Our Next Rally
NOTE: Please update your bookmarks to point to www.brmscc.org!!
Blue Ridge Mountain Sports Car Club
Presents:
Rails to Trails
Date: Apr 14th 2024
Registration: Registration is at 1:00 PM and the first car starts at 2:01 PM. Rally fee is $10.
Start:
AMC Classic South Pike 10, South Pike Square, 718 S Pike Rd, Sarver, PA 16055
Coordinates: 40.7000 N 79.7230 W
Midpoint: Butler, PA
End: Same as Start with optional dinner at Fox's Pizza, 616 S Pike Rd, Sarver PA 16055
Description: Rallymaster Rob tells us: A tour rally of about 70 miles through western Armstrong County and eastern Butler County. Continuing the railroad theme with pauses for at-grade railroad crossings, this time of the Buffalo & Pittsburgh RR near the Rt. 422 corridor between Worthington and Butler, with a new twist of also pausing for bicycle crossings associated with the Butler-Freeport trail on the old PRR Butler Branch right-of-way. Should take about 3.5 hours. Will have some short unpaved portions, but they are generally in better shape than some of the paved roads. No intentional course following traps. Open and DIY controls will be used.
What beginners should bring with them:
For starters - there should be two of you in the car: a driver, and a navigator (who isn't inclined to get car-sick reading while moving, or has an antidote for it).
Bring a mechanically sound car* that has a tenths -reading odometer (a resettable trip odometer can be a help), a clipboard, a four function calculator, several working pens, a set of highlighters (for marking up the route instructions) and post-it notes.
If you can choose between a mechanical odometer that "rolls" and a digital display, the mechanical will enable you to interpolate to the hundredths. If you only have the digital tenths, then you'll have to do a lot more "guessing" in between the numbers clicking over. We have folks who have gotten good at this with practice!
While every team has their own procedure, it's useful to be able to highlight things like speed changes, and free zones (remember - there is a tutorial to get you started!) so that "on the road" it helps you remember them better. The post-its are to stick on your dashboard to remind the driver of the assigned speeds and what the active course following priorities are.
Also - having a good map of the area that includes secondary (and tertiary roads) can be very helpful if you get lost and can't regain the rally course.
*While a cell phone and a AAA membership can't hurt, a lot of the time, we'll be traveling on roads that are well off the beaten track, and you may not have much of a description of where you are! "Well - we got here by turning left after "Snodgrass", then right at T, and left by protection... " While a GPS unit probably won’t help you very much while running the rally, it may be very useful for telling AAA where you are if you break down.
