Rolls Report: April 2 – These buggies ain’t no Fool

Posted on | by Natalie McGuier | 7 Comments on Rolls Report: April 2 – These buggies ain’t no Fool

With only 16 days until Raceday 2017, spring has officially appeared to have sprung in the ‘Burgh giving us warm but often rainy weather. Saturday rolls were cancelled due to excessive precipitation, but Sunday was upper 30’s and sunny. The cooler temperature resulted in slower roll times all around, but teams were still taking practice seriously. While we were missing several Greek teams due to Greek Sing, 6 human teams and 2 robotic buggies were out and rolling this weekend. 

In anticipation of April Fools’ Day one of our more dedicated reporters prepared a number of possible report openings and post titles. Despite not rolling on the first, they were too good to share:

  • Rolls consisted of drivers pushing the follow car down Frew street where unsuspecting flaggers were forced to catch them and send them back up Schenley drive.
  • Flush with success from greek sing a triumphant AEPi returned to buggy claiming to be the only fraternity capable of winning the triple crown. Kamikazi was caped and ready to roll.  
  • A belligerent Sam Swift appeared at this roll with Blackjack demanding to be let onto the course insisting that the BAA was a legitimate team and this was always why he made the organization.
  • SDC PAINTED A BUGGY IN 2 COLORS!!!!
  • PIKA PAINTED A BUGGY SOMETHING OTHER THAN BLACK!?!?
  • FRINGE BUGGY WITHOUT A ‘B’ NAME?
  • AEPi NEW BUGGY?

Back to more serious things:
The ‘trench’ in the chute continues to dramatically slow buggies down as it tosses the lighter vehicles and drivers, since this Quick Crete conduit cover spans the entire roadway it is totally unavoidable. While some of the heavier buggies seem unaffected, it’s sure to be a good test if you have all your hatches in place. Make sure your drivers are wearing their mouth guards -this one will jump right up at you.

Buggy alumni were out in droves this weekend trying to get not one, not two, but three timing systems working. Ben M. teamed up with Lou C. to get the laser-based system created by Mark Estes functional. They continued to run into some issues getting all the transmitters to talk to each other, but are hopeful to have the system up and running in time for Raceday. Ben Brown was out getting his speed trap tested, but didn’t have much luck with his system. Finally, Shafeeq S. was manning his battle-tested photo-based system. We have data from Shafeeq, which will be posted on Wednesday. 

In Attendance 

Org Sunday
Apex Phoenix, Ember
CIA Tempest, Orca, Impulse, Emperor
Fringe Boson, Bolt, Bissa, NB17
SDC Malice, Havoc, Bane Avarice, Rage
SigEp Barracuda, Kraken
Spirit Inviscid, Zuke, King Pin

Observations (Sunday Gallery) Continue reading →

2017 Membership Info and Undergraduate Alumni Networks Challenge

Posted on | by Dan Becerra | 2 Comments on 2017 Membership Info and Undergraduate Alumni Networks Challenge

If you’re reading this, you must be very interested in Buggy. And if you are, you definitely want to be a BAA member this year.
Members get exclusive perks, most importantly access to the highly anticipated Raceday Preview, which has everything you need to know about the teams and races. And you get to know you are supporting all the events we hold and the other things the BAA does to help make Sweepstakes run smoothly.

CMU is trying something new this year where they are running a challenge for every network and providing a potential cash reward! The challenge revolves around graduates from any Undergrad program at CMU who have never donated before. The best part is, ANY amount counts (e.g. the low low price of a BAA membership) and while we hope you send it our way, it can go towards any organization or program you want! Here are some more details:

  • Challenge will run between April 2 and Aprill 22
  • We will be posting weekly updates throughout
  • With 50 new people, we receive $500
  • With 100 new people, we receive $1000

If you’ve never before been a member, this is the perfect time to become one! To become a member, all you have to do is donate $10 or more to the BAA.

Should we make either of our goals, the money from this challenge will go towards the improvement of the cmuTV Raceday broadcast and help cover the costs of the production when sponsorship coverage is insufficient.

