Almost District Champion!

[B_Regal Racing]

Race at the NPWDRL, and we'll help you get faster, regardless of the rules. When you understand all of the concepts and become comfortable in your abilities, you'll be able to pass it down to your son. If you and your son enjoy building, don't limit it to a once a year event. Nothing against scouts (i have a son in boy scouts), but don't let scouts control this activity, you go and control it. You don't have to race every month, just when you want to, and when next year comes around, tear 'em up.

And fix those front fenders

 

[derbydentist]

Race at the NPWDRL, and we'll help you get faster, regardless of the rules. When you understand all of the concepts and become comfortable in your abilities, you'll be able to pass it down to your son. If you and your son enjoy building, don't limit it to a once a year event. Nothing against scouts (i have a son in boy scouts), but don't let scouts control this activity, you go and control it. You don't have to race every month, just when you want to, and when next year comes around, tear 'em up.

And fix those front fenders

Yeah definitely not happy with the front Fender look haha! I would love to race more often - I will try to find some time to do another build and send it in to race with you guys. I've got 4 kids under 8 and we are expecting #5 in a week! Soooo.... I may be getting even busier coming up here. Thanks for the encouragement everyone I hope to find a balance between home life and derbying

 

[Richard C. Moeur]

We can have the previous heat's boys retrieve their cars, let all four boys for the next heat stage their cars, and have the Boy Scout / MC interview the boy in Lane 1, and still consistently run 50-55 seconds / heat. If you have 20 boys in a rank and run each twice per lane (double the fun!), that's 36 minutes total. We run one rank per hour on one track (so all the boys are in the 'spotlight'), so that gives lots of extra time for re-runs, halts for repairs, track cleaning, and other items.

 

[Skywalker Racing]

We can have the previous heat's boys retrieve their cars, let all four boys for the next heat stage their cars, and have the Boy Scout / MC interview the boy in Lane 1, and still consistently run 50-55 seconds / heat. If you have 20 boys in a rank and run each twice per lane (double the fun!), that's 36 minutes total. We run one rank per hour on one track (so all the boys are in the 'spotlight'), so that gives lots of extra time for re-runs, halts for repairs, track cleaning, and other items.

We try to stay within 20-30 seconds a heat to keep the action fast-paced, and the entire event is usually over in 3 hours including track cleanings between ranks, software issues, and trophy presentation.

 

[Richard C. Moeur]

In fact my dad and I thought that you two might be our hope for one day having a Grand Canyon Council race again. Reading your rules comparison/unification among districts made me think you may have that same goal in mind? I think the last one we had was the one my dad was in charge of. Let me know if my dad or I can help to make this a reality.

That was the plan - but I discovered that reportedly that last Council race (before my time) was "memorable" enough that certain key Council staff are still not in favor of the concept. Right now, the focus is on facilitating information sharing between the Districts to improve and strengthen (and in some cases, simply re-establish) the District-level races, because a healthy District Derby culture across the Council is preferred prior to trying to restart the Council event. The "Corporate Derby" at PIR back on April 29th might have been an alpha test to see if a sponsored Council-level event could be feasible, but I haven't heard how it went (I attended the Firebird and Camelback Distriict events instead that day as part of inter-District outreach).

And I thank you both for volunteering!

 

[Richard C. Moeur]

We try to stay within 20-30 seconds a heat to keep the action fast-paced, and the entire event is usually over in 3 hours including track cleanings between ranks, software issues, and trophy presentation.

There's one Pack in Four Peaks that has 114 Cub Scouts - biggest unit in the Council in terms of Scout membership. Their approach is to have all-adult car handling, with 4 adults building an assembly line of cars fed to the start line. They were running 25 seconds per heat - an impressive speed.

All the racing (110+ heats) was done in just over an hour, and given their unit size, seems to work for them. But one thing I noticed was that some of the Cub Scouts just seemed to lose some interest after about 20-25 minutes, since their role was simply as spectator.

Yes, there is a risk of car breakage or droppage with the boy handling his car, and it does result in somewhat longer heat dwell times, but my personal preference is that giving the boy ownership of the racing experience through responsibility for car placement and retrieval strengthens the sense of car ownership, and markedly reduces the likelihood of parent "feedback" that their boy's car wasn't staged as well as the others in that heat.

 

[derbydentist]

"The "CorporateDerby" at PIR back on April 29th might have been an alpha test to see if a sponsored Council-level event could be feasible, but I haven't heard how it went (I attended the Firebird and Camelback Distriict events instead that day as part of inter-District outreach). "

I saw this email about the PIR corporate pinewood derby but it was so confusing that it wasn't even clear if there was a race being held? It didn't seem to have anything to do with pinewood derby just that scouts could get a deal on watching the real race. Was there actually a pinewood derby race? There were no rules posted or info that I could find.

 

[Jimmy & his 2 Kids]

Regarding kids involvement. We did have adults staging and retrieving at our church's Awana GP. But we also had 4 seats at the end that lined up with the lanes so that the kids in the heat were at the end of their lane watching up close and being "center stage". We have a new 42" Best Track so it is too tall for them to stage unless we had a ladder for them. It worked out well. Yes kids would get anxious if there was a long wait but it wasn't too bad. It's no where near as tight as the local Cub Scouts race but was fun. Ours took 2.5 hours. 90 cars, 3 kids classes and one open class. Each car ran 4 times all 4 lanes. The 3 class finals and then all class final for the coveted Awana GP Cup. (Cup went to my daughter. with my son one car length behind)
We do need to tighten it up tho. That was our 2nd annual and it was better than last year.
But we will keep it done with adults.