If you want to see what it takes to finish the Laughlin Rally – you’ve come to the right spot.

This week I started with our fast night stage ‘Cane Springs’ done to some funky beats and decided to release the rest of the rally stages. SS7 ‘Black Canyon’ was where we went off last year. It’s a fun stage with some good speed. SS8 is ‘Diamond Creek Down’ a how fast can you go downhill stage that just won’t stop getting rougher. SS9 ‘Diamond Creek’ Is a 12 minute long musical overview of the last stage we ran. It’s an epic adventure that starts out with us creeping over the boulders. We slowly gain speed and start passing stranded rally cars. Finally we emerge from the Grand Canyon carrying a good average speed.

This will be the most videos I’ve ever released for one rally. Check out the low-res on Google and if you like what you see, help yourself to some rallynotes.com videos for Thanksgiving. Go ahead, have a second helping!

2007 Laughlin International Rally – SS2 “Trust” – 40.9MB WMV
Low-res preview of SS2
2007 Laughlin International Rally – SS5 “Can Springs at night + music” – 50.3MB WMV
Low-res preview of SS5
2007 Laughlin International Rally – SS6 “Black Canyon In” – 77.3MB WMV
Low-res preview of SS6
2007 Laughlin International Rally – SS7 “Black Canyon Out + music” – 81.0MB WMV
Low-res preview of SS7
2007 Laughlin International Rally – SS8 “Diamond Creek Down” – 63.6MB WMV
Low-res preview of SS8
2007 Laughlin International Rally – SS9 “Diamond Creek Up + music” – 69.2MB WMV
Low-res preview of SS9

The week had a certain feeling to it. Like you would be working on something and get 99.9% there, and you would have to work harder then the original 99% to accomplish that remaining 0.1%. For example, you get packed up and ready to go and you’re just about to walk out the door – but you can’t find your keys. You then spend the next hour tearing the house apart just to finish your goal.

After a discussion about driving cars around and meeting up with trailers in the middle of the desert, we decided it would be easiest if we towed the car on our dolly out to Nevada and met up with Kevin, Danielle, and Jake in Laughlin. They would bring their four wheel trailer empty for the ease of the Laughlin Rally Transit System. What I’m talking about is the fact that Laughlin is a rally that takes place about 80 miles away (from the rally HQ) in Arizona. Peach Springs, Wikieup, all not close to the river hotels. This means the crew gets up, loads up, and drives 2 hours every morning for pretty much a week.

Much, much, Continue reading →

Right off the bat Laughlin starts with a fast stage that has lots of exposures and blind crests. Christine and I picked up a new term this weekend: ‘Trust’ – Even in a little production car, in order to go as fast as you can, you can’t be lifting over blind crests. When the notes are spot on and you trust, you fly! About 4:00 minutes in SS2 there is a big long hill and I shift to 4th just before it. ‘Trust.’

You’ll notice that this stage was stopped shortly afterwards. We’re glad to hear that Jason Waples & John Dillon are okay after landing hard. John Dillion hurt his back, but is recovering and even considered getting back in the car for Saturday. Check out this link to their painful video. The big off came from Rafal Listopad & Greg Dorman who flew off one of the big exposures later in the stage. Both driver and co-driver are okay and we’re glad no one was injured.

I have started to add pictures to the 2007 Laughlin Gallery and will continue to add as I get them. The funny ones are all from Dan Green who was on the crew and managed to snap some pics while making fun of Kaiser .

Laughlin International Rally – ‘Trust’ Yellow Pine Ranch – SS2 40.9MB WMV
Low-res preview

John Black’s Neon becomes a parts car for the rallynotes.com Rally Neon at the FRX Rallycross.

I can’t tell little parts of the story. I have to tell the whole story, so I’m working on it right now.
Yes, you read the scores correctly. We are the 2007 USRC Production Class Champions!
I’m encoding video and collecting pictures. Look for everything to trickle in soon!