See our current membership list below which will be periodically updated. To help speed up the process of getting you on our list, or if you don’t see yourself on there and you think you should be, send me an email at danbecerra[at]cmubuggy.org with the receipt.

Click here to view the list!

Cheers,
Dan

Rolls Report: March 25 & 26 – Warm Weather and Good Turn Outs

Posted on | by Natalie McGuier | 4 Comments on Rolls Report: March 25 & 26 – Warm Weather and Good Turn Outs

Spring has sprung! Since hanging up the stop flags and climbing harnesses in November for the long winter, we’ve had only one occasion to roll thanks to a lack of attendance, freezing temperatures, and various forms of uncooperative weather. We went from having to cancel rolls for sub-freezing temperatures to waking up Saturday and Sunday morning to sixty five degree weather, before dawn. Leave the coats at home, let’s roll some buggies!

The Safety Chair politely reminded the teams that starting their pass testing earlier rather than later was a good idea. Consequently, Sunday’s rolls could have made for excellent day time TV: You get a pass test, and YOU get a pass test! EVERYONE ATTEMPTS A PASS TEST! There were pass-tests all day today cumulating in 7 successful passes.

Buggy alumni were out timing this weekend trying to grab some empirical data for the imminent heat-selection. We were tweeting about the efforts, but some data is more impenetrable than others. Take care not to disturb the trip-wires too much during rolls, this data collection is for your benefit.

A little about the new system: Created by Mark Estes, it is a series laser trip sensors connected via radio mesh network to record roll times via GPS clock sync and automatically calculates speeds and splits. The system got to a late start both days because, as it turns out, it takes a while to set up and align 4 laser sensors and a master station.
Saturday we collected some data, but couldn’t connect to the stop sign sensor. In addition, the hill 3 sensor wasn’t getting triggered (probably due bad alignment). So, some data, but not informative data. Also, due to the chaos of just getting the system running, we didn’t keep notes to attribute buggies. On Sunday we again had trouble connecting system together, and ultimately gave up halfway through day. On the docket for this week is to test the range of the sensors and determine how much battery level affects it.

In Attendance 

Org Saturday Sunday
Apex  Phoenix, Ember Phoenix, Ember
CIA  Equinox, Orca, Icarus Tempest, Orca, Icarus
Fringe  Bolt, Bissa, Beacon, NB17 Boson, Bolt, Bissa, Beacon
PiKA  Banshee, Cliodhna Banshee, Cliodhna
SAE  Lucy
SDC  Malice, Havoc, Bane, Avarice, Vice Malice, Havoc, Bane Avarice, Vice
SigEp Barracuda, Kraken
SigNu Krait
Spirit  Inviscid, Zuke, King Pin Inviscid, Zuke, King Pin

Observations (Saturday Gallery | Sunday Gallery) Continue reading →

No Rolls, Carnival Report Instead!

Posted on | by ben | 5 Comments on No Rolls, Carnival Report Instead!

With a cold last few weekends, Sweepstakes hasn’t been able to hold rolls since the earliest Spring Rolls start in years. With Spring break looming over the next two weekends, and an inclination for low turnout, they’ve also decided to cancel those weekends. This puts the next possible rolls for March 25 & 26. We’re hoping for a greater showing then along with potentially 6 new buggies that are in the works!

Given the lack of reporting material, we’ll take this opportunity to share some Carnival info with you, including:

  • Buggy Events
  • Volunteering
  • Preview Info
  • Auction
  • Elections!
  • New Race Format?

Continue reading →

Fall Rolls Wrap-up

Posted on | by ben

As we head into an exciting season of spring rolls, here’s a recap of what happened this fall, team by team. Detailed MiniRaceday stats can be found in our report here.

Autonomous Division

Robobuggy

The honor of the first roll of the 2016-2017 season went to Transistor, a product of the Robobuggy program in Robotics club. They’re not quite at autonomous rolls yet, but they made a few assisted rolls during the fall and look encouraging.

