TeamD Adventures

In preparation for the Alcan Winter Rally and with great hopes of bring all of the cars back home whole TeamD wanted an opportunity to get some more experience scooting around on ice. We were able to take a dvantage of Bill’s job on the 787 cargo flight qualification team at Boeing. They needed balast for long distance flights as a part of 787 FAPJAC certification process. The dates worked out and our friends at Boeing were able to give us a decent number of hours on the ground at our destination.

One downside to our arrangement was a 2am departure time from Paine Field, outside of Everett, WA. Once underway going back to sleep was easy enough. Since much of the 787 performance and testing data hasn’t been published we were asked to not disclose our destination. However, the sun angle in most of the pictures may be a hint as to the approximate latitude.

The main goals of the trip were getting more experience one ice for the people and more bumping around for the cars. The cars held-up well and the good news is the last couple of months of car changes resulted in reliable cars that handled well on the ice. The people were less reliable but improved over the course of the session.

The "track" roughed-out for us was about two miles long and had a great variety of curves and not much in the way of non-curves. It would hav been nicer to run a larger course but the option of dodging Dreamliners popping thru touch and go drills on the long straights bits wasn’t inviting. The snow banks were harder than the fluffy white stuff we’re used to which helped focus drivers on avoiding them. The harder edges caused us to practice vehicle extraction a good number of times. While not on out on the ice trackside facilities were luxurious by comparison to our normal Alcan ice racing venues.

Track surface conditions were described as grippy, with the cold temperatures providing a textured surface with little or no moisture. One of the biggest challenges of the track was reigning-in your enthusiasm and setting-up correctly for the far corner, or should i say far hairpin. A good lap was just about any lap where you made it cleanly thru the hairpin. The apex there slowly degraded thru the day as a wide variety of lines were tried (or simply found).

I won’t shame anyone with stories of the biggest ‘stuff’ or the most tires deflated at one time or even the most trim pieces removed with snowbanks. Suffice to say the todo lists for some of the cars got longer. Having a tie-down strap connected to a control arm instead of something stronger will also contribute to the work to be done.

We got a chance to try out some equiment provided by TeamD sponsor Edge Camera. They hav a cool video recording system that takes inputs from up to four cameras and records and image with picture-in-picture or split screen or any number of combinations. We played with camera mounts inside and outside of Jeff’s WRX. One cool mount framed the right front quarter of the car. This should look really cool as the car corners and skitters around the course. The lighting was difficult due to the low sun angle but hopefully there will be some good footage that gets posted.

At the end of the day everyone was happy to for the practice and generious amonts of seat time. TeamD would also like to thank our transportation and hosts along way that made the whole trip possible (a big mala-kalaka-brewkus to you all). Now we should be ready to head off on the Alcan Winter Rally and burn up the ice slaloms.

cheers,

steve