Having a club is all well and good, but what have we done?
This website
You’re here, so no need to spend much time describing this one, but we’re pretty proud of it and hope you like it. It is central to our mission(s) though, that current buggy folks, alumni, and fans can gather to follow, discuss, and support the sport online.
The website itself is cool, but the content it has allowed us to gather is a bigger part of what this group has been able to accomplish. Our history section is the most complete record of race results and participants that exists. Our gallery is goes way back. Our reference section is…off to a good start. All of the above is thanks to the many contributions from members.
Buggy Endowed Fund
Coincident with our Buggy100 event, we completed the creation of the Buggy Endowed Fund to help support Sweepstakes in perpetuity. This fund is administered jointly by the BAA and CMU. Yields are awarded by a board of BAA officers, CMU staff, and current Sweepstakes officers each year to support the continued success and growth of Sweepstakes.
A small sample of projects that have been approved for funding in the past:
- New GPS tracking system for buggies (to be used for data collection, research, and integration with broadcast)
- Harness testing equipment for Safety & Capability testing to quantify the safety of buggies in a crash
- Materials to facilitate smoother freerolls (signage, cones, brooms, etc)
Publications
Our schedule of publications has changed a bit year to year, but each has been a pretty awesome summary of the current state of buggy for our members near and far. Lucky you, you can still download them here:
- 2009
- 2010
- 2011
Raceday video archive
In 2011, the BAA unveiled an archive of buggy videos with an initial collection of over 200 videos from the 1950’s up to complete coverage of 2003-2010 racedays. Previously the fine coverage produced by cmuTV was unavailable online. This project was costless, but many hours went into transcoding, sorting, and uploading videos to youtube.
Raceday timing system upgrades
In 2009, the company that had been hired to run buggy timing for years showed up short-staffed so BAA members filled in in critical roles. What we saw gave us enough information to confirm that buggy was due for an upgrade in the sophistication of its timing system. We worked with sweepstakes in the 2009-2010 season and made it happen.
The BAA contributed $1,200 to sweepstakes for raceday 2010 to enable a month-long rental of a FinishLynx digital photofinish and timing system to fully test and vet the system before raceday. Ongoing rental prices are within Sweepstakes’ normal budget.
For the 2010 and 2011 races, the system was operated by BAA members.
More info on the timing system project as it developed here in the news section:
- Raceday timing system upgrade (Feb 18, 2010)
- Timing System in hand and working (March 17, 2010)
- Timing System test at rolls a success (March 27, 2010)
Jumbotrons
One of the original pie-in-the-sky project ideas for the BAA was to get a jumbotron for raceday. The geography of the course makes it tough to follow everything that’s going on and besides it would just be awesome.
In 2009, a CMU spin-off provided a jumbotron at no cost to Sweepstakes and proved it was a valuable addition to raceday. In 2010 and 2011, the BAA contributed $1000 to subsidize the cost of not one, but two jumbotrons. Money was raised by running the now-annual Lead Truck auction in which bidders compete to ride in the lead truck during the races.
More info on the jumbotron and lead truck auction projects: