Special Stage Forums banner

Best Practices

15K views 13 replies 13 participants last post by  Joe Lipinski 
#1 ·
I have travelled to a few events outside of the area I'm most familiar with and have noticed that each event I visit, I come away with a practice or procedure that I hadn't thought of before. I have tried to work some of these ideas into my event. For example, when I visited Sno-Drift I found that they were supplying ham radios to the folks in the medical vehilces. Even though these folks aren't licensed, they could monitor communication and use the radio in an emergency. When I visited SandBlast I saw the execellent Rally Guide Anders puts together, and when I visited LSPR I saw they create a Banner book noting where banner tape is needed.

So my challenge to the organizers on this forum is, tell us about what is done at your event that is a best practice?

I realize that each event has different issues and I'm not suggesting that anything posted here must be done, I just thought we could share the things each organizer has found works well at their event so that others could copy the practice if it suits their needs.

I'll kick it off. At Mt Hood we include contingency instructions in the back of the routebook that direct competitors how to get from the start of one stage to the start of the other stage without transiting the stage. This came about because we had an incident that required medical attention and sending the competitors thru the stage was not possible. With these instructions we can tell competitors to follow the contingency instruction to the start of the next stage.

So what best practice do you have to share?

Thanks

Simon Levear
Mt Hood Rally Chair
 
See less See more
#2 ·
One thing I like that Sno*drift does is put stage opening, first car due time and closing time information etc. for all the stages on the back of the worker's credentials. The first year they did this, I was amazed how many times I refered to it to double check my own stage times, to tell locals when other roads would be closed and to plan spectating. Having the info right on the lanyard around your neck is really handy at Sno*drift, because you are usually bundled up in layers, and can't remember which pocket on which layer, you put that important item like your car keys.
 
#3 ·
Simon this is a great thread and long over due.
As a steward I also get to travel to many different events and see how differently they are organized.

The best practice I would like to relate is the numbering of every intersection. The Ojibwe Rally labels every intersection with a number. These numbers are also referenced in the route books, service books and maps.

The numbering system makes it very easy to know exactly where you are or where you need to be. You can also reference a tulip with an intersection number and then look at the map and find the same intersection to determine exactly where you are.

Maybe someone from the Ojibwe organzing committee like Karen or Kerry or Mark Larson could explain how it was developed.

In the heat of battle this system makes it very easy to know where you or other people are.

Keep the best ideas coming.

Steve Gingras
Rally America Steward
 
#4 ·
Steve,
The intersection numbers was started at Paris. I can't take credit as it was done before I was Rally Master. But I started changing that slightly. I now label the intersections with letters and put the actual instruction (tulip) number in the map so the competitors can report where they are. That worked last year except some people were confused thinking that the numbers were still intersections. This year it is clearly noted on each map.
Richard
 
#5 ·
We started doing intersection numbers about 8-9 years ago back when I was RM'ing Headwaters and OFPR. The original intent was that it would be used only in our worker books and maps. We accidentally included it in one competitor book and the co-driver for that entry thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Based on that feedback we implimented it universally, and have received plenty of positive feedback since.
The original number scheme was somewhat "hap hazard", and has since been replaced with a system that assigns certain number ranges to certain areas to provide better consistency.

Mark Larson has been handling the numbering since he took over as RM from me, but the basic idea has continued with little alteration. We use the intersection numbers to designate the tactical radio call for the marshals and/or medical teams that are assigned to that location, leading to less confusion amongst people.

Brad
 
#6 ·
I keep a big spreadsheet to manage all the documents. There are probably, oh, 110 documents in use. The spreadsheet denotes which are COMPLETELY done, which are year-independent, which are rally-independent. Everything from the Supps to the parking sticker is on the list.

If it wasn't for this I would have lots of "hmmm, did I get that ready for this year?" issues.

Cheers,
Anders
 
#7 ·
Not an organizer, but I am on the fringe of the of 100AW group. Maps, I've been to a couple of other events and luckily we had locals in the stage crew that knew where they were going, otherwise I would have been lost. Mike Houser does these beautiful maps that are distributed to all lead cars, officials and stage crews as to what is where. I believe he uses some kind of DeLorme product.

I know from being part of the course opening cars that this year, Sno*Drift's practice of a course opening car schedule was copied and really assisted us as to what time we needed to be into the stage.
 
#8 ·
Worker communication

I'm not trying to point fingers or cast stones at anyone because I know what kind of effort goes into putting on a rally, but communication to workers could be improved before the event. I see this from both sides as I'm the chief of controls for the 100AW and I travel to a lot of the other rallies as a worker.
We regulars have to remember that a lot of workers are new enough that they may not know where registration is or why they need to go or when to go. Or maybe just never been to a certain rally before.

I think we organizer types could utilize the web more than we may already do. Many of us count on online worker reg. to estimate how many people are coming and can get a lot of the assignments done before the event. Yet when these workers sign up online, they are many times never contacted again until they show up on sight. We need to do our best to keep track of who signs up online and contact them fairly soon to let them know we got their registration and once or twice more before the event to let them know more details.
I have been doing this more and more each year and it lessens all those extra questions you can get by answering the obvious ones in advance. I think I could still put more effort into it next year.
I have a feeling that the people reading this post aren't who it's directed at, but pass the word along if you can.
 
#9 ·
On our organizer stages notes we put transits into them so that competitors are not going back and forth from a routebook to stage notes. They loved that....

Also we have always put instruction numbers on all of our stakes of arrows so that if someone is using a routebook so if they do get lost they know where to get back on track.

We arrow the heck out of our stages far more then any other rally since character of the roads blends with the dirt and can trick a competitor going at speed so you can actually run a rally without a routebook or maybe stage notes...

We started putting stage schedues on back of our volunteer badges 10 years ago with Rim and kept the tradtion going on Desert Storm.

I start a worker newsletter 5 months ahead of time to get people start noticing it not far off and start thinking about signing up and then we keep the signed up volunteers in the loop monthly up until the week of the event with all downloads on the database program. But IF someone gets sick or is going to be out of town then you do need to have someone as a backup just in case of that...
 
#10 ·
your way of doing all the above mentioned things, so far has been my absolute favorite way of seeing it done. :)

I would love to see all CRS rallies eventually adopt any of the above portions they may not currently be doing yet.

IIRC you also put in a lot of mileage into the Stage Notes as well, mileage at the start of every line in the stage notes. (might have been a different event?) anywho i also Loved that as well.

Awesome stuff Denise! :)
 
#13 ·
Something that popped up at LSPR 11. We were checking an ATC and discovered that there was no watch for the start line. A lot of people now use their cellphone as a timepiece rather than wear a watch- thus nothing with seconds that could be used as a start line watch. Perhaps another item for the control packet?
 
#14 ·
With the recent addition of more cell phone towers in the 2013 Ojibwe Forest Rally area of Minnesota we were able to use cell phone communication between start and finish controls without interrupting net control.
Marshals could notify start control in an emergency without needing a ham radio or license.
Our Lead and Advance cars communicate over 440 between the group and with cell phones texting and verbal between cars.

Joe Lipinski Ojibwe Forest Rally chief of controls

LSPR 000 car
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top