(1-31-2004)
Amazing but true, it's another update already. Well no surprise here, since I purchased
a new camera I've been taking lots of pictures. The latest new pictures are of the January 31st Pro AutoSports track day. Brady and Pat Fisher ran
it as well as a couple other folks that I've met at events and seen on messageboards. I took 216 pictures,
but only posted the best 33. My new Canon Digital Rebel is certainly making action photography fun again.
Now all I need is either a 2x lens multiplier or I'll go ahead and buy a bigger lens so I can zoom in
closer to the action.
In the mean time, I thought I'd kick it off with a new photo area with lots of pictures of some R/C car racing which has taken place in the secret testing grounds in Chandler, Arizona. I figure since I wanted my site to be about all kinds of racing anyway and not just autocrossing (contrary to what it's name implies) I should post up some totally different content. You can visit the R/C car racing photo page to see an example of some of the wild wheel to wheel racing which takes place here.
After putting it off for, oh, over a year or so I created a write-up about my hatchback today. Since I've actually done quite a bit over the last 15 months or so of ownership, I decided to put the feature in my race experience section and call it the building of a track car and just give the quick overview of the last year's worth of building. Not unpredictably, I spent a lot of time talking about the transmission fiasco since that's dominated the last 5 months or so.
Finally, I decided to add the 2002 Event Calendar to my web site. I never actually took the 2001 calendar down, I just removed the link to it from my web site. As it turns out, a bunch of people still had it bookmarked or something because as of this week, it was still getting about 50 hits a month. That's a lot for an item I removed from my table of contents back in September or something. So, it's back again, and lists all the AZ and ABR Solo2 events as well as ASRA and NASA events.
Speaking of which, I am working on transitioning this page back to being my own personal page, and not so much an extension of the Arizona Region SCCA Solo2 program. Mark Shaw has completed putting up www.AZSolo2.com which is going to be the new "official" Solo2 page. Since we haven't worked out how to do CGI scripts on that server yet, pre-reg and results will remain on my own site in the mean time. Once that is all worked out however, the new home for all official AZ SCCA Solo2 content will be the AZSolo2.com site and my site will once again just be for my own pictures, videos, and write-ups.
As I probably should have done quite some time ago, I put up a small vital information page for my 88 hatchback. It's done in the same form as the one for my 97 Civic, except for the fact that I don't know most of the dimentions such as overall length, wheelbase, etc. Pretty much everything else is on there however. Although the data is based on the current drivetrain (B16A/YS1 tranny) I don't have any information about other modifications I've done to the car, such as the spring and shock combo or what aftermarket parts I have. I'll probably put all that information on a separate page at some time in the future.
Another little tidbit added recently was the addition of an MP3 of Mark Tozer's single turbo Toyota Supra doing a dyno run at Technodyne. This is actually from a while ago and I put the file online a month or two ago but never got around to updating the assorted car sounds page to include it. It's now available however for all to enjoy. For those unfamiliar, this particular car put down over 600 horsepower at the wheels. It's a pretty quick car on the street.
As a final note, Brady finally put up his review of the 2000 Prescott Forest Rally in an article on Hondaprelude.com. For those unaware, Brady is a friend of mine who has a 1986 Mazda RX-7 modified for SCCA Club/Pro Rally. He's the owner and driver and I've been the codriver, or navigator for the last two events. Although Prescott didn't exactly go as planned, we ran the Treeline Rally a few months later and took something like 17th out of 28 entries, which is pretty good for the fact that we're both brand new to rally. We're planning on running the 2001 PFR as well and hope to finish in the upper half this time around.
For those who may or may not have noticed, I've pulled the videos from the site for the time being. They managed to soak up almost my entire bandwidth limit last month, so I need to cut things back. With any luck, I'll be able to put a few on the SCCA's web site, otherwise there just won't be any videos for a while.
The only other new content is the addition of a few new MP3 files. The first is a Ferrari 360 Challenge car running up and down through the gears on the dyno at Technodyne. The other is my Civic hatchback running through 2nd though 4th gear on the dyno. The Ferrari forced me to slightly alter the scale of how good everything else sounds. The Challenge Car is now the only MP3 with a 5 star rating since, honestly, nothing else can compare with it.
In other news, I recently picked up a new computer. Believe it or not, this entire web site including all the MP3's and MPEG videos were developed on a Pentium 200Mhz with 32mb of ram and a 56k modem. This partly explains why I have no fancy shockwave animations or Java programs, although the other reason is of course that I always manage to find something else I'd rather be doing anyway. Well, getting to the point, I just picked up a Dell Pentium 3, 1Ghz computer with 128mb of ram last week. I haven't yet swapped over my video capture card or really started using it full time yet, but it will offer a much better platform for development of my web site, especially when it comes to videos. As always, feel free to email me with any questions or suggestions.
ASRA has finally announced an event for 2001. Yes, just one lone event is planned so far. It's scheduled for April 21st at the Firebird main track. As such, I have added it to the 2001 event calendar for Arizona events open to all makes of cars. One of these days I'll add NASA's events too. But not today.
Lastly, the 2001 PAX factors have been entered into the PAX Calculator as well as the new STS, STR, and SM classes. I double checked everything, so the factors should all be correct, other than the fact that I never got around to fixing the script to do real rounding instead of 3-digit truncation. So, for example if your PAX time would have been 59.23456, it will truncate that to 59.234 instead of rounding off to 59.235. I'm not sure when I'll be able to fix that, so it's just something to keep in mind.
