NPG10 Suggestion Box
After receiving Haggy's email asking for ideas/suggestions for next year's Newtons i thought i'd start a thread for everyone to voice their opinions. Once again a big big thanks to everyone who made the event possible. Robbo the video setup was awesome and something that i have only ever seen at the X Games and Red Bull DHX that had million $ funding, so to pull it off as well as you guys did was brilliant.
Anyway my sugestions would be
- Christmas tree start lights with a buzzer, the pull cord has lots of room for variation as to when riders interpret the start. Do you start when the cord passes you or when you see the fingertips from the starter flinch? Start ramps would be good, they were there last year. Maybe we could get them back again.
- Bands and/or DJ up at the campground would add a bit more atmosphere for the crowd and riders.
Thanks again guys and gals.
Anyway my sugestions would be
- Christmas tree start lights with a buzzer, the pull cord has lots of room for variation as to when riders interpret the start. Do you start when the cord passes you or when you see the fingertips from the starter flinch? Start ramps would be good, they were there last year. Maybe we could get them back again.
- Bands and/or DJ up at the campground would add a bit more atmosphere for the crowd and riders.
Thanks again guys and gals.
Views: 211
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Robbo on
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A big screen was looked at this year but out west it has a cost of about $4500 a day. We very much wanted to put one on the inside of forest but were unsure if our video would work and the screen people take no responsibility for getting a signal to it. Last year a professional production team were paid $30,000 to do this and were unable to even get a signal to a tv on track so we are ahead of them already. Our video system cost us about $2000 to build with cable included which was the budget I was given to do this.
It is definitely our plan to have a big screen at forest next year.
Ryan 'RY RY' Peterson said:i know this would be expensive but awesome
a big screen tv thingy like they have at the soccer
matches.......
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During our contact negotiations with council this year we pleaded for a 4th day but were unable to get it. We will be aiming for a 4th day again this year. The split qualifying is designed to accommodate possible bad weather and injury. Due to IGSA regulations we must provide for 2 qual runs which puts us in a difficult position if it rains on the qual day and we have more people entered than the tree allows.
We are most definitely aware that we need more freeride but the IGSA regs make this difficult to achieve without the use of a forth day. If we held practice all day on day one you would likely not practice again until finals day and we would be unlikely to fit a repecharge race in. The simple answer to this is we need more days
Isaac said:Way more practise
Pretty much any method to achieve it, even if you push back first qualifying and group it with the second.
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There was no problem with you being on track which is what I thought you were going to do.
Hank's Place Australia said:Hank's Place could do with being down on the track itself; even if it were further back where the slalom was set up and the riders were dropped off. This would give the riders more of a chance to get the between run treatments and make it easier for the therapists to treat those that need it just before they line up.
2010 should see us being able to offer 70 places with three therapists plus a strapper.
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We certainly need something better on the start line as we were not very lucky with the weather this year (high wind and plus 30 degrees). If we do a sail type structure it would need to be erected from the outside of the track and be high enough to allow a buses under it when the road opens again. Engineering wise the start line is a tough area to work with as there is no off track area and it has a cliff drop off on one side and a 45 degree incline on the other. Anything that goes on track at the start must be balanced against the time it takes to erect and dismantle so if it takes us an hr at the beginning and end of each day than 2hrs must be removed from track time to enable us to do this. This wind and heat this year was a bitch and anything we put on the start line was quickly destroyed by the weather. We will attempt to get something on the start next year that we don't have to remove that can be erected within the geography that exists there. Its a shame that the hill does not start a hundred mtrs further back with some flat off track area.
A traffic light setup with a buzzer should not be to hard to build for next year.
A better broadcast system would be great so long as we can raise a lot more funds. If we can't get it from sponsors we would need to raise the entry fee to about $400 a rider to pay for it. Our rider fees are currently just below the average of the other WC races which is preferably how we would like to keep it.
Pat Team OBR said:Micheal Reeve (didnt turn up this year) has 2 big traffic light set ups (red/yellow/green) just lying around, and said he would love to see them as start lights for a race, we could give them to Richard Powers and let him work his magic, and could link em to a horn/buzzer
Lets try and find a big shade sail (maybe with a sponsors logo on it) and string it off that big sign over the start line, set up a formal (organised) pit area
Richard Powers has some awesome ideas for filming / broadcast systems, its what he does for a living.
All PlanetX games had a marquee for riders at the start line, with water in it, I'm amazed we havent had anyone cook in there leathers yet, not a good reciepe to perform at your best.
The start ramps are still in Bathurst with Ian Carter from Carter Bros engineering, and have been improved with BMX style drop gates fitted to them to prevent false starts like I did in round one
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haha Maybe we could get the military engineers to build one for us
Merrick Wildash said:A bridge from one side of the Esses to the other would be cool. As personally i was getting my best photos from that side of the road. Its the best spot to view the race.
Se up a bigger version of the screening system there.
Just an idea
Robbo said:Maybe we could build a sail type structure across the road.
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Given the IGSA qual requirements the only real answer to better practice is to have more days. If we split the practice than luge would have 1/2 a day and skateboard would have 1 1/2 days. The other option is we restrict the rider numbers more heavily, but this has the downside of also lowering our budget and hence the things we can provide as there is a large amount of fixed costs that are the same if we have 50 riders or 200. Whatever happens we will look to improve it somehow, its just about getting everything balanced right and believe me I will be camping on the council doorstep to get an extra day.
Sakamoto said:I mentioned this to Haggy, after talking to Peter Eliot and Chris McBride,.....split the days prior to the final race day. The first day have only speedboarders on the hill, giving them more practice runs and still time to do 2 qualifying runs, and on the second day, the other disciplines. This would not only give more practice to all riders, but would lessen the stress on officials as well as riders. The final race day would be as it was this year. If it could be opened up to four days, have the very first day as a controlled free ride/practice day.
The Christmas Tree is an excellant idea.
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Permalink Reply by Sakamoto on
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Do you think it would help if we offered to sacrifice a virgin to them Robbo? Only problem is, we need to find a virgin!!!! (Shit, we're in trouble.....lolololol)
Robbo said:Given the IGSA qual requirements the only real answer to better practice is to have more days. If we split the practice than luge would have 1/2 a day and skateboard would have 1 1/2 days. The other option is we restrict the rider numbers more heavily, but this has the downside of also lowering our budget and hence the things we can provide as there is a large amount of fixed costs that are the same if we have 50 riders or 200. Whatever happens we will look to improve it somehow, its just about getting everything balanced right and believe me I will be camping on the council doorstep to get an extra day.
Sakamoto said:I mentioned this to Haggy, after talking to Peter Eliot and Chris McBride,.....split the days prior to the final race day. The first day have only speedboarders on the hill, giving them more practice runs and still time to do 2 qualifying runs, and on the second day, the other disciplines. This would not only give more practice to all riders, but would lessen the stress on officials as well as riders. The final race day would be as it was this year. If it could be opened up to four days, have the very first day as a controlled free ride/practice day.
The Christmas Tree is an excellant idea.
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Permalink Reply by Hank's Place Australia on
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We had asked to be trackside but when liased with Pete were told it wasn't possible and had to pitch in the market area. Perhaps a map of who is going where before we turn up next year; this would increase the quality of communication all round.
Robbo said:There was no problem with you being on track which is what I thought you were going to do.
Hank's Place Australia said:Hank's Place could do with being down on the track itself; even if it were further back where the slalom was set up and the riders were dropped off. This would give the riders more of a chance to get the between run treatments and make it easier for the therapists to treat those that need it just before they line up.
2010 should see us being able to offer 70 places with three therapists plus a strapper.
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Permalink Reply by Sean on
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I like the idea of track time being split over hours (as per saturday) rather than days. As Robbo said, its much better for bad weather or injury to have chances to ride each day. Otherwise if you get a wet day the people scheduled for that day miss out on any riding on the good day following. It also provides more opportunity for riding a variety of weather conditions which may help come finals time.
More shade at start line would be great, maybe everyone can try to consider ways of doing this without lots of setting up day to day or have something set up for the event which is high enough to drive under, but as Robbo points out the geography is difficult.
Hopefully won't be so hot if in October next year, but could still get warm then. Actually I thought we were reasonably fortunate temperature wise with 30 degrees being the max, it could have been much hotter, thursday for example was well above that.
An important consideration for a starting system is false start prevention too - lights and buzzers can be anticipated same as the rope, so what happens if someone jumps it or rolls back and forward for momentum at start time? Maybe a bar placed behind the riders would help with this, but that wouldn't stop jumping the start.
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Permalink Reply by Muhammad on
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something that would be cool when u put videos up is maybe to have a camera man following them down the track the whole time i have seen it done b4 and it looks sweet!!
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Premium MemberPermalink Reply by nathan on -
I guess when we talk about track time and adding another day for more practice, i think its worth discussing the crash zones. Given that a run was taking for most people just over a minute, and we were sending riders once forest elbow was cleared, with no crashes we could be sending groups of 4 or 5 every 45 seconds roughly. Even the slightest impact where a rider may just clip the crash zone at forest required around 2 minutes for the tirelessly hard working guys and girls working the hay bails to rebuild. Thats two groups of 4 or 5 riders that could have been down? The big impacts were pushing out over the 5 minute mark. (20 riders). Over the course of the weekend its easy to see how riders could have easily doubled their runs. I have no idea of the cost of placing sections of "air fence" or something similar on those crash zones but i reckon we would have nearly doubled our track time. Does someone have some contacts?? I would like to hear Andy Lally's opinions given his experience in motor racing.
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