Posted on | by ben

This weekend was a monster, so much happened that this if this comes out around the usual time it will be a miracle. BUT, before I can get into the craziness that was this weekend I have one thing that I need to mention first. Next weekend I will be indisposed with another event down south at CalU. I need will need help writing next weekend’s rolls report, so if you have wanted to contribute, or have ever thought about getting some notes in this’ll be your best chance to do so. Please email news@cmubuggy.org if you’re interested in helping and I’ll get you the info you need.

Saturday was as windy as Sunday was COLD. Pittsburgh’s winter party keeps on going, everyone at this point is either drunk or asleep on every possible surface. Despite the sun coming up, Pittsburgh just keeps blaring the winter music not getting the hit that it was fun, but we got things to do. With the weather aside, CIA, Fringe and Spirit all brought out new buggies on saturday who now have 4 potential days left to get qualified. It’ll be a hard battle for all of them. With a significant lack of time this year, it was amazing to see rolls end at 8:43 on Satuday. All the bundled up alumni that showed up on Sunday were treated to dusty slick roads and some amazing driving.

In Attendance  (new buggies in green)

Org Saturday Sunday
AEPi Kamikaze
Apex Ember, Phoenix Ember, Phoenix
CIA Icarus, Ascension, Impulse, Freyja Icarus, Impulse, Freyja
Fringe NBXIV, Beacon, Bissa NBXIV, Beacon, Banyan
PiKA Banshee, Chimera Banshee, Chimera
SAE Lucy Rubicon
SDC Vice, Bane, Malice, Avarice, Psychosis Vice, Bane, Malice, Avarice, Psychosis
SigEp Kraken, Mamba, Barracuda Barracuda, Pandora
SigNu Bungarus Krait
Spirit Zenith, Zuke, Seraph Zenith, Kingpin II, Zuke, Seraph, Haraka

Observations (Saturday Gallery | Sunday Gallery)

  • Apex – As the first org to get a new buggy out this year, Apex is ahead of the curve on getting Ember, their new buggy driven by Palak Pujara, qualified for raceday. Because of the one week lead on other new buggies, they were able to avoid some of the issues that plagued many other orgs on Saturday. From what I can see everything has been rolling smoothly for the young org even at speed. Hopefully those GoPros will help them figure out their ideal line and make for a very competitive raceday.
  • AEPi – Making their debut to the course this semester, AEPi is sticking to their guns of only rolling on sunday, last semester Kamikaze was primarily driven by Erica Green, so this semester they’re starting off with Jennifer Shin to even out the roll counts. With only two possible weekends remaining, it’ll be near impossible for them to get both drivers qualified on Sundays alone.
  • CIA – Releasing their new buggy Icarus, driven by Amy Hung, to the world on Saturday CIA was just the tip of the iceberg of new buggies to roll that day. With large wheels as the back of a forward trike and a funky shell, similar to Apex’s Ember, it certainly seems like an experiment gone awry, but not necessarily in a bad way. The large wheels in back don’t seem to be the intended design as the nose seems to be diving perpetually into the ground. Antics aside, on her first roll, Amy in Icarus managed to pass a very slow, possibly stopped,  Ascension in the chute. On Sunday, CIA had what looked to be a pass test where Freyja’s Rachel Karp passed Orca’s Ting Wang, but then didn’t have enough and passed Amy Hung in Icarus. Once under pusher power, Rachel Ting in Orca then also passed Amy. Even with all those passes, CIA may not have planned them since there is no credit listed in the roll counts. Hopefully this is a good sign for when they will need to do this for qualification.
  • Fringe – With possibly the most bizzare new buggy, Fringe showed up with a 4 wheel buggy, but not in the retro style that you might be thinking. NBXIV looks the same as every other Fringe buggy on the surface, until you get the the rear wheels. That is not a typo and I did not use photoshop, NBXIV has two inline rear wheels. The claim is apparently functional, but after crashing on her first roll on Saturday, we couldn’t get a good idea of what function that might be. Not letting that get to her, Gillian Rosen came back out on Sunday to get her first complete rolls and start that march towards qualification. Banyan, driven by Shaheen Essabhoy, only came out on Sunday, but seemed to have a mechanical issue just after the chute and didn’t roll the rest of the day.
  • PiKA – During drops, Chimera apparently had an issue where her rear wheel dislodged from it’s mount and popped up into the buggy. The brothers of PiKA managed to get it back together to roll that day, but that could be a scary issue come raceday. On Saturday, Yisu Wang driving Banshee attempted a pass test on Chimera, but the gap was too large for her to overcome causing them to pass in the chute in a near miss. Yisu’s driving was enough to avoid collision with Wendy Du in Chimera, but not enough to avoid the bales that she diverted towards. Yisu managed to hit softly enough to continue her roll up the backhills. Yisu managed to get her pass in on Sunday as she barrelled down the hill in Banshee past a very slow, Wendy-driven Chimera. On a later roll Wendy was rolling so slowly that she needed a couple pushes to finish out the course.
  • SAE – Making out both days this weekend was apparently not in the cards for SAE. On Saturday they came out ready to go, but before they could push off, their pushbar had enough and detached completely leaving driver Eileen Wu with the most aerodynamic and unpushable buggy to ever touch the course. Sophia Kim came out on Sunday driving Rubicon to get some rolls in the cold weather. She managed to steer clear of the potholes and cones that now litter the course, but she has some speed to gain if she’s planning on being competitive.
  • SDC – As one of only two orgs at this point with any drivers qualified, SDC might be the only org that might actually be prepared for Raceday. Jing Xiao in Vice made a strange stop on Saturday right around the transition flagger. She was extracted on the course and Vivian Wong, who had made a clean stop behind her in Psychosis, was pushed through. Things got much more violent on Sunday where Rachel Chow had an issue in Malice where the inside fairing came loose and spun around turning the wheel into a ski. This caused her to spin around hitting the inside bales and skid backwards until the fairing popped back around to make the ski into a wheel again. Rachel was allowed to continue rolling later in the day without her fairing. Jing in Vice was doing just the opposite of stopping or crashing on Sunday as she made the turns into and out of the chute. On entry, she was making a sharp turn at the chute flag causing her to drift significantly nearly hitting a pothole-marking cone. Once in the chute, she made the hard turn to straighten out causing a second drift on all of the hay, gravel, and dust that lines the sides of the chute. One such roll had her slide so close to the bales that everyone thought she had crashed until she continued to roll up to the hill 3 pusher.
  • SigEp – Not technically with a new buggy, SigEp re-debuted Kraken to the course on Saturday with Sushma Narayan at the helm and a very slow couple of rolls. So slow that she needed a couple pushes her first time down. She didn’t make it out on Sunday where Krystina Williams took over in Barracuda to get the average speed up a couple notches. Pandora also made it out on Sunday with Madeline Finn and Emily Helfer trading off rolls, neither up to any considerable speed just yet.
  • SigNu – Returning to the course again this weekend, SigNu is surprisingly nearly qualified unlike many other teams. Maybe less surprising since they only have a single buggy/driver combo. Even though they only have the one combo, Avia Weinstein in Krait is doing some amazing things on the course. Aside from Malice and Banshee, Krait might be the next fastest buggy on the course right now and is getting some equally fantastic roll-outs. This could be the kind of resurgence that SigNu needs to get them back in the action after falling apart a few years ago.
  • Spirit – Also out with a new buggy this year, Spirit is the only other org with qualified drivers after this weekend. Their new buggy is Zenith, driven by Sussy Romoleroux who formerly drove in Fuko and who hit the course this semester for the first time this weekend. After Zuke, Zenith might be the easiest buggy to recognize of the Spirit fleet with a cut off tail. Aside from the tail, there is no difference until you get to the steering which now boasts an enormous shock spring right in front of the driver’s face. Zenith is definitely not the first buggy to employ some form of shocks, but maybe it’ll be the first to keep them around. Sussy managed to get a few extra rolls in this weekend with Apex since spirit kindly flagged for nearly every org in the weekend prior. Unfortunately, Alyssa Casamento didn’t have as nice of a time when something dislodged her steering around the transition flag causing her to make a hard right. Grinding and dragging could be heard from the chute as she continued her turn until she hit the inside curb before the monument. She was extracted and carried off the course, but managed to return on Sunday in an attempt to make up for Saturday’s failure.

Course Happenings

On Saturday, there was apparently a Cement truck that found it’s way onto the course causing the already slow day to become even slower. We also got a glimpse a the new trial EMS vehicle being tested out with the chute patrons. Sunday saw some issues with the phipps drivers that apparently didn’t remember how we have worked together in the past. After being allowed through the barricade, one truck decided it wanted to use the far entrance instead of the side driveway and was quickly stopped and reverse before the buggy coming down the hill could see it. Later a car managed to weasel their way through the panther hollow barricade only to zip around and enter in the side driveway of phipps instead of using the normal, much shorter cut over the Schenley bridge.

REMEMBER  Please help us next week and email news@cmubuggy.org if you can contribute to next week’s rolls report! Every little bit helps.

42 thoughts on “Rolls Report: March 22 & 23 – New Buggy-Palooza”

  • Ryan says:

    Corrections, under pusher power, Ting in Orca passed Amy. Freyja passing Orca was planned, not sure why it’s not showing up in the roll counts.

  • DAConley says:

    Should have hijacked the cement truck and filled the damn potholes before someone gets hurt.
    Yes, the recommendation is in jest…but the concern is not. Understand unauthorized patching is not allowed, what about simply filling the holes with ‘dirt’…like fine dust that gets hard once water is applied and allowed to dry. Running over a soft spot if better than falling into a hole.

  • Aileen says:

    Icarus? Flies too close to the sun then falls in the sea and drowns? Really?

    Wait, I just remembered that we thought it was a good idea to have the CIA theme in the buggy book the year I was chair be “cheeses of the world”. Carry on.

  • the cook says:

    Well since one inline skate wheel per axle is bog slow I guess two will be faster? Someone is drinking the matter wheels kool-aid

      • Someone says:

        Fringe took the second wheel off for push practice. Looks like they either:
        1.) Were pulling one over on us as they like to do on first reveal
        2.) Trying not to mess up their rollerblade wheels (lol)
        3.) Read this post and took it off when they realized we were right about the turn radius

        • the Pope says:

          Those little wheels should shine in push practice. Low wheel inertia is everyone’s friend during push practice. Think of Sig Ep’s Messiah in 2008, very quick in the push. Watch it fly at the start of hill one here then die in the roll then come back to life on the backhills:

          http://cmubuggy.org/video/2008prelimsm1 ( also shows why hatches as crash protections is a bad idea)

          • ben says:

            I have a hard time believing that it was the wheels that made them do so well on the uphills. Definitely agree that the downhill suffered because of it, but A team pushers should be faster than a B team generally.

          • the Pope says:

            Granted they had a goodly push team as well. I suspect it was a bit of both and thus, sited them as an example. A less known but clearer example was when we strapped 2 similar wheels on Jerboa back in 87 (some of the first UHMW urethane to hit campus methinks) . The wheels they replaced were big heavy derby wheels of 80s vintage so the inertia effect was exaggerated. The time dropped on hill 1 was 1-2 seconds per pusher. That said, the time added in the rolls made the choice clear. The delta between 3 xootrs and 3 or 4 of these will not be as wide, so the results may be more on the order of .5 to 1.0 seconds. That will not be enough.

  • the Pope says:

    PiKA – During drops, Chimera apparently had an issue where her rear wheel dislodged from it’s mount and popped up into the buggy. …

    this would not be the first or 2nd time such a think has happened. I believe we saw it on raceday within the past 2 years, possibly during a women’s heat, just after hill 2. A new mount can not be that hard to develop…

  • Connor Hayes says:

    I think this is one of the most interesting, diverse and innovative classes in modern times. Zenith could be the buggy spirit has been looking for to make their comeback. Fringe could change the standard wheel from the xootr to the skate wheel if it rolls even slightly better than a xootr wheeled buggy. And Cia could show people that the 80’s had the right sized wheels. Hell we thought our buggy was going to be amazing and its probably the least interesting new buggy in the field this year. All in all buggy people keep on keeping on. Somebody’s got to make that leap to break 2:00

    • Shafeeq says:

      I predict that the buggy that breaks 2:00 will be an incremental improvement on its predecessor or peers, and not some giant leap. The pushers, on the other hand…

      • the cook says:

        the giant leap is often a repave. When the push off to transition was last paved a couple seconds fell right off the free roll times.

        • Peter says:

          Agreed. The road is in absolutely horrible condition right now. If they repaved the entire thing I think someone could break 2 minutes on a warm day.

  • Peter says:

    Matske, Icarus was in fact designed for those 10″ wheels :) But she has a few tricks up her sleeve. Stay tuned. ;)

    The reason our passes weren’t counted is because apparently pass tests don’t count if the passed buggy is on bags…we didn’t realize that until we’d already done all the tests…oops.

    • Someone says:

      Huh? Since when? That must be a new rule – we’ve always bagged our buggies to let other orgs pass us. And I clearly remember other orgs doing the same for us.

      • Rachael says:

        It’s a new rule this year (or at least newly enforced), but wasn’t communicated before CIA did their pass tests.

        • the cook says:

          the whole reason bags were allowed in the first place was due to the notorious unreliability of trying to slow down a buggy by cranking up on the bearings and the like. Bags are reliable and slow the buggy down most right where you want it – at the bottom.

          stupid rule. “reasonable speed” is a good rule, how you achieve that short of doing something very stupid should be your business

      • Barsham says:

        It’s not a “new” rule, it’s just selectively enforced year to year. Every year we had fights with Sweepstakes over letting us pass a bagged buggy. Do you guys understand how difficult it was to get Camo to pass a buggy that didn’t have a bag attached to it? Heck, even with a bag it wasn’t an easy task.

        For my years, you couldn’t pass a bagged buggy. Once I graduated, Sweepstakes got more lax and allowed it. But every year (at least every year that I’ve been involved, in some way, in pass tests) we’ve had the debate with Sweepstakes. Sometimes they’ve allowed it, sometimes they haven’t.

        • felmley says:

          If Sweepstakes uses bags at the beginning of each semester as an officially-sanctioned and REQUIRED method to slow the buggies down on the first day, it is illogical (hypocritical?) to not allow teams to use them to slow buggies for a pass test. As the cook said, they are visible, reliable, safe and repeatable. They are also scalable; and free when you make a run for Ramen Meals to the ‘Iggle in Squirrel Hill. I know of a recent max-speed variance between a bagged and non-bagged buggy (both decent buggies) of 5mph, which is a “reasonable” difference. Actually, maybe not even enough difference for mid-course pass.

          • CHayes says:

            Reason given for no bags was to better simulate race day conditions. Belief is bags cause buggies to be much slower than race speeds and therefore the pass will not be a good representation or practice of race conditions. Its being done for driver safety

          • the cook says:

            5 mph is about the difference between a women’s heat and men’s heat, top speed right before the chute. Seems reasonable to me

          • Shafeeq says:

            Nobody starts from a dead stop on hill 2 on race day, so pass tests are pretty unrepresentative of race day conditions anyway.
            The dropped buggy will take a lot longer to get to the bottom of the course, but when it gets there, it’ll won’t be moving much slower than the pushed one. So you can have a 15mph differential at the top of the course, and less than 5mph at the bottom.
            Throwing on a bag will slow down the bottom more than the top, keeping the differential closer to uniform.

            Plus, a lot of race day passes happen in the parts of the course where pass tests don’t count. Making teams jump through extra hoops to get a “legal” pass test just wastes everybody’s time and takes away a run that the slow driver could’ve been using to practice going fast.

    • Anonymous says:

      As safety chair you were impotent and incompetent, and as an alumni you seem to be incapable of contributing anything of value to this community. The rest of us are burdened with the responsibility of thinking before we speak, maybe you should give it a shot.

    • Anonymoose says:

      As safety chair you were competent and accountable, and as an alumni you seem to be at about the same level of bullshit as everyone else in this community. The rest of us are burdened with the responsibility of having wheels that don’t suck, maybe you should give it a shot.

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