Since I did dyno the car, I decided to bring my video camera along and record the whole thing. Althoug a video of the dynorun would have been pretty boring, I decided to put up a few MP3 sound recordings instead. One is of a run through 1st and 2nd gear on the dyno, and the other is the actual 3rd gear dynorun. Since the car has no muffling of any kind, it's kind of funny to listen to.
Nothing else is new, but I've now got several updates in the works that should be published over the next few weeks. Among them are the basic info on the 88 DX, timeslips for my 97 HX, photos from the Sierra Vista autocross, and a few other things.
Also updated is the Arizona Race Calendar which now features the remaining Tucson events which I neglected to add in. Whoops! I also verified the dates for the NASA events for the year, so everything should be accurate now. The only one I'm unsure of is the October ASRA event, so I'll be sending them an email to try and verify if there is still an October ASRA event scheduled to happen.
Other than that, it's pretty much what I expected. The body is in real good shape and it doesn't appear to have been in any major collisions. So, I went ahead and started on the build-up. See below in the 8-1 update for a description of where I'm going with the project and what my goals are. Right now the car is about a week or so away from having the engine swap completed.
"Locash" Joe is doing the whole swap for me as well as replacing stuff like the timing belt and radiator hoses and stuff and removing all the A/C stuff too. Once I get the car back, it's on to the next component, which will probably be suspension. Right now I'm leaning towards getting Gound Control coilovers with Koni single adjustable shocks. I'll also be putting my extra set of 14" HX wheels on the car so I can get rid of the horrible 13" Prime 3-Spoke chrome-effect wheels. The 13's are so hideously ugly that it's an embarrassment to even drive the car.
So I'll probably be doing a big update later, like when I actually get the car back, hopefully with a perfectly good motor. I'll dyno it as soon as I can too, and with any luck, I'll see about 140 wheel horsepower. With 140 whp and about 2100 pounds or so, I think the car should get around all right. Too bad Tage isn't still in Arizona or else I'd finally have a car that would offer him some competition! Instead, he'll have a year or two in Indiana to build up his GS-R to a point that he feels he can trophy at nationals in the DSP class with. It would certainly be nice to see him do that, although it will be a bummer to finally start roadracing and not be able to go head to head against him here.
So anyway, I'm not going to be running my car this season since it still isn't fixed yet. Since the shop also wants the car for a month or so to fix it, I'm going to need another car to drive around in the mean time. As such, I'm actually looking to get a second car which I'll turn into a race car, but can use as a daily driver while my 97 Civic is in the shop. Once I get a second car, then of course I'll be broke and need to save up to get my car fixed. Once I do that though, I'm not going to want to race my 97 anymore, so I'll have to spend a bunch of money on the other car to make it a good race car.
So it's going to be a while before I'm racing cars again. In the mean time, I've been spending time at Technodyne "helping" Brady build his Mazda RX-7 rally car. So far I've helped out with the following upgrades:
So basically most of the time when I go over there, it's because I'm bored and want to hang out around cars and see what shows up to get Dyno'd. Technodyne is a first class Porsche 911/944 Turbo race shop, and some really serious cars show up on a regular basis. I also get to find out about stuff like when a Ferrari F50 shows up at the local dealership so Brady and I can drive down there and take pictures of it and stuff.
So there's not really much else going on. I'll probably be shooting some pictures at some upcoming NASA and ASRA events and doing something for the SCCA with the Solo2 stuff. Since I won't be racing, I don't really know what I'll be doing. Too bad they don't allow cameras at the site they run at or I'd just go ahead and take pictures and video. Also, I still haven't been able to come up with a car yet. I've seen a couple of 88 Civic DX's show up for sale, but so far the cheapest was $3700 and the most expensive has been $4500. That's just too much money, and since I don't need a car right this minute, I'll just keep waiting. It's not like I've got a huge stash of cash sitting around anyway, so the longer I can't find a car, the more money I'll have saved up to hurry up and fix my 97.
Lastly, with all the time I spend hanging out at Technodyne, I started thinking of maybe having a club Dyno Day there for all the autocrossers and anyone else that wanted to show up. It's normally $65 or so for a single car to get 4-5 runs or so, but if we could get even just 10% of the folks who show up for a normal autocross - about a dozen - to show up just to do baseline runs, I'm sure we could do it for maybe $35-40/car. So, I'll probably check with Chris, the owner of Technodyne and see what he thinks and what we'd need. If you're interested at all, drop me an email letting me know what you'd want (i.e., just a baseline run, or 3 tuning runs, or whatever) and what kind of range you'd be willing to pay. I may do a little survey for this tied to the online pre-registration as well. I'd likely schedule this for the Saturday before the October event - Saturday October 7th. I'm still not really sure what to do though, so send me an email if you're at all interested.
I also fixed a problem with the Survey where it was set to attempt to send email to my linux machine which isn't even on the internet. Whoops! So that's fixed now. I also removed the link to the "about me" page since it was written back in April of 1999. It was so out of date that it wasn't even worth having up at all. I may update it and put it back online later, but I'd been meaning to update it for over a year anyway, so no promises there. On a personal note, I think I'm finally going to go back to college this fall. I'm actually meeting with an admissions guy tomorrow in fact and will probably go ahead and apply. There's crazy stuff going on with my job right now and I'd like to have the security of being able to apply for other jobs with a degree to my name. Besides which, I might actually learn something useful while I'm at it.
Beyond that, I think I'm going to spend at least a week or two trying to catch up on the 300+ emails I've got sitting around waiting for me to reply or do something with. The only problem with replying to a ton of email all at once is that I tend to receive a large amount of email shortly afterwards. In other news, I'm looking to buy a car to turn in to a racecar soon. I've decided that I'm looking for a 1988 Honda Civic DX hatchback and I plan to drop in a B16A. For those unfamiliar with the platform and motor, 1988 was the first year of the double-wishbone suspension on the Civic, and it was the lightest, rated at just under 2000 pounds from the factory. The B16A is the first DOHC VTEC motor and was rated at around 158hp in Japan. However, it's extremely tunable as it's virtually the same as the current B16A in the del Sol VTEC and 99+ Civic Si. With just a good intake and header these motors can make around 145hp to the wheels. There are a lot of other reasons I've chosen this car, but none of which are really worth going in to until I can actually find an 88 DX in good condition to buy. Hopefully it won't be too long.
until I can find a new site to host the Autocrossing.com domain. I am very sorry, but the company which hosts my domain has only given us 48 hours to pack up before they delete all our accounts. It was fun while it lasted.
I do, however, have a pair of new videos online that actually include my car and absolutely no rocketry whatsoever. The first is actually a little 180 degree handbrake turn done at a closed location. The lot was pretty small, but it's still better than trying this kind of craziness someplace where I could be looking at about a million tickets. Yes, Brian Peters and I really did get permission to do this stuff. For some reason, he didn't want to bring his Golf along though and try it out himself. Something about "high roll center" and "my springs are way to soft" or something.
The other video is just a classic burnout like we've all seen plenty of from dragstrips everywhere. The difference with this one? It's done by my car! So of course I had to put it on the web with full motion and sound for everyone to check out in bemusement that a car with 104 ft-lbs of torque can actually keep it's tires spinning (yes, it was both of them) as long as a little dishsoap is used to get them up to speed. I actually would have tried to keep it going a little longer if the sloped lot wasn't trying to carry me away as well as dragging my locked rear wheels. Still a pretty good show, especially after I let off the handbrake and started picking up some speed.
So, that's about it. Slowly but surely, I am going to catch up on all the things that I've been trying to get to over the last six months or so. The videos from the Viper Days event are next, followed by the photos from the Sierra Vista autocross, and then maybe some new material, assuming I actually do anything new. As always, suggestions and feedback are always welcome. Feel free to send me an email or post to the messageboard.
The other little update is that ASRA is now showing as having an event on Saturday, June 3rd on Firebird's East Course. There aren't really any facilities or even paved parking on the East Course, but the track itself is in excellent condition and is a LOT of fun. That is the track that Tage, myself, Brian Weikert, Chad Mizner, and a few of the other locals raced at with the Viper Days club a month or so ago. If you're into open track racing that should be a very fun event.
Outside of that, I don't have much else right now. As listed at the bottom of the page and on the messageboard, myself, Tage, and a few of the other autocrossers helped out at the Viper Days event about two weeks ago in exchange for free track time. It was a blast and I've got pictures as well as in-car video both from my car and Tage's which I'll be posting up when I get some more free time. We ran on Firebird's east track, which is known as the Indy track and is one of the best road courses I've done so far. It's pretty short; only about 1.1 miles, but for a slow car like mine, that's just fine. Full report coming soon.
Back to autocrossing, I have posted the February 13th results online. We pulled a very healthy 131 entrants for this event which is as good or better than any event we've had in the last 12 months here. After a dismal 5th place of 6 eligible entries in Sportsman last year I elected to run in HS Open for the spring 2000 series. Not surprisingly, I am back at the top, although this year there is actually another Civic autocrosser, Chris Mahood, running in HS Open on Kumho race tires. He's still new but improving quickly so it should be interesting. I also updated the race links page. I had the wrong address for Chris Mahood so that works now. I also added a link to a cool Finnish chick's site who has a link to my site at the bottom of her "Autoslalom" page. If I ever move to Finland, at least I know I can Autocross there!
There will be a few more updates over the next few days as well as I open pre-registration and make some more tweaks and changes. I will hopefully get the Divisional results online as well using the same script that currently processes the normal events. I would also like to get that other PIR photo area online soon as well as the new videos from the road race events. Check back often as I will be pushing out new content over these next few days.
The big new feature which I've been working on the last week or so however is the addition of an Autocrossing Messageboard. It's just a basic wwwboard design, but should work plenty well for keeping up and informed on local events and stuff or just autocrossing or car stuff in general. Also, since I don't even have to bring up my web server at home to update it, I can post updates on stuff there a lot more quickly, easily, and frequently than I can update the rest of my web site.
Lastly, I finally got the pictures from the November 27th NASA event online. These are probably my best pictures yet, at least of what I've put online so far. PIR is a far better track than Firebird to take pictures at, so I was able to get more action shots where you see the cars in the turns. There's even a few of the Porsches pulling their inside front wheel up off the ground blasting out of the ess curves. If you're at all interested in cars, this event's photos is a must-see.
Other than that, I don't have anything right now. I've been extremely busy, and in fact I intended to do this update about two weeks ago but never even had time to complete what I wanted to. So, I now have two entire photo sessions from PIR waiting to go. The pictures are pretty good though, so they're worth waiting and checking back later for. I'm also going to add the schedule for the Tucson and Sierra Vista SCCA regions as well as ASRA to my race schedule for 2000.