Atlas

Atlas has been experimenting with the former CIA buggy Quasar. They debuted a controllable version at design competition 2016, but it has yet to be seen on the course.

Classic Division

Apex

Apex debuted two new drivers on the first day of fall rolls, and therefore slowly progressed to bag-free rolling over the course of the season. They also generously shared their follow car with CIA, in the spirit of buggy camaraderie. The only incident was a loss of the rear hatch on the first day of rolls, but otherwise they rolled cleanly throughout the fall. Surprisingly, despite their surfeit of drivers, they only rolled Phoenix during the fall season, and Ember remained unseen.

CIA

CIA continues to demonstrate their significant manpower, rolling five buggies on the first day of fall rolls, with three new drivers. This is an encouraging sign from an organization that a decade ago barely had enough people to keep the buggies on the course. They were efficient and showed off their competitive mentality by heating Equinox’s wheels on the second weekend of fall rolls. Their only weakness so far appears to be a lack of a follow car, which they remedied by rolling with Apex and thus requiring only one car for the two teams. They were routinely competing with SDC for fastest team on the course.

Fringe

Fringe got off to a rocky start on the first day of rolls, when Bissa grazed the curb near the Panther Hollow Bridge transition at low speed. Reportedly, the incident may have been caused by a steering issue. Otherwise, they rolled quickly and efficiently, with multi-window rollouts by the end of the first day. The rolls reports for the fall season in general describe them as “smooth, quiet, and quick around the course.” They slightly trailed CIA and SDC in observed speed, but otherwise look like a threat come Raceday.

PhiDelt

PhiDelt was unseen on the course this fall, but instead have been focusing on a new build for spring.

PiKA

After a year competing as the independent Fishing Club, PiKA returned to the course as a Greek team this fall. By their second roll around the course, they removed the bags and piled on the speed, losing Raptor’s hatch in the process. By the second weekend of rolls, there was some fishtailing seen in the Chute, as well as creative flagging positions. Their drivers continued to take some “experimental” Chute turns through the fall, which seemed to reduce PiKA’s overall pace.

SAE

SAE was a minimal presence at fall rolls (only one weekend out with Lucy), with their most noteworthy event pairing with SigEp in order to produce sufficient manpower at rolls.

SDC

SDC started off in expected style, smooth, quick, quiet and efficient, removing all of their bags by the first day of rolls, and already starting on some impressive rollouts. They returned several veteran drivers, making the first day of rolls relatively easy. The second weekend produced a bit more excitement, as a new driver in Vice missed the transition flag and headed up the path to Phipps. She eventually stopped on the grass, and was (interestingly) allowed back on the road to continue her roll. Otherwise, SDC was one of the fastest teams on the course throughout the fall.

SigEp

SigEp had a fairly uneventful fall, with their only reported incident the loss of a GoPro on one roll (subsequent rolls with the GoPro had a lot more gaffer tape). Due to reduced manpower, SigEp and SAE rolled together one weekend, and were thus dubbed the “Sigma Squad”.

SigNu

It was MiniRaceday by the time SigNu (rolling only Krait) made an appearance, and it was a dramatic one. An accidental stop flag caused Krait to come to a full, spinning stop, but all was ok and the driver finished her lap without other incident.

Spirit

Spirit gave themselves a gradual but smooth start into the year. All three buggies were heavily bagged for the first two days of rolls, and there was initially some trouble clearing the chute. However, they soon sped up and were passing each other on the backhills. They have not yet achieved the amazing speed we expect from them come spring, though.

 

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone on the course this spring!

— Summary by Aileen Dinin

Rolls Report: February 19 – A day of Independents

Posted on | by ben

Rolls were canceled late Friday night with an unfortunate message regarding Sweepstakes leadership health. Sunday morning got underway still lacking Sweepstakes Chair Enosh, who has a bad case of Pokérus brought on by the the recent update to Pokémon (Here is Enosh at the Dallas Regional).

