Fall continues to cooperate, giving teams another dry weekend to get their routines down. We’re definitely into hoodie weather now though, and leaves were blowing across all parts of the course like crazy. SigNu was absent but a new team called Delta Force came close to joining the ranks of the rolling. Read on for the nitty gritty.
Rolls next weekend are tentative because of mid-semester break, so check our Freeroll Status indicator on the home page. The following weekend is Ciehsdffkjhlskj or whatever homecoming is now called and we’ve got some legitimately fun stuff in the works, so get ready.
In Attendance
| Org | Saturday | Sunday |
|---|---|---|
| AEPi | Kamikaze | |
| CIA | Ascension, Freyja, Renaissance | Ascension, Freyja, Renaissance, Quasar |
| Fringe | Bonsai, Borealis, Banyan | Bonsai, Borealis, Banyan, Bedlam |
| KapSig | Apache | Apache |
| SDC | Bane, Avarice, Malice, Rage | Bane, Avarice, Malice, Rage |
| SigEp | Mamba, Barracuda, Pandora | Mamba, Barracuda |
| SigNu | ||
| Spirit | Zuke, Seraph, Fuko | Zuke, Seraph, Haraka |
Observations (Saturday Gallery, Sunday Gallery)
Spirit continues to be the spinningest org in buggy with Zuke spinning twice on Saturday and Seraph once on Sunday. They’re not sitting idly by though as I noticed experimentation on both the compound and profile of their tires this weekend. On Saturday, Seraph and Fuko were rolling on the orange compound they’ve been using while Zuke’s tires were black. The two on orange were also sporting what I believe is a new profile with beveled edges and a smaller contact patch. Whatever Zuke was rolling on was pretty slippy stuff as she managed to put the buggy into a spin immediately after the chute flag on her second roll after a more traditional Spirit spin on roll 1.
KapSig is splitting rolls evenly between their veteran and new driver which I hope suggests that they are working on a build and planning on having two buggies this raceday. We lauded Apache (and KapSig) as an impressive first build by a totally novice team, but I get the feeling it’s holding them back at this point. Apache consistently needed helpful shoves near transition to make it down the hill on Saturday and is the slowest buggy on the course by a wide margin. I heard talk of a rubbing brake, but the front wheels are also badly non-parallel in both dimensions and that can’t be helping.
Teams are fairly occupied with driver training and getting everyone to come out, but it can also be a valuable R&D opportunity. Fall typically has many more rolls than spring, and there’s plenty of time to use data gathered in the fall to inform builds and wheel selections for spring. CIA has had something electronic taped to the outrigged side of Ascension for a couple of weeks now, presumably collecting data. On Saturday half the tape holding it on came loose and it was dragging on the road up the back hills. I also noticed a USB cord dangling out the back of one of CIA’s buggies and a camera mounted on one of their pushbars. That’s quite the suite of electronics, they must have something cool going on. Fringe had timers out at hill 2 and window 0 taking times on laptops with some custom buggy timing software. With PiKA out for the moment, there are no “thumbs” on flagstaff, and I’ve never noticed SDC collecting data which seems unlikely so their system must be more discrete.
[Don’t forget to write something about SigEp]- SigNu didn’t make it out either day after their rough start to the year last weekend. Hopefully neither Skua nor their enthusiasm was too badly damaged and we’ll see them back out again soon.
- Delta Force (or DDDDTD as listed in the Sweepstakes spreadsheet) is a new co-ed greek joint effort between Tri-Delt and DTD. They were apparently planning on making their debut on Sunday but scratched on the last day when some essential folks didn’t make it out. The fraternity-sorority combo team doesn’t have a very high success rate historically (I think 0 such teams have made it to a second year), but then again, none of them have had a name as awesome as Delta Force, so hope this one will work out. Let us know if you need any helpful pointers Delta Force.
- An aggressively driven car made it onto hill 1 on Saturday and made it around some buggies on hill 1 before being stopped by Sweepstakes at the top of the hill. The barricaders weren’t sleeping on the job, but failed to anticipate the driver’s morning road rage and got out-maneuvered. More physical barricades were added for Sunday and moving forward.
- I don’t have any times or speeds to share this weekend, but Fringe and SDC both had at least one buggy rolling out well each roll with Fringe’s Bonsai going a bit faster if I had to eyeball it. SigEp and CIA were also rolling at decent speeds.
- Rumor is that almost every team rolling this fall is working on a build so I’m already getting excited for spring.
Ian says:
I think you forgot to write something about SigEp.
Sam Swift says:
It was an intentional accident. I can never come up with story lines for the ever-dependable SigEps, but I had a good picture, so I thought I’d play into the running “joke” I’ve got going with a non-story
Zatchmo says:
Well, for what it’s worth…
Pandora was still loud as hell on Saturday; I swear she has been getting louder every day for the last few weeks, and it was the kind of rubbing that really grabs your attention from across hill 2. The mechanics said that this has been fixed by Sunday; Pandora was out, but unfortunately her driver didn’t show up to hop in and prove it. SigEp also is still in the habit of rolling two buggies per roll, but having all three buggies present. Since they are doing this whether they switch their driver midday or not, I am guessing that this is to reduce the amount of pushers they need to bring out.
From what I saw Saturday, their work in the chute is progressing along well enough. They have their buggies bag-free and don’t really ever seem unstable. Pandora came pretty close to clipping an inside bale on her first run on Saturday.
It’s not super-exciting, but it’s coverage.
lemuroid says:
Zoo – I believe they are still fired up despite the major beating Skua took last weekend.
tommyk says:
spirit: move your axles forward 12-14″ and you might stop spinning.
Jerry says:
To help sort out the heated discussion, I have a visual aid for Tommy’s proposal:
What he obviously means
Keep it classy, BuggyAlumni
Anon says:
Tommy: In the interest of keeping things entertaining for us buggy alumni, please shut up about ways to keep Spirit from spinning. Who wants to read rolls reports if everyone rolls like Sig Ep? The public wants exploding wheels and spinning buggies.
Anon#2 says:
Spinning out? Thrilling. Exploding wheels? Exhilarating. Still coming in 5th place behind only 2 other orgs? PRICELESS.
ThatPissedOffBlackGuy says:
[redacted]
PurpleP. says:
Woah there. Calm down buddy.
Ben says:
Least Tommy was man enough to use his name, and if “ThatPissedOffBlackGuy” is really your name I am so sorry for your life.
Anon brings up a good point though, We should make it so that ALL the orgs spin in the chute to make it more exciting for everyone.
Time to go eat some shit.
Sam Swift says:
I removed the comment by request of Spirit’s chair and the original poster. It’s obviously frustrating to be working on a tough problem like dynamic stability and have your successes and failures discussed by a bunch of people you don’t know on the internet. For the record, I know I never mean to be discouraging in my comments, and I don’t think any of the comments here were meant that way either despite the humorous tone taken.
TommyK was just speaking from his own experience with standard trykes that had a tendency to spin. Check it out, this was his A team his first year being head mechanic: http://cmubuggy.org/video/1999fringeaspin
We’ve all been there and I’m sure you guys will get it figured out, good luck to ya.
Ben says:
Thanks Sam,
And yea, we (or at least I) seriously mean no harm. You guys are well on your way to making things work and I believe you guys are gonna keep making it better and better while still pushing that line harder than anyone else out there.
Aileen says:
I think that’s Conquest in that video (judging by the purple shell), which marks the 4th recorded instance (at least that I can think of, there were two during my tenure in CIA and one more recently) of Conquest narrowly avoiding a chute spin. I think we need some sort of youtube compilation of these things.
tommyk says:
… wasn’t HM in ’99, unfortunately was still booth chair. in ’99 Bachi was on CIA style glue on wheels in the back and pneu in front (problem #1) but was otherwise pretty much as close to a Spirit buggy as we could get … although we didn’t have a source to replicate their awesome windshield and had to do the odd looking celerity style portals (problem #2). we tried a new rubber profile on raceday in an attempt to get more grip in the wet conditions (problem #3)… she sure was going fast when she got to the puddle in the chute that she couldn’t see. same buggy/driver got 2nd the following year with Pika style wheels in back and a CIA solid front, also had slightly bigger windshield.
Spirit’s basic design came about during the age of pneus, a high cost-high risk-high reward technology. lots of blowouts and busted spokes were a risk that came with a high grip surface on a 95-99% energy efficient rebound rate with a killer profile which seemed more forgiving of long wheelbases and unbalanced distribution. If spirit’s steering hasn’t changed it also has a design ‘feature’ that can affect the relative slip angle in the chute and could warrant an even shorter wheel base than a perfect Ferris distribution would recommend. its a pretty hard thing to get right – especially with varying driver sizes/weight. thorton told me brazen’s weight distribution was still off by as much as 5% but that they got banyan just about perfect. given no other information its the #1 thing I would change about a spirit buggy to make it work better with its current wheel technology, with the second being a steering re-design. Or, follow the crowd and go reverse. everybody’s doing it, it will make you feel good.
Anon says:
Is anyone even sure tommyk is real? I mean, I know there is a real person, tommyk, but I mean on this website. I say he’s just Sam’s fictional unaccountable alter ego. Sam posts under tommyk whenever he wants to stir up trouble (which is all the time) while he plays diplomatic under his own name. You know, Sam, the guy who’s a shameless Fringe homer and started pikabuggy out of spite. He hates all the rest of your organizations just as much. Don’t fall for his aw shucks facade. Hate him and his alter ego tommyk the same way they hate you.
Sarah says:
If this were facebook, right now it would say “Sarah Schipul Swift likes this.”
Sam Swift says:
great, now you’ve even got my wife doubting my identity. or maybe she has the hots for tommy. either way, sounds like trouble for me
Sam Swift says:
aww shucks, the ruse is up. it’s true though, Anon bravely advanced his theory and the world deserves to know. I hate buggy. this website is just phase 1 of my grand plan to turn everyone in buggy against each other and drive their energies back into …. booth. the wheels are in motion, there’s no stopping me now!
Ben says:
THERE ARE NO WHEELS IN BOOTH!!!
Chris says:
Good luck with that, Sam. I get the impression that some people hate booth with a passion that knows no bounds. They would probably prioritize obtaining a pony above funding booth-related activities.
jixson says:
I vote for the pony
jwade says:
Seconded. Ponies don’t steal the extension cords.
2x4 says:
I’ve never had a problem reconciling the two.
MoreAnon says:
Anon: You’ve got it backwards.
Sam Swift, while a real person, is just a nom de plume on the website. It is really ruse by tommyk as he wanted a way to argue, troll, etc. It will all come crashing down next year when the real Sam gets a job and sees that this site exists as we all know grad students don’t have time to surf the internet and have hobbies.
The real tommyk created the site and the Sam Swift accounts purely so that he could create his own tommyk account.
Jerry says:
Man, I’ve got to get my own unaccountable alter ego profile. Too bad Jake Reid is a real person.
Zatchmo says:
Unconvinced.
tommyk says:
who’s trolling? what the hell is wrong with you people? spinning buggies is not funny, its a fucking serious thing and moving the axles forward WILL help. I’ve suggested to Carl to move the damn axles on at least 1 occasion in person and probably in some emails. If they built the carbon hold downs to be removeable like I thought carl said they did its a piece of cake to move the axle position. Monkeying around with profiles and compounds is a red herring and that exact strategy may have contributed to Fringe’s spin in ’99. The longer wheelbase on Spirit’s hallowed design, which they seem beholden too probably on the insistence of obstinate alumni is inherently unstable – run the Ferris formula and I’m sure you’ll find the weight distribution is way off – just look at SDC and CIA’s wheelbase and get a clue.
I’m coming to Pittsburgh in 2 weeks and if they havn’t moved their axles by then and are still spinning I’m taking a drill down to the spirit garage and I’m gonna move them myself.
PurpleP. says:
While youre at it can you build new buggies for SAE and the Zoo?
tommyk says:
I don’t like dick jokes or cigarettes
Carl says:
Let me know how that turns out.
Also, let me dispel any rumors of a cabal of old Spirit alumni insisting upon spin-tastic buggy designs. If there is a cabal I’m not a member, at least (Tom? Can you put me on the cabal d-list if there is one?).I have less input into Spirit’s buggy design than I do into CIA’s.
Err… Fringe’s.
Err… PiKA’s.
Yes.
In the interest of leveling the playing field, here is my input into buggy design: Use carbon. Use a bag. Build. Because this didn’t sink in when I originally told Fringe; DON’T use Kevlar. CIA, you get 5 points for figuring that out the first time. Would have been 10 but I’m deducting 5 for you guys letting a strange white dude wander around in your buggy room.
DeVos says:
“letting a strange white dude wander around in your buggy room”
CIA, I thought I told you not to answer the door when Paul was in Pittsburgh. Shame on you.
Zatchmo says:
He brought a six-pack and told me Alex said it was cool…
Paul D says:
Hey CIA exists as an org only because of the strangest of white dudes. And of course because of his dream.
Aileen says:
Tommy does have a point. If it’s happening this often, it becomes a driver safety issue on Raceday, and it has been since I was a buggy chair – coming up on 6 (?!) years now.
As the statute of limitations has expired on this, I will admit that one of my seeding tactics as chair was to avoid heats with Spirit, after a few too many near misses. We were not very competitive at that point, and I would rather have my drivers come through the heat without the danger of collision and be able to join the raceday party in one piece than have a slightly better lane placement. It was nothing personal, but Spirit’s propensity for spectacular Raceday spins (I admit do not have hard numbers to back this up, but when I’m not on a paper deadline I can crunch them from the database) has been a given for at least going back to my involvement in buggy starting in 2004.
Spins in practice obviously are a team matter, but when does this constitute endangerment of drivers? I guess incomplete rolls due to spins should in theory keep obviously unsafe buggies out of competition, but what known risk is acceptable in this crazy sport?
Zatchmo says:
That hasn’t changed… it has sort of become more blatant. Teams basically left gaps next to the top Spirit teams, and many opted for significantly earlier rolls or undesirable lanes until there wasn’t another option. There isn’t anything surprising about it either, the chances of you losing your raceday shot outweigh a slightly poorer lane choice.
That is now a good question, whether there is any level of responsibility to make it seem your buggies won’t cause an accident with relative sureness, but it raises the bigger question of how much ability Sweepstakes ACTUALLY has, in practice, to prevent a team from rolling. Right now, they essentially don’t. Going off memory, in Raceday 2009 or so something similar was going on, and the Safety Chair and Sweepstakes Chair decided that a particularly unstable Spirit driver could not drive on raceday, with reasons including late-season stops at Westinghouse pond and spins in the Chute I think right up through Raceday. The Spirit chair came in, explained how it was really the mechanics fault, explained how much it meant to the driver, and why she was ready to roll. The voting system for overturning Sweepstakes is a public show of hands in front of the people who just gave their plea to you. So yes, of course we decided Sweepstakes wasn’t being nice and they rolled on Raceday, and if memory still serves, they spun.
Then there was last year, when not one but two teams (I think SigNu and AEPi) both managed to not get their drivers enough rolls, due mostly to poor planning on their parts. Both came in, and there was not any discussion for that one – they were granted the exemption with few to no holdouts, and one of them had a fairly serious accident on raceday. This I still don’t quite understand. We have a rule that says you need a certain number of rolls before we feel it’s safe for you to race. If that number is wrong, fine, change the number. Otherwise, every other safety rule and restriction becomes equally mutable and weak as long as it would make a driver very sad to enforce.
Then you have the issues of the fire safety violations. The tone of discussion for Beta was essentially expectation that they would not be allowed to roll, and we were mostly surprised when the Sweepstakes Chair introduced their chair to us, ready with an apology letter and a promise to do extra chores. Then there was SDC, where there was a lot of muttering, but the expectation that they would roll. At this point, any team with a solvent near a heater in their truck would be shocked to get hit with the 1-year ban, and probably (rightly) claim how unfair it is to assess the penalty unevenly.
I guess what I am getting at is that I would probably be OK with seeing some expectation of ability to clear the course safety to roll. I think that a buggy-driver combo that is spinning exceedingly often into the chute very close to raceday should be DQ’ed by the Safety Chair/Sweepstakes Chair (I won’t even attempt to quantify this into a rule right now). But more importantly, I would like to see the rules revised into something that Sweepstakes feels OK enforcing, then actually enforce them, even when it makes everyone unanimously feel bad. Then we can talk more about more circumstances that could DQ a team.
lemuroid says:
WRT not getting enough roles in, yet still racing, The rules actually allow for this and it is nit uncommon. I am NOT a fan of this and would also point to the zoo wreck on race day 2011 at proof. From rule 10.5.1…
In the case of very special circumstances, such as a long duration of inclement weather where no freeroll practices are held, an organization may seek permission to race a driver and buggy that do not meet these specific requirements. In such cases, the organization must submit an appeal in writing to the Sweepstakes Committee, explaining that the failure to meet the qualifying standards was through no fault of the driver of the organization. The Safety Chairman, with counsel of the Sweepstakes Chairman and Assistant Chairman, will evaluate the appeal and either approve or reject it. If an appeal is approved by the Safety Chairman, it must then be passed on to the Buggy Chairmen to be approved by a majority vote.
Carl says:
I dimly recall a discussion hinting at trying to get SDC DQ’d for raceday due to spins as well (I think this was during the pikabuggy days).
I have various thoughts. I think that DQ-ing teams for raceday due to crashes during freerolls encourages teams to not crash during freerolls, which, I think, would not limit the number of crashes during raceday. I’m sure that Spirit could complete every freeroll without spinning if that was the goal simply by slowing down. I think that raceday results from last year demonstrate that Spirit had a pretty good grasp on how fast they could go without spinning.
I know they’re working as hard as they can to fix these problems because who wants to spin?
If the concern is with other teams crashing and taking your team out I would suggest going to a staggered start.
Ben says:
This sounds like something that could (and maybe should) be discussed more on th e forum and brought up in the rules committee meetings with sweepstakes.
Shafeeq says:
Monkeying with profiles & compounds may be a red herring, but it is fascinating that the weight distribution managed to land in the middle ground between “will spin with any kind of wheel” and the Ferris-ideal “will work with any decent wheel”. The Ferris formula assumes 3 of the same wheel, so it goes out the window if one starts playing mix & match.
Aileen, the “avoid Spirit” strategy might also have had its beginnings in the backlash from shooting ourselves in the foot several times with a “pick a heat with Spirit because it’ll give us someone to chase but not catch” strategy.
There’s no fixed “safe or unsafe” line in buggy. You can comply with all the rules, get the required number of rolls, and yet still have a higher chance crashing dangerously than a team that, say, got too few rolls. And you can always make practice easier at the expense of not being prepared for the race. On the other hand, you can be better prepared for the race by practicing as realistically as possible, but each practice has its own risk. Unfortunately, buggy is too small to be able to say anything statistical about the relative risks, which is why the Safety Chair has so much discretion about “unstable” or “unsafe.”
lemuroid says:
This topic is a bit of a slippery slope. There is a means available in the rules to prevent an unstable buggy/driver, but it is poorly worded and puts the burden on the sweepstakes committee to enforce. from 10.5.1
“No driver shall be permitted to participate in a Sweepstakes race unless he or she satisfies all of the following requirements:…
(long list ending with)
He or she has demonstrated by his or her performance at both freeroll and push practices that he or she is capable of driving a buggy in a safe and controlled manner.”
While showing instability often in practice is a sign of trouble, the case of no troubles in practice, big troubles on raceday has occurred more than once in the past (much to my dismay) with no signs of the org in question sandbagging in practice. I suspect that no one wanted to be in our heats in 87 or 88 after our performance in 86 and 87. To Carl’s point, adding a rule that discourages orgs from finding the limits during practice would be silly.
This might be one of those things that regulates itself. At some point, any org will tire of a buggy that is unruly and will either move to a different design or will find a way to fix it. Until that happens, other orgs will avoid rolling with them on raceday.
Anom says:
Oh CMU Buggy. It’s like 4chan but for dickish old engineers.
bordick says:
I miss you guys.
Carl says:
Move in closer; switch to guns.