Peter
It seems that some folk had a stopwatch/phone and the car odometer right through to laptops and connected Blunik and gps tripmeters. So not a level laying field.
What happens in you ralllies as regards what's allowed and what's not? The Blunik unit takes the entered TSD data and constantly recalculates it for the driver who "simply" drives the speed set by the computer. Which surely removes a level of skill required by the team. Not sour grapes but I'd be interested how other organisers are dealing with this technology
James,
in the classic car rallies I participate in any kind of electronic trickery is disallowed: GPS, phones, Google Maps, regularity computers, all forbidden. The only thing allowed is a mechanical trip counter (such as a
GTI Rally Twin or a
Halda Tripmaster. Amazingly these are much more expensive than electronic versions). When we do regularities we both need to solve navigation puzzles (rather than using tulip diagrams), as well as use tables and arithmetic calculations to run precisely on the second. Because of the navigation puzzles (e.g. construct the shortest route between points on the map)
which are handed to the navigator as your time starts running, first priority is driving the right route (otherwise timing becomes a non-issue), second is the time. As a results, average speed computers are not all that useful in classic car regularity rallies.
In these rallies, to prevent cheating, every day there is a hidden check point (which you cannot see in advance -- favourite trick: just out of a tunnel) where they check every car for disallowed maps, phones, average speed computers etc. Spotted once, 500 penalty points (like missing 5 controls), spotted 2x, you are disqualified.
In TSD (time-speed-distance) rallies in the US, they typically have different classes:
- R01 Equipped - Those equipped with all navigational and time / distance computers (average speed computers)
- R02 Navigational- The equipment permitted for the unequipped plus class (R03) is allowed plus maps, prepared tables, mechanical slide rules, non-programmable, single memory calculators and navigational/GPS systems.
- R03 Unequipped Plus - The equipment permitted for the unequipped class (R04) is allowed plus factory built-in computers that can read out average speed. Navigational/GPS systems are not allowed in this class.
- R04 Unequipped - The only rally aids permitted within the rally automobile will be simple time pieces including stop watches, pens/pencils, paper, clipboard or any device for holding the route instructions, and the original equipment speedometer/odometer, trip odometer in its original location in the automobile. (Prepared tables of any kind are not allowed in the unequipped class.) Navigational/GPS systems are not allowed in this class.
Then winners are allocated by class. Clearly participating in class R04 is the most challenging.
Peter
