Chuck's workplace graciously hosted the Ann Arbor Mini-Z Club Get-Together (GTG for short) for the second time in a row after losing our previous host (they went out of business - what a bummer).  With much anticipation most of people started arriving right after 7:00 pm. 

Previous to coming this night we had decided that our club would participate in the "How Fast Are You" Online Point Series (HFAY OLPS) that just started this January 2006.  It's a great series that allows you to race locally and then get ranked nationally against other racers and clubs doing the same thing.  How cool is that?  Minimum requirements are 2 Wide L RCP Tracks, an approved timing/scoring system (like the CoreSpeedway system we were using), and at least 3 Mini-Z racers running stock PCBs and motors (IWavers and XMods are also allowed).

This was our last January GTG so we had to run our first 2 HFAY OLPS races all in one night.  Plus some of us were itching to also put together a bigger track to have more fun on.  This turned out to be a bit ambitious. 

We had only been doing Ann Arbor Mini-Z GTGs for a couple months; basically every two weeks since late November 2005.  In many ways we were still getting familiar with the RCP Track, CoreSpeedway system, and each other.  One unfortunate thing is we are a "nomadic" club and have to setup and breakdown the track at each GTG.  We don’t have a place were we can setup the track and leave it.

David (famous, among other things, for running Mini-ZRacer.com, TinyRC.com, and Shop.TinyRC.com) had started the Ann Arbor Mini-Z club and GