Pack doesn't have a timer? Do you use the "Young & Pope" Racing Charts?

[CivilWarTalk]

Last year we used these charts for 10 cars racing on our Pack's timer-less Best Track., and it worked great!

http://www.stanpope.net/ppngen.html

This year I've had to prepare charts for 16 and up to 24 cars, which is great because it means our pack is growing, but I think we are going to need to have a run-off for the best cars to award trophies. The person who does the scoring is going to have to pay very close attention!

We really need a timer, but I think this plan will work for this week.

Has anyone else around here used these charts?

 

[Vitamin K]

We used a PPN chart in my son's first Pack, which ran its derby on an old wooden track with no timer. It worked well, though there was some human error involved in calculating scoring at the end, which led to the wrong kid getting 2nd place. It eventually got corrected, but that was kind of a bummer.

For running a race without times, though, PPN points seems like the best way to go. I do like that it makes it "real racing", in that your position against the cars you race against actually matters.

Another interesting timer-less option would be the "No Chart, N-Elimination method." I've never actually tried this one, but it sounds kind of cool. http://stanpope.net/nelim.html

 

[CivilWarTalk]

Well, now I'm going to go back on what I said earlier about these charts. I ran a race for 22 cars last night, and it was a bit of a logic / mathematics nightmare.

The system and concept are fine for a few cars, but with larger groups you get a lot of ties. I needed to run a runoff for each den as well as a runoff for the top 4 just to confirm the standings. This did cause a few changes in the overall standings.

On the plus side, we got to see lots of good tight races! Some of the races were decided by a slow motion camera one of the parent brought. Thank goodness for that!

Need to get my Pack a timer with a PC for next year, get out of the dark ages of PWD!

 

[Vitamin K]

A Perfect-N points race really does best with more than one round of racing. Sadly, this is a hard sell when you have limited time and impatient parents.

Having a timer does make things a lot nicer, though. If our Pack didn't already own one, I'd definitely consider building one from an Arduino (http://www.miscjunk.org/mj/pg_pdt.html). Also, you might take a look at DerbyNet software, since it's free, and can even run on a Raspberry Pi (http://jeffpiazza.github.io/derbynet/).

 

[bracketracer]

I would second the miscjunk.org timer. I've built two and used the heck out of them. Never a problem and they plug in to a standard USB so no serial/usb adaptors needed. Works great with GPRM up to version 15 so far.