Day 21: Battle Mountain NV

Wednesday.  Almost total suXX0r for wind.  In the morning only Kit, Daniel and the Sprockettes had legal wind, and the timing system once again failed to register the former's presence in the Milan RS.  Which has Chief Timelord Jun Nogami tearing his hair out since it's quite happy to register the presence of the same machine when Niklas or Wild Bill is at the controls.  Heat one had Al in Bilby clock a respectable 66.86 mph, with Daniel, er... and Diego and Cerberus getting 43.51.

Diego catches some rays

Another quick turnaround for Monash saw Kit running first and scoring the high speed of the morning, 68.24 mph.  The Sprockettes were trying a different acceleration profile which, as Denise wryly observed, didn't work.  They're be returning to the treied-and-tested once tomorrow as today they only managed 57.68 mph.  I expect Jun's results are more accurate than mine, because I had Enzo in heat three but the official results say otherwise.  Sadly his launch woes continued and after three falls Policumbent were out of retries

Note totes stoating acceleration of Sprocket Rocket...

In the third heat Niklas managed 53.25, Oscar Varney in Bilby clocked 50.20 and Diego only 20.80.  Catena!  Catena!  Though before heat three we had major sweep car drama; Lynn Briggs let me drive his dinky little Saturn Sky roadster.  as we were slowing from 150 mph the dash lit up to warn of low coolant.  This wasn't a sensor fail  either, as we observed the water and anti-freeze  dripping out from somewhere up the pointy end.  With  the car being low and having a whole rats' nest of turbo-related plumbing above the radiator we couldn't tell where it was coming from, though Al Krause said it appeared to be leaking even as we left at the start of the sweep run, so it probably wasn't my fault...  Onoz!  This saga to be continued.

Phoenix waiting for the green light

In the final heat of the morning Matilde was the sole runner; she fought the wind for a 46.57 mph pass with the crash panels back on.

And at some point during the morning one of the of the Aussie PSOs launched Bilby dressed like this:

Australian safety boots

After the morning debrief Lynn and I set off to recover his wheels, having established that getting a replacement radiator for the machine would take almost a week.  And we're still not sure it actually IS the radiator.  Purchased a couple of six gallon water containers plus a couple of one gallon petril cans, and borrowed a water cooler jug from Battle Mountain Mike before driving the twenty miles back to the course to try to nurse the car back to town.  Fill up at the start area.  Fill up at the 2.5 mile start.  Fill up at Badger Ranch Road (600 metres before the timing traps).  Fill up at catch another mile down the road.  Lynn filled up again somewhere while I was Otherwise Engaged before I caught him back up to fill the thing at Copper Basin, just at the top of the hill before the edge of town.  The warning reappeared as he was crossing the bridge over I-80 but it's only a couple of hundred yards from there back to the Civic Center, where the incontinent vehicle is awaiting whatever the heck Lynn and Battle Mountain Mike can come up with.  Lynn lives in Denver...

Motor-car doned a wee-wee

Scarcely had we finished this bit of Type 2 Fun than it was time to go back out to the 305 for the evening session.  Again the wind declined to coöperate and there were no legal runs at all.  Only Chris Hall and Bilby ran in the first heat; he clocked 47.40 into a screaming headwind.  Heat two contained Matilde and Oscar, whose 42.06 and 51.10 mph passes meant they arrived at catch side by side.  In the third heat were Daniel and Enzo.  The former's 55.37 was pretty impressive even though the wind had dropped a fair bit, while thanks in no small part to some mid-afternoon launch coaching from Professor L Lem Enzo got away first time and ran 44 mph dead.  Wind forecast for the rest of the week is said to be better.  "I Predict the Future" - Weatherman's amazing claim!

Another textbook launch by Monash

You can fit Bilby into a Transit minibus, provided you do this to said Ford

Also there was a dead rat on the road just after the start.  Kudos to Annecy for wielding the shovel.  And Mike Sova has tested +ve for teh Plague and is self-insulating or something.  Bah!