2007 Laughlin International Rally Results
Rallynotes.com 2007 Laughlin Pictures

Pretty much the reason I got into APRS and my ham license is because of what happened last year at this event. Just in-case you missed it, you can re-live Black Canyon SS7. So there we were in the middle of nowhere trying to get a hold of service. Now I’ve been to the middle of nowhere NH and the northern (welcome to Canada) middle of nowhere Maine, but this rally is 100 miles from nowhere, no cell towers, no coverage, middle of NOWHERE, I hope you brought spares.

On top of that, the organizers use a mix of amateur radio and GMRS service to communicate. That means your high power 2 meter rig can’t transmit on the frequencies of the repeater and your hand held TalkAbout is about 49.75 watts short of ‘making it.’ As for APRS, take a look at the APRS map for the area from our pals at aprs.fi. We’re well over 50 miles from a digipeater in rough terrain, I doubt that this rally will be able to be followed via the net. Even if our service crew picks up our packets there is little chance that any number of them will be relayed to the internet.

What I expect you’ll see is our tow out to Peach Springs, a few misc packets throughout the day, and our tow back. Far from the clarity of Prescott where you could tell where we were on stage by the minute. Although I’m disappointed in this, it will be a weekend of testing. So, if you have the time to take a look at our rally car tracking page over the weekend – we’d be interested in feedback.

Itinerary for the Laughlin International Rally 2007 Times are all PST
Tuesday – November 6th: Drive out from California to Laughlin, NV (12:00PM – 6:00PM)
Wednesday – November 7th: Reconnaissance (7:00AM – 6:00PM)
Thursday – November 8th : Reconnaissance (7:00AM – 6:00PM)
Friday – November 9th: Rally day one (9:00AM – 8:00PM)
Saturday – November 10th: Rally day two (8:00AM – 7:00PM)
Sunday – November 11th: Rally day three (superstage & rallycross) (10:00AM – 3:00PM)
Monday – November 12th: Drive home from Laughlin, NV to California (10:00AM – 5:00PM)

For our first uploaded video (in a while I might add) I chose Witty Tom North SS9. We set 10th fastest and I must say I was sliding the car more then usual. By this time in the rally – the car, driver, and co-driver were all working as a unit.

I also have a handful of pictures up in the 2007 Prescott Gallery.

Prescott Rally – Witty Tom – SS9 65.1MB WMV
Low-res preview

UPDATE: I had some fun with SS6 and I turned it into a time lapse video of a rally stage. It’s actually cool to see it as one small unit like that. Perkinsville is an 11 mile stage and we take you down it in 1:26. Now if I could only go that fast on the straights… hrm

Prescott Rally – Perkinsville Time-Lapse SS6

We are really excited to have our APRS tracker up and running for the Prescott Rally. What this means simply is: Friends, fans, and family can now watch our progress in real time on the internet! Updates should be around every 5 minutes. The map interface is now Google Maps, so it’s very easy to use and navigate. If you click on the dots on the tracked route you will be able to see the following:

KI6IUC-9 – Is my Amateur Radio call sign.
(The -9 is to indicate the rally car.)
Date and time in 24 hour UTC
speed in MPH, direction, altitude in feet
/Short message that will indicate our status.
[how that packet got to you]

Itinerary for the Prescott Rally 2007 Times are all PST
Wednesday – October 3rd: Drive out from California to Phoenix, AZ (12:00PM – 7:00PM)
Thursday – October 4th: Drive to Prescott, AZ – Reconnaissance (10:00AM – 6:00PM)
Friday – October 5th: Rally day one (4:00PM – 10:00PM)
Saturday – October 6th: Rally day two (1:00PM – 9:00PM)
Sunday – October 7th: Drive back to California (10:00AM – 7:00PM)

** Don’t miss Friday and Saturday, these are the days to watch. We will be in the rally car racing at speed on the roads around Prescott!
Times are LOCAL – Pacific Standard Time or GMT -7:00
This may help…

Live scores and results of the Prescott Rally will be available here!