It’s looking warm for the start of Spring Rolls this semester. It was a brisk 40 degree low as everyone climbed out of bed for the first time since the winter hibernation. T-shirts were seen on many pushers while those with more stationary jobs were still forced to bundle up. Temps climbed to 50 degrees with the rising sun.

While it didn’t rain overnight the few orgs in attendance were treated to a sopping wet road surface. Speculation abounds about the cause; high pressure fronts, temperature differentials, sabotage by the shadow government, regardless rolls were delayed until 7:10 to give the streets some time to dry out.

In Attendance

Org Sunday
Apex Ember
CIA Icarus, Equinox, Tempest, Orca
Fringe Bissa, Bolt, Beacon
SDC Malice, Havoc, Bane, Vice
Spirit Inviscid, Kingpin, Mapambazuko

Observations (Sunday Gallery)
Continue reading →

Warm start to Spring 2017

Posted on | by ben | 2 Comments on Warm start to Spring 2017

Classes have been on for a couple weeks now and the students have been treated to an incredibly warm January and February isn’t looking much worse. Given the extremely tame winter with little to no snowfall, this could be the first time in several years that rolls could get going properly before spring break. With all this practice, we could be looking at another competitive Raceday. Making predictions now might be a bit early, so we’ll hold off until the Raceday Preview. Remember you have to be a dues paying member to receive the annual publication and the earlier you do it, the more likely you are to get it in the first round.

Speaking of donations, we’re still running our donation challenge for a little Raceday bonus to the winning alumni team. Currently CIA is in the lead, but not by much, so there is still plenty of chances to get ahead before the challenge ends on the first day of spring rolls. So remember if you make a donation before the first weekend of rolls, let us know.

Last bit of news for today, we are looking to revamp our normal luncheon into more of an evening event and are currently looking at a couple options. BAA HQ has narrowed it down to a couple options and we would like feedback from the larger buggy community. Which would you prefer:

  • Alumni wrap-up party after Saturday awards ceremony for all alumni to get together and share their favorite raceday moments.
  • Friday alumni or senior Banquet with the sweepstakes staff and our Alumni Relations reps.

At either of these events, we plan to restart our biannual elections. More information on those later this season.

We would love to hear your feedback and we are looking forward to a long spring season!

UPDATE: Rules Amendment – Greek Restrictions

Posted on | by ben

The discussion that happened a week ago was an interesting one, though with low attendance, it’s hard to tell how informative or how much it will affect the future conversations on this topic.

In attendance: SigEp, PhiDelt, SAE, SDC, Sweepstakes, BAA

Quick Summary:

  1. The greek teams seem to have a different philosophy when it comes to buggy in that it is more of a group activity rather than a sole focus as is the case for some independents.
  2. Because of #1, current greek teams don’t seem to have an interest in taking advantage of the situation if this rule were lifted.
  3. Teams didn’t see a huge advantage of the “ringer” pusher. While independents have used this “advantage”, competitive teams, use it only to fill out their few positions on lower teams.

Next Steps:

  1. One point that came up is that this type of rule change may be more desirable by new teams, so Sweepstakes will be reaching out to them to get there opinion.
  2. Due to low attendance, there should be interest in having a larger discussion with more teams.

This discussion is far from over, but this is the current information we have from teams.

Saturday Rules Amendment Discussion – Greek Restrictions

Posted on | by ben | 13 Comments on Saturday Rules Amendment Discussion – Greek Restrictions

Greek Pusher Restrictions have been a hot topic of late and Sweepstakes will be having a formal discussion this Saturday at 1:00pm. We will have some alumni in attendance and we would like to have your input if you are not able to join us in person this weekend.

Please comment below with your opinions about these issues.

Questions that will be covered during this meeting:

  • What are the pros and cons?
  • How many non-Greek pushers would it take to no longer be seen as the Greek organization’s team?
  • What are the differences between Greek and Independent Teams?
  • What is the effect on both Greek and Independent teams?
  • How does it help/harm the organizations/Buggy as a whole?

Given some recent trends, sweepstakes has a renewed vigor in their focus on increased participation and we would like to assist them in any and every way we can.