SOLO II Committee Meeting Minutes 3/09/04

Members in Attendance – Jerry Lamb, Gretchen Everett, Lou Ann Christensen, Aaron Pailthorp, Dick Willy, Val Korry, Mark McCooey, Bud Bohrer, Mike Cangie, Mike Leuty, Scott Miller, Ron Bauer, Tom LeCoque, Tim Irwin.

Minutes Review – A few minor typo changes in the January minutes.

Board Report – After further review of the sanction fees, it was determined that Rally hadn’t paid any of their fees for 2003. It was clearly stated that Solo is totally opposed to the raise and the group agreed to wait and see what the additional Rally money does to the overall situation before they make any decisions to go up against the Solo group. There was a rally cross with 97 entrants. Kevin Dietz chaired the event along with Sherry Masterson. All event proceeds went to the general regional fund. Lesson learned, more coordination between venues. It was clear that the focal person should be an autocross person just based on the fact that it was so similar to an autocross event. Race held their racing seminar with 13 attending. They will be holding a high performance car clinic on April 3. No fancy car will be necessary. You can show up with your autocross vehicle. Due to cost efficiencies the Nov/Dec and Jan/Feb. newsletter issues will be consolidated. The all-city rally is coming up on April 25^th. This will be a gimmick rally that is usually a great time.

Treasurer’s Report – Please see attached. Not much activity during January/February. First event was held in March, so we will see some income.

WWSCC Report – WW is working on a remote timing display. John Henderschott is the new WW secretary. Slush 3 was held on January 29^th. Ace is putting on an event Oct. 3rd and Miata Club on August 8^th. Next meeting is March 16^th, a Tuesday rather than March 15^th so that people can travel back from LA. The first event will be April 18^th. A question was raised regarding how many people took advantage of the “hire a worker” situation at the last slush series. A bigger discussion was held regarding the general pool of workers being used by this club vs. having all of the other WW clubs step up to make sure that event can actually be held in a timely and safe environment. Several ideas have been discussed to help them with the organization of their events. The club has been offered training on several occasions and tends to ignore these requests. A suggestion was made that ALL event chiefs be mentioned in the event plan, but unfortunately these chiefs just don’t hold enough experience.

Equipment Report – Solo Bus Maintenance; Karl received a packet of information regarding preventive maintenance from Brett & Jason Spore. Most of the scheduling information was more applicable to heavy fleet use, but when scaled back according to our use could be helpful. The prices were reasonable and the logic seemed to make sense. Karl passed around the information for people to review. The van is due for an oil change, so a motion was made and passed to send the bus E.K. Bus Sales and have it checked out. Karl will work with them to determine which items need to be done based on work that’s been done recently. An amendment was made to add that once a year we also have the brake system flushed out. We also need to have the trailer brought to sky-race trailers once a year to have maintenance done. Wireless Mics; they were used at the last event and the only problem seemed to be the wind. It will be necessary to purchase some wind balls to cover the top. A suggestion was made that to help with mud gathering in the timing van a yard of gravel be brought in and placed in the spot that we always park the van. Karl will talk to BMP to see their feelings regarding the situation. A suggestion was also made that we do a little more research before purchasing the radios to make sure that we are getting a reliable product.

OLD BUSINESS

Event Chairs for 04’ – Jodie LeCoque has volunteered to cover event #2, which will now be held at BMP. The May 23^rd event will be held at BMP. We still need to cover two events on May 30^th and October 24^th. Both October 10^th and 24^th events will be held at BMP.

Annual Tech – Annual tech will be held on March 20^th at Fordahl Motorsports. Keith is also planning on holding a second clinic at Jim’s Details Shop. You must have competed in at least 5 events in each of the past two seasons. Keith will post more information on the autox list with details of all of the requirements.

NEW BUSINESS

Event #1 Recap - The event chair Scott Miller made one comment, it was “damn wet!” Course set-up was done in the dark due to scheduling conflicts. The course was very interesting and many people hit cones on every single run. There didn’t seem to be much confusion regarding the new classing structure especially with the great handout that Mike Leuty created and all of the hard work Jodi put into database changes and corrections. Scott received a nice round of applause.

Consolidated classes & New registration process – The new procedures seemed to work well. The changes were very well received. The only problem encountered was a power issue for the laptop to do live data entry. Rather than borrowing the generator from timing it will be important to find something that can be used specifically for registration. There was also an issue with transferring the data with a floppy disk from registration to timing. We may need to develop a wireless network. Joe is working on one for the timing display that we may be able to hook into. Scott Miller has the inverter.

Posting/Radios/Headsets – The consolidated classes worked fine, but it makes posting extremely important. Without an announcer who was totally on the ball letting people know what was going on competitors did not have any idea where they stood in their class.

Printing results can be done between runs very easily. It will be necessary to get an additional power strip for inside the van. We will continue to work on this issue with Joe and his wireless network idea that may actually be able to feed the timing display. We all agree that this is an important issue and will come up with a solution for this problem.

Safety Steward Class – We will be holding a class on Sunday, March 13^th. We currently have 10 people signed up to attend the class.

Novice School – The Novice School will be held on March 27^th at BMP. She currently has several instructors and has received about 140 emails. She needs to go through them and see exactly how many of those are students. She will keep us updated on her needs.

Event #2 – Jodie LeCoque has volunteered to be the event chair. It will be held at BMP on March 28^th. Thank you Jodie!

Event #3 – Karl and Kevin have volunteered to be event chairs. Thanks guys! The pre-event function will be held at Grant’s Brewery the night before hand. To help not blow-up the timing van, Kevin has agreed to pull the trailer behind his personal vehicle. A motion was made to pay for Kevin’s diesel fuel from Seattle to Yakima and back again. Jodie and Tom have volunteered to drive the bus over.

Clarification – Event Chair and Solo Bus driver both get free entry to the event they are volunteering for. This means one event chair and one bus driver. If more than one person volunteers, they will need to work it out between the two of them. Last year a decision was made to give each specialty chief a free rulebook. A motion was made and passed that we NOT do this again next year. We will continue doing the Chief’s Jacket and patches instead.

GOO

The meeting was adjourned at 9:08 p.m.