I might be able to get some of the new stuff online this weekend, although there is an autocross practice on Sunday. They sent out the registration today (Wednesday) which means that if I have it in the mail tomorrow, it should get to the guy doing registration by Friday or Saturday. If not, then, um.. I guess I'll have to try and register on-site on Sunday. Hopefully they aren't planning on making a habit out of sending out the registration forms 4 days before the event.
In other news, I sent in my application to join the SCCA yesterday! I probably would have continued to put it off even longer if it weren't for the fact that there is going to be a divisional competition on February 19th and 20th with folks coming in from surrounding states to compete. The only requirement other than the normal stuff is that you be an SCCA member. So, I will finally be joining the club officially so that I can compete and see how I do against people other than the normal Phoenix crowd. Hopefully there will be a couple of other HS cars so that I'll actually have similar competition, although I also hope they're not too fast, since I want to win, too.
So that's about it for now. I'll be getting new stuff online soon, but it's getting almost comical with me posting updates saying that I'll soon be putting new material online. Really, I do actually intend to stay on top of this stuff at some point. Until then, feel free to email me and tell me that you're getting tired of reading about what I plan on doing someday.
The first update here is a large gallery of pictures from the November ASRA Race which I took pictures at. That's right, I did not participate at this event. I loaned my camera mount and video camera to Tage to get some in-car video though while I took pictures from the stands. I don't have the video quite ready to go online yet, but I'll get a hot lap online soon. Until then you can enjoy the action photos taken and a few examples of cars which didn't exactly finish the day without incident.
The other area is something completely different. Although I'm not exactly sure of the best way to describe it yet, I'm calling it my PhotoChop Gallery. It's basically a collection of photos of cars which have been modified in popular graphics programs to give the appearance of high performance. Most of the pictures were posted to message boards or sent to me by other people, so it's not just a bunch of pictures of my Civic. Check it out and be prepared to smile.
So, that's about it for now. If you're reading this and wondering where the results are from the December 5th autocross, you're not alone. I actually don't compile the results, I just post them online as soon as the scoring guy sends them to me. Once I do get the results, you can be sure that they'll be posted for everyone to see. I will also be posting the final points standings for the fall season which should also list which places will receive trophies at the awards banquet in January.
I will also probably try to get a summary of the fall season posted online here some time soon. I really learned a lot at the driver's school and was able to post a great improvement over my previous times at the event the next day. I'm starting to feel like I'm actually getting the most out of my car rather than every run being a collection of minor mistakes. As always, send me an email or fill out the visitor survey if you like what you see here, or would like to see more of any particular area.
The recognition couldn't have come at a better time as I actually have a ton of material to put up this month. In addition to the "normal" stuff which I have been putting off for several months already, I have some video footage from the ASRA race at Firebird which I'll be putting online, photos from that event, video from the NASA event at Phoenix International Raceway, and photos from that event as well.
On top of all that, next week is the Phoenix autocross driver's school as well as the final event of the fall season. Count on a review of the season's events as well as a little bit on what I learned in the school. I've also got a few little surprises that I'm going to be putting online over the next month or two that are pretty entertaining.
Well, you may be reading all this and wondering what exactly I updated over the 4-day Thanksgiving weekend. Well, to be honest, almost nothing. Between doing family stuff on Thanksgiving, housework on Friday, the NASA event on Saturday, and some general cleanup stuff on Sunday, the only thing I had time to update at all is the Event Calendar which is now pretty much a list of the Phoenix SCCA and NASA events for all of 2000. I'll be adding the Tucson SCCA and ASRA events as soon as I have schedules for them. I'm no longer going to be tracking the SoCal events, but I'll probably provide some links to the larger SoCal groups so anyone interested can check them out. There are certainly some great tracks out there.
So there is much for me to do getting new pictures and video online as well as some reviews and commentary when I can find enough time to finish one of the many projects I'm currently working on. Check back often as this will be a very busy month with some real high adrenaline material on the way.
Also new is the 1999 Cactus Corvair Club Autocross photo area. I didn't have much description for this area, but there are some good photos here of my Civic and several of the other cars which ran at the event.
I also opened the Online Pre-Registration for the December 5th autocross. It sports numerous refinements behind the scenes and a comments field for anyone who has special requests or information they'd like to pass on to the registrar. Let me know what you think of the form and if there's anything we can do to make registration easier.
And now for something completely different. I updated the "My Computer" page. I actually got a second computer and monitor some time in July or so but I never saw the need to update the web page. Well, there's still really no need, but I figured anything worth doing is worth doing right. So, for anyone who wondered what kind of dark ages equipment I actually created this whole web site from, you can get the latest info.
Lastly, I've added two new videos to my Racing Videos area. They're both from the September 25th Cactus Corvair Club autocross. One is of another NSX running through the cones and the other is Cecil Walker in his Mustang Cobra.
Just yesterday I was at Firebird raceway watching a race on their 1.6 mile road course hosted by ASRA. Although I didn't participate, I was on hand to provide camera support for Tage Evanson who was running his CSP Acura Integra GS-R at the event on his new Kumho tires. I've got some good pictures that I'll soon be getting developed and over an hour of video footage I can pick and choose from to decide what to put online. Check back soon as this was an awesome race that I will have new material from.
Also just a week from this writing there will be an event hosted at PIR by the local NASA group. It's a two day event, so I'll probably be heading out there for some pictures and video as well. Check back often as we're getting into the thick of the race season now and there will be lots of new sights and sounds to tempt your senses over the coming months.
However, chances are that you didn't come here looking for gas mileage figures. The big news with this week's update are the highly anticipated Racing Videos! Yes, after weeks of stalling, I finished the first installment of my racing video area. There's about 100 mb of MPEG's of my Civic as well as some other cars, such as an Acura NSX and Tage's Integra GS-R.
While it took me weeks to get these videos online and on their own web page, you can be happy to know that there are many more just waiting to be converted to MPEG format and uploaded to the site. Stay tuned, as this area will certainly see some activity in the near future. Until then, happy downloading!
After that, I looked over my Willow Springs Photos and remembered that I actually had two more pictures of my car actually on the track. They were taken by a professional photographer and I left the files in a different directory than the rest of my photos so I wound up forgetting about them. Serves me right for putting off doing that update for 3 months. Anyway, the Willow Springs page has been updated and has two great new pictures of my car online now.
Also having received a facelift is the Arizona Region SCCA Solo2 Online-Preregistration Form. While the look is about the same, there is now a hyperlinked FAQ which can be viewed by clicking on any topic in the registration form which you are unsure about. Anyone new to the sport should find this very helpful and informative.
Lastly, just a note that my domain is finally being transferred to its new location. Unfortunately, some people are unable to send me email depending on where the whois/DNS tables have reached. I don't really understand it, but basically, any place that hasn't already received the new tables is trying to resolve a mail address for me at best.com. Best.com already has the new host tables though, so they're rejecting it saying that autocrossing.com isn't hosted there anymore. Great, huh? Hopefully by Monday I'll be fully operational however. I don't get much mail on the weekends anyway so I'll just have to hope that anything which is important arrives safely.
Of greater interest however are the long-awaited Willow Springs Raceway pictures. Yes, months after having done the events, I finally made good on my promise to put something online. Although there are no pictures of my own car out on the track (!) I do have many pictures of Porsches, an Integra Type-R, and Carl's Supra Turbo running around the track and having a blast. Take some time to check it out, if for no other reason than the fact that you can see for yourself that I finally put some new pictures on my web site!
I'm also working on getting some pictures from the Cactus Corvair Club autocross online. Now that event was run in mid-September, so I'm not quite as far behind with that, but I still wish I'd been able to get this stuff done sooner. Oh well. Check back soon, because there is certainly a whole lot of new stuff in the pipeline.
In other news, I have a video capture card now and have been busy preparing new content for my web site. It will be moving to a new provider pretty soon where I'll have a lot more space to upload files. The site will still be accessed at autocrossing.com, but it will actually be hosted on a totally different server. Hopefully there will be no surprises to this process.
Although I've done a pretty poor job of doing regular updates over the last six months or so that I've had this web site, I've still managed to get over 95,000 hits since March 1st, 1999. With some luck, a little promotion, and maybe even regular additions of actual content, I may even be able to gather 200,000 hits in 2000. If you have any comments or suggestions on stuff you'd like to see here, feel free to send me an email letting me know what you like or would like to see more of here.
Also finally fixed is the last picture on the about me page. Apparently this has been broken for a month or two, but no one bothered to tell me. It worked fine on my linux machine of course, but I guess I never checked the copy actually on autocrossing.com. I finally got my statistics working today and noticed that there were 22 failed requests for the image just in the last 35 days. If anything, this is a cry out into the dark ether(net) asking that people please email me if I do something stupid. In fact, feel free to email me if I do something right too. Just for the record, Autocrossing.com has recorded just over 15,000 hits in the last 35 days, and a little over 86,000 hits are in the logs from March 1, 1999 to the current date. I accidentally lost a week's worth of logs during one of my busiest periods, and consequently the hit count should be about 4000 or so higher. As it is, that still works out to an average of 418 hits per day, or 12,500 hits per month. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll be celebrating 100,000 hits.
I've also been promising a review and some pictures from Willow Springs when I went there in July and August. Well, I may actually do that this weekend after the Corvair Club autocross. I hope to get some fresh new pictures of my car at this event. As I may have mentioned elsewhere, cameras are not allowed at the normal SCCA site, so I haven't been able to really take any pictures except in Tucson, where I don't go very often. So that will give me yet another thing to do.
In case anyone is really curious what I've been doing with my time, I've actually started playing around with security and things on my linux box. I've since been successful in intercepting my password for both telnet and FTP sessions within my intranet thus convincing myself that I should really go to Secure Shell and WU-FTP which do not broadcast passwords in plaintext. I also cracked a password on my linux box with a simple dictionary attack in a mere 3 minutes and 26 seconds. Yet another reason for passwords which have no basis in dictionary words. I may put up a little page about this stuff some time, but obviously I'm having enough trouble just keeping up with all the car-related stuff. Stay tuned however, as new stuff is always in the works.
As there was an autocross last Sunday (September 12th) you may be visiting here expecting to see the results. Well, I'm almost done converting them and should have them online by tomorrow. In fact, if you're reading this on Monday and I still haven't gotten the results up, feel free to send me an email letting me know that I'm being lazy.
I'll also be posting a recap of the autocross, as well as reviews of my adventures at Willow Springs in my car in July, as well as when I went there to run in a 94 Toyota Supra Turbo with my brother-in-law. It was very fun, and I promise to eventually put up something on my web site here. Feel free to send me mail nagging me about that too in fact.
The other "big thing" is the online registration for the AZ SCCA which I've finally mostly finished. I'll be updating it again pretty soon, but right now it's up and working for any and all who wish to signup online for the next event.
I have not had a lot of free time lately, and this trend will likely continue until I finish a very long and involved process which I'm going through right now. It is a good thing, and worry not; I am not giving up on the web site by any stretch of the imagination. See you at the track!
Well, I returned to Willow Springs raceway about a week ago to race around the track in a borrowed Toyota Supra Turbo and I've been pretty busy working on the AZ Region SCCA on-line registration in my recent free time. I also had a nice visit to Plano, Texas a few weeks ago as well. The end result is that I haven't had any free time to update stuff on my web page here, even though I've got plenty of material I'd like to get online.
Worry not, I should have something new up here in the next week or two. Most likely it will be the pictures from my adventures at Willow Springs in July and August. Heck, if I wait long enough, I can even write up how I do at the September 12th autocross. Hopefully I'll have something up before then, however.
I'm also moving more towards higher-bandwidth requirements and a 1024x768 format rather than my traditional 800x600 format so if it looks like I'm trying to fit more on the screen that I should, consider moving up to a larger monitor and higher resolution. It could change your world forever.. or at least you'll be able to see my web pages more easily.
The next big thing for summer was my adventures in Buttonwillow, California at Buttonwillow raceway. It wasn't an actual race, but rather an "open track" event where you just race around the road course in 4 sessions of 20 minutes to see what you can do. See my Buttonwillow Review for pictures and a little analysis of the event.
Although it's too late for me to do them tonight, I'd still like to write up a review of my autocross adventure in late June in sweltering hot Tucson, as well as my track event at Willow Springs. I've got some very special pictures in store for the Willow Springs event so check back often, as I hope to have that page finished by no later than August 15th.
So you may be wondering what's new at all. Well, not really anything. I thought the front page graphics were getting a little stale, so I decided to replace them with some photos taken at Buttonwillow raceway instead. The good news is that I have pretty much finished taking care of all the stuff that had been keeping me from doing anything with the web site, so I should be able to get some new stuff on here in the next week or so.
Also available now are the June 6th Results. Sorry it took longer than usual for those to be posted. Between work commitments and the open track at Buttonwillow, I didn't have all the free time I'd liked. Watch for more updates in the near future.
I also updated my Civic cost of ownership page with the latest gas mileage figures. Now that summer's here and I'm using the A/C almost all the time, my 10-tank moving average has dipped under 37mpg. Otherwise, not much new there. Owning a Civic isn't all that expensive when you take out the upgrade stuff.
I also posted a Mini-analysis of the June 5th autocross, which is the first time I've gotten to use the Kumho tires on the track. I'll be updating that page and moving it to my normal autocross area as soon as I get the track map scanned and all of the results so I can do a better comparison to the other cars. This event wasn't part of a series, and thus there are no points towards trophies, but it still offered a great chance to test out my new tires which performed great.
I received the pre-race orientation mailer from Open Track a few days ago, and will be leaving on Friday morning for Buttonwillow Raceway to attend my first road course driver's school. Hopefully all my gear will be up to the task and nothing will break. Since the event and commute between Arizona and California will take up most all of my weekend, I probably won't have time to post anything on my site on Sunday. By mid-week though, I may have something put together.
Lastly, I updated a couple things on my Solo2 Checklist after doing my race prep on Saturday and remembering things like pen/paper and sweatshirt. Also, it originally said that I didn't have a portable air tank, but I just purchased one, albeit one that has promptly broken. Good old Wal-Mart auto supplies. I know I really wanted to have to deal with exchanging a $20 air tank two days before I have to leave for California, but such is life. Better that broke than something like my jack, or a tire, or something I really need.
I also completed the initial draft of my Solo2 Checklist. I may make changes to it after this weekend's race if I discover anything else that I should bring with me. If you're not an autocrosser and were ever curious what kinds of loony stuff we try to cram into our car's small trunks to make us go fast at the track, take a look and see what you're missing out on.
So, I've decided that it's probably a good idea if I actually stay on top of all the updates for my web site. So, today I finally have published the remaining two autocrossing MP3 recordings from Tucson. These recordings were taken from my Sony 8mm camcorder with an external mic, all mounted to the front bumper of my car.
The recordings are from the same track layout as the first one, but during my more aggressive runs. The second one was one of my faster times and has lots of run-ins with the rev-limiter. The third recording was when I was experimenting with using the handbrake to aid with rotation of the car. Lots more skidding, and the very audible running down of one cone.
I've finally got most all of my racing gear purchased for the Open Track event at Buttonwillow Raceway in California. I'll soon be posting up information about all that and my reviews about the different products and how well I think they perform.
Since it took me that long just to do April's race, I'm just going to resign to the fact that I don't have the energy to do May 2nd's results. If cameras were allowed at EFA and I could be taking pictures at these events maybe it would be different, but such are the rules we have to deal with to get a good race surface.
Look for a new area coming soon where I'll describe all the fun things that I'm doing to upgrade my car in preparation for Open Track racing! That's right, flogging my Civic on autocross courses isn't enough, so I'm taking it out on road courses now! My first event is going to be an Open Track/Driver's School at Buttonwillow Raceway in California on June 12th. So far I've purchased a second set of wheels, Kumho race tires, a helmet, a jack, a torque wrench, racing brake pads, $200 worth of video camera mounting equipment, and I'm still not sure I'm done yet. Am I crazy? Well.. maybe, but I'm having fun so far at it.
