SOLO II Committee Meeting Minutes 3/9/10
Members In Attendance—Jackie Kmetz, Tasha Mikko, Dick Willy, Bud Bohrer, Mike Leuty, Mark McCooey, Russell O’Connell, Glenn Austin, Gretchen Everett, Charles Aggenbach, Keith Brown, Val Korry, Rick Vomenici, Jerry Lamb, Trenell Stevens. Guests—Tim Brennan, Daniel Wilhelmson, Cass Marchant.
Minutes Review—Correction was made to chiefs of tech by email. Minutes approved. Dick moved, Jerry seconded.
NWR Board Report— Jackie reported that LouAnn was at the meeting, said she is getting close to turning over the books and had to replace the laptop because she spilled water on the old one. Val talked about the successful Corvette show, but expressed that he really wanted to have a Solo car and person involved to help with recruiting. Saturday attendance was big, Sunday was lighter. There were about 12k people overall. We are given a booth by the show, so that is a big help and we sponsored a national SS champion to come to the show (show owner’s request). The booth is also shared with Sovereign.
WWSCC Report—Keith reported that the final slush event was this last Sunday and the weather was great in the morning and turned rainy in the afternoon. A number of drivers didn’t take all runs because of the weather (and paid workers thanks to UWFSAE). There were a lot of timing issues throughout the day due to some technical and some operator issues. $200 was collected for timing lights being hit and cord being run over. Jerry suggested that we communicate that courses in general should be adjusted to be longer and create more slow elements before the finish. The second event, Ace’s event, was a gorgeous day and timing issues were a lot smoother when they came up. The sun played some havoc at the end. A motion was made to approve the series as an official series—seconded and approved. There is still an opening for VP if anyone is interested. Next event is TS Understeer/Oversteer in Packwood April 24th and 25th which are Championship events #1 and #2. April 3rd is a closed TS practice.
Norpac Report—San Francisco is going to run a divisional on July 24th/25th (last weekend) which runs at same time as some WW events. The Packwood Tour is the other Divisional event. There will be no divisional series but the Packwood NT will be the Championship event. You can enter in just the Packwood event and win the championship. We won’t be asked for trophy money now because the money that Tirerack was going to pay for a divisional fee (if was a standalone event) will now go towards the championship portion and trophies. Details are still to be worked out. Sound will be important issue at National Tour this year and will be fully enforced our Packwood event.
Jerry—sound meter, anything over 90 you will be notified as a warning, anything over 100 it will be requested that you make adjustments to come under the limit. You get 2 warnings and chances to fix but on the 3rd measurement over 100 your runs will be disqualified. This rule applies for the vehicle, not the driver. Nationals is still going to fine tune the wording to be more straightforward. There should be unsportsmanlike conduct elements for people trying to work the system.
Drift Report—it’s the beginning of the season. The BMP folks ruled that drift cannot use any portion of the staging area. Course design will be affected, but better than not running on this site at all in the future. BMP has also had some problems with oil and other leaks by cars. In response Russell posted a bulletin that will be well promoted before, at registration and at events about how cars will be tested for problems during tech as well how they appear to work during the event. BMP was pleased with the notice and hopes that it will resolve the problem. Drift will also be changing how grid operates so that the cars return to the same spot after every run so that during the event it will be easier to determine which cars are having leak problems. SSS license update for Ed and Matia, the drift school is putting pressure on everyone involved to make it happen in time. The divisional steward has them and should have them submitted to the National office in time to get the insurance sanctions without late fees. Rick Vomenici was helpful working with BMP and BSCC to let drift share the event date for 4/19. School will be $60 for SCCA members, $75 for non-members. Drift is looking at using Motorsport Reg for event registration to utilize pre-paid registration. Downside is a 4.5% fee, paypal is around 3%, race uses Motorsport Reg, M.R. direct deposits money into an account and has a lot of reporting options. A motion was made and approved to allow Drift to use Motorsport Reg for the 2010 season.
Treasurer Report – Not a lot of activity this month. We have paid our portion of Coneheads.
OLD BUSINESS
2010 Specialty Chiefs - Couple positions still open. Becoming critical to fill now that our first event is in three weeks. Stock half of Registration, Stock half of Grid, and Trophies. Davin Stardivant is interested in filling one of the positions and Jackie has tried to direct him towards filling the registration opening.
2010 Event Chiefs – We NEED someone to step up and chair our first event. June 27th event will be Karl and Amy. Rick Vomenici will chair September 26th event. Dick Willy will chair May 1st and 2nd. March 28th Jackie will co-chair with Trenell Stevens. Keith Brown will take June 26th Pro Solo. Glenn Austin will chair July 5th. Anyone that volunteers to be the Event Chair gets their competition runs paid for. Not the whole day, but your scheduled half of the day. Chairs are also invited to the FREE Core Workers event later this season in September.
Equipment Purchase Updates
Blower – Shane had $1100 approved for a particular goat blower. We do not know if this purchase has happened yet.
Sound Meter – Jerry has made a purchase - Extex which is very similar to what Karen recommended. It is the process of being shipped.
New Laptop – Arrangements are being made. Gretchen has a contact through her IT department and he will be able to help us purchase a DELL with a 20% discount. This should all happen prior to the next meeting.
New timer display – Jerry has contacted the distributor and has not been able to confirm that this unit will work with our current Pro Solo equipment. He has looked into Race America equipment. The 8” digits display is $1500. There is also some question as to whether this will work with our equipment as well. Plus we also need to confirm this unit will work wirelessly.
BSCC display case – We are waiting for confirmation from Jodi. We need to figure out exactly what type of case we need to purchase. We need to make sure we know the specific size of their display before anything is purchased.
NEW BUSINESS
2010 Schedule – Jackie has rearranged the S/NS run order. This means that there will be shuffling between the Stock and NS halves of the day throughout the season. The vote was 10 to 3 for rearranging the schedule so that the breakout is fair throughout the year. This means that announcements will need to be made often and loudly since we are going against the traditional way we run our schedules. Tasha will create flyers to be displayed at Registration, and Joe should also be announcing this on the NWR-SOLO website. This also means that there may be people who show up the day of the event for the wrong half of the day and we may have to take this under consideration on an individual basis.
Rule books for Annual Tech – Last month we discussed and voted to drop the requirement that each competitor must have a rulebook to be eligible for annual tech. This does not match what is actually happening with through the National office. Rulebooks are still necessary for annual tech participants. A motion was made and approved for our treasurer to purchase a total of 40 books.
Torque Steerers renting cones for (4/24 – 4/25) – A motion was made and approved to allow this to happen for a total of $50.
Sanicans and dumpsters – Jackie has made arrangements for both the sanicans and dumpsters for ALL Packwood events. She has also made arrangements for the additional cleanings for the Pro Solo, Evo School, and National Tour. Thank you Jackie!!
Annual Tech – The first day will be held this Saturday at Jim’s Detail Shop. Charles is aware that he will not have the rulebooks from National office yet, but he will let people pre-pay and keep a list until they arrive.
Novice School – There is currently not a Novice School scheduled. Since there is no room available right now at BMP or Packwood, someone will need to contact Shelton to see if there is a day available there. If Rick sends Dick an email, he will give him the contact name and number. Another suggestion was made that it might be possible to use the BMP site during a Porsche Club event.
SMS Messaging Company opportunity - Russell has a friend that works with a SMS messaging company. There is a possibility of creating a text group that could be used for last minute event announcements, or misc. information. They may be willing to work a promotional deal, or possibly even do a sponsorship for the season. Jackie asked that Russell send her the contact information so we can at least look into the possibility. This may be a great way to remind people of the S/NS swaps throughout the season. It could also potentially be used for Packwood weather alerts.
Talk-a-bouts – There has been some discussion at a recent event that the SCCA walkie-talkies are not working very well. Jerry was curious to see if this was something anyone could expand on. He is trying to determine whether they have ever actually been handled properly, and whether this was a rechargeable battery problem, or just a management problem due to the fact that we had no Equipment Chair last season. Jackie will contact Kimm and Shane and ask them to check inventory and also try and test the longevity on the ones we currently have in inventory.
Meeting adjourned at 8:57 p.m.