track one of the quietest
4th up .....#123 Buford .......... 8.93 .....9.10 .....hard tires hurt it but nice car
5th up .....#72 Reek 455 .........7.93 ..... 7.61 ..... boy is everybody close on time, these cars are great
6th up ...... #8 bibster .......... 7.77 ...... 7.48 ..... Really easy car to drive, liked the graphics
7th up ..... #17 Vegas racer .....8.12 ..... 7.62 ..... nice car but a little twitchy on the tight turns
8th up ......#4 Czar .............. 7.77 ..... 7.60 ..... Likin' that BMW, it hauls the mail
9th up .....#007 Burrell ..........7.72 ..... 7.64 ..... That Aston Martin is my favorite car of the bunch
10th up ...#23 Ventura Alfa .....7.38 ..... 7.42 ..... Look at that first time. no way is that car that fast

so looking at the time for my car in the first run I came to the conclusion that the track got cleaner or something because no way was that car that much faster than the other cars. As a result I reversed the order and ran a 5 lap qualifier.

Qualifying is done on to the race. :music-rockout:

[VenturaAlfa]

The qualifying was done on the outside lane of my track. The race will be two 9 lap sprints on the inside lane with the fastest overall time the winner. Running order will be reversed for the second race to even things out.

Several of the cars, mine included, did not want to stay in the slot so it will be interesting to see how they run in a 9 lap race. Some of the turns on the inside lane are tighter which I am sure will make a difference.

The line up for the race is:

1. Ventura Alfa - I don't believe that but we'll see what the race brings
2. Bibster- strong car, runs smooth
3. Czar- another nice car
4. Reek 455- great car, could easily move up in the standings over a 9 lap race.
Tie
5. Ember- car sounds like an old time sewing machine; smooth and quiet, very easy to control. That Audi looks really good
5. Vegas Racer- Really like the livery on this Porsche
7. Burrell- As I said, digging the Aston Martin, feels a little too heavy to finish up front but who knows? Stayed on track nicely in qualifying.
8. Arroldn- This is one smooth Ferrari but I think the bumpiness of my track may affect the tripod stance of this car.
9. Tusco Todd- My bet is this car does not stay here once the race starts,.
10. Buford- Wish I had a pair of tires to throw on this car. I think it would be one of the fastest if it had soft tires.

It's interesting to me to see how the tires on my car have changed since this series began. In the beginning I thought the XPG's were too soft but they seem to have gotten slightly stiffer over time which has actually helped the car quite a bit on this track. It's the only explanation I have for how much better this car has gotten unless one of you secretly messed with it and didn't tell me (thank you if you did but I am just kidding as I'm sure no one did).

This is a lot of fun with some great cars. I really enjoy being part of it. Now to see how they run tonight. Stay Tuned.

Ventura Alfa

[Ember]

Good luck. I hope you have fun with it.

It really doesn't surprise that you managed to pull a good lap with your car, even with its design challenges. You'll have it set up in the way you prefer and it will most likely have been tested on that track. You obviously got into the perfect groove with it for a lap (or two). Nothing to worry about.

[arroldn]

UMMMMMMMMMMM,
Hope it being smooth translates in to a top 3 finish. Looking at the times it's a 7th or 8th place car. Would hate to drop out of 2nd place.
Looking forward to the results.

[Czar]

I found the pearl! It appears that you are an excellent pilot. Thanks for the 3rd place qualifier. The results are interesting. YOu said you decided to re-run the quail because your Alfa was "too fast." Only you and Buford lost any time on the second series and everyone else gained time… some by as much as a half second. Do you have any idea why the results got better? Maybe because you were more familiar with the cars?

[TuscoTodd]

Ventura -
Thank you for the update!
Some great feedback / observations on how the cars are doing out there in the "Golden State"! :)
With the qualifying times being as tight as they are (a number of positions separated by only .01 sec!) it looks like the racing segment ought to be a LOT of fun! :dance:

Hope you enjoy them as much there as we did here in Ohio! :D

Oh - and any chance that you can share a shot of your layout to tie us over to the next update?
(appreciate it!)

[reek455]

Ventura,

Thanks for the q run and the comments, always interesting to hear what others think of ones car. It looks like it's going to be one close race judging from the q times.
Looking forward to it.

Rico

[VenturaAlfa]

Hi czar and others,

The only thing that made any possible sense to me, which is why I re ran them, was that maybe I didn't get the track as clean as I thought and each car cleaned the track a little for the one that followed it. I made sure all tires were clean and I thought the track was in great shape but maybe somehow I missed it. That's the only thing I can think of.

Can't wait to get home tonight and race them. :banana-dance:

Ventura Alfa