While I won't be able to put up an analysis of the road course school until mid-to-late June, I will probably have all the preparation info up before then. I'm also working on a racer's checklist for autocrosses which I might have posted by the weekend since it's already about two thirds finished anyway. Check back often and feel free to email me with any comments or suggestions. As always, a link to my email address is at the bottom of the page.
I also added a link to the 1999 Cactus Patch Series race results on the main index. Notably still not updated is my personal commentary on the last two events due to the fact that I have been rather busy getting gear together for an open track event in Buttonwillow, California in about 4 weeks. More on that later.
The page that I do have which is new today is the 1999 Racing Calendar which shows a listing of where you can go racing in the Phoenix and So-Cal area this year. Inspired by Doug Hayashi's 1999 Race Calendar, the Autocrossing.com calendar will focus on events open to the novice or intermediate racer in the Phoenix area. Hopefully over time I'll find out about more track events and be able to expand the calendar to include even more events.
In other news, I finally got my camera mount for my car. I installed it on Thursday and have taken it back out today. It's not quite what I had imagined, but it should work well enough. I think the next time I install it though, it will be for good. I'll get pictures of it posted online after I get a chance to re-install and take pictures.
Next, I posted up a ton of new pictures from the March 27/28th autocross in Tucson. Most of them turned out very well, especially compared to my pictures of the autocrosses in December. The new Nikon N90 I'm using just makes all the difference in the ease of getting good pictures. As I gain more experience, I should be able to improve on these, but it will be a while until the next autocross.
Also new is another PERL script that I've recently completed. It's the PAX Calculator! What it does is allow you to compare your PAX-adjusted time in it's raw form to other PAX-adjusted times in raw form. For example, if your raw time in HS is a 46.533, it will tell you that's the same as an SS raw time of 44.010. It's kind of handy, and was fun to write anyway.
Lastly, I finally completed the major revision for my Civic info page. Yes, new pictures, information, and tons of commentary awaits you at Brandon's Civic HX infopage. Since my stats showed it to be the very first thing that people visited most often, it's finally a full-featured page of it's own now. If you want to see the first pictures of my Civic with it's racing decals and learn the story behind them, you can't afford to miss out on this new and exciting update! Well, yeah, it'll be there tomorrow too, but hey; I need something to sound exciting until I get the rest of my racing pictures and sounds online. As they say, stay tuned...
I've had the results for the March 7th race for about a week and a half now, and I still have not posted them online due to my avoidance of the web site planning. This is something that I've got to get on top of. For any interested, I won in HS Open again, although second place was pretty close still. I think there was only about a second or so between us, possibly less. I'll get the exact results posted soon.
In other news, I've re-written most of my survey form online to make it a little more relevant. The big survey was written in 1996 or so, and asked all kinds of questions about what school you went to, and other silly things I couldn't care less about. The new one is much more racing-oriented and more meaningful. It's just not done yet, so I haven't posted it online. Hardly anyone ever sends me surveys, so it's not a high priority.
I would ordinarily make a promise about getting my web site updated this weekend, but I'm going to be racing in Tucson this weekend, most likely on both Saturday and Sunday. Since cameras aren't allowed as the Phoenix track, but are allowed at the Tucson track, I'm going to make the 125 mile drive on down to Tucson to hopefully get some pictures of racing in action. An old friend of mine, Julie Lazarr, also should be there to take pictures of my car now sporting magnetic decals. Everyone loves good pictures, so I'm sure people will like pictures more than they care about seeing charts and graphs showing that I won my last race in Phoenix. I also will bring my video camera if I make it to the Saturday session and will try to get an MP3 recorded of a whole autocross. Should be lots of revving, screeching of tires, braking and all the stuff that makes a motorhead's blood race.
Also to soon be updated is the page on here that describes my car. By looking at the stats for my web site, the single most visited page excluding the index is the page about my car. This would be extremely cool if that page wasn't so cheesy. So look for it to be updated soon to be more exciting, and have pictures both of my car in street form, and with all my exciting magnetic racing decals on it. I'll try to get into a little more detail too, but since that sounds a lot like work, I'm just going to hold off on that for now.
Finally, calling out for an update is the page about me. It's about four months old now, which is kind of a lot considering I'd only been to two autocrosses at the time, and I held what amounted to a totally different job then too. It was made before I got my spiffy new camera too, so I'll have to get to work on updating that too. So folks, that's what's going on. I don't know how many people really visit my web site on a regular basis, but if you're one of them, be sure to check back over the coming weeks and expect to see some bold new changes. Until then, enjoy your journeys on the road of life.
There was an autocross on the 7th, which I attended. Unfortunately, the only other H-stock car was Heidi Kmetz's Saturn SL1, although both her and her dad drove it, so that sort of gave me more competition. Still, I wish there were more cars in HS. I don't have the official times, but this was an even faster track than last time, which rewards the powerful cars. Heidi's Saturn has some awesome 205/50-15 BFG R1's which are awesome in the turns, but the SL1 only makes something like 90-100hp, compared to my 115. My Yoko's sure aren't R1's, but they provide terrific grip for a street tire, and I was able to run a lap time around 46.5 or so, compared to Heidi and her dad (Mike) turning around a 48-something in the SL1. I'll post the exact results as soon as they're officially released.
In other news, I decided to clean up the My Computer page. It had been quite a while since I'd done anything with it. Lately, it just hasn't been playing very nice to me, in fact locking up completely about 7 or 8 times just while I was doing this update to my homepage. This is the computer I've rebuilt a zillion times, reinstalled many operating systems on, tried about 5 video cards, two motherboards, 3 CPU's, and all kinds of other stuff. It's just always had problems.
So, some time this year, I'm going to stop messing around with this thing and just get a new system, most likely from Micron. Unfortunately, to get it with all the equipment and stuff that I want would be about $2400 or so, and then I'd still need to add a new scanner on top of that. Possibly a video capture card as well. Who knows. I'm putting it off for as long as I can. Oh well. That's probably more than anyone reading this wants to know, but hey, it's my page after all, so I guess I get to write whatever I want. ... Ok, that's it.
Ok, well, I still haven't cleaned up the look of the page, but I've added a pointless (but still fun) new CGI script to my stuff page. It's called WebLibs and it's an adaptation of those old MadLibs stories that you might have played when you were a kid. I know I personally thought they were just the coolest thing in the world but didn't always have someone to fill in the blanks with. Well, this program lets you play even if you're just at work and don't want anyone to know you're making up your own stories alone in your cubicle.
I'm still doing strategic planning on getting that seagull photo area set up on here. Since I want it to be a quality product, I keep putting it off until I really have enough time to do it right. I may complete it in a week or two though. Stay tuned.
The first theme is Sunrises, Sunsets, and Clouds. It's got 13 of my better photographs in this category and is nicely laid out in a table format with very brief descriptions of each photo. Hopefully I will be able to put out a new theme each month, and update the existing ones along the way as well.
The new race season starts in just two short weeks, so I should have new results and photographs within the next month. I have high hopes for this season, so I am very anxious to get started. Also, I can't wait to do more action photography and possibly even see if there's any money to be made at this photography stuff. Most likely not, but it's at least worth a shot.
I also updated the Civic front-end, which I don't have any links to anymore, but the link from VTEC.net points there, so I have to keep it up to date every now and then. Other than that, not much else has been updated. I've got a number of new pictures which can be posted, but I think those will have to wait until tomorrow, or else next weekend.
The first thing that I had to update was the About My Civic page. It had lots of stuff lumped all into that one page that didn't really belong there anymore. So, it's mostly just trimmed down, has newer pictures of my car replacing the first ones, but still has the same text. No real biggie.
Next up was the Civic Cost of Ownership page, which is technically new, but is really just the costs table from the above mentioned "My Civic" page. It's updated, has my latest gas mileage figures and such, and now has a running total of the cost of owning my Civic.
The last key part which came from the formerly overstuffed "My Civic" page is the Sounds of Racing page. It's both a carry-over of the old page, plus 4 new sounds which I just finally posted up today. They're from a race I videotaped about two months ago, but then again, I'm not known for doing lightning quick updates here. Still, the 4 new files are easily the best, partly because they're of the much better sounding Integra Type-R instead of my Civic. It's worth checking out and probably downloading an MP3 player for if you don't already have one.
Finally, I have some new links out for the first time in what must be about a year and a half. Yeah, that's kind of a while, but I've never really known just what to do with links to this, that, or the other so I just kind of stopped updating my other links page after a little while. So, finally there is a new Hondas and Racing Links page available. I have yet to see a good way to organize a large list without just putting it in a large list or else putting it in a table. They're just always long and wordy. Kind of like this last paragraph. Hmmm.
So, the solution was to have multiple photo areas. However, there's going to be overlap between my Racing Photo area and my Civic coverage area, since in the Civic area, I'm really going to get into the details of the race and stuff, as opposed to just telling you the technical and artistic elements of the photographs, as they apply to racing. Possibly this will make sense to you, possibly it will not. Is there a point? Yes, but I'm too tired right now to try and spend even more words explaining it to an unknown audience of people. So hey, just check out the pictures that I've got and come back often for new pictures. My next race is on December 20th in Tucson, supposing I can make that race. Looking at how well I did in this one (1st in class) I think I'm going to like this hobby a lot. Yes, I'm hooked.
That was actually done on the 28th, and with today being the 29th, I decided that major changes were in order. So, after about an hour and a half of playing around, I came up with a new index that almost looks sort of like I might like it. It still desperately needs something, but since I'm not sure what, it's just going to sit the way it is for now.
One of the other things that I actually got to update was the info about my Civic. I've put on a lot of miles, and even got new tires since that page was last updated. It will soon be broken up in to two parts though. One for slightly more detailed information about the car itself and it's current running order, and a second page for all about the running costs and maintenance and stuff like that. There are also some new sounds linked off that page that can be downloaded and played with any MP3 player.
The next big addition is the latest photo area that I've added to my homepage. I've actually taken a total of four rolls of film since last updating a photo area on my homepage, but this was the only one that I felt was well-suited to my homepage. One was of night-time photography and random experimental imagery, another was just another set of pictures from Tonto Natural Bridge, and the last was a black and white set of pictures from around town. The set I added though is of my drives through Globe, eastern Arizona, and Mount Lemmon. It's one of my best sets yet, if not the best one of all, so I encourage you to visit that page and poke around.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that in response to the feedback of my dedicated fans (both of them) I decided to continue the practice of thoroughly describing each of the pictures. This gives the area more of a story line or at least tells you what elements of the picture I took hold photographic value. I hope that the dozen or so people who actually visit my Civic Trips area will appreciate the time and effort I put into this area. Feedback is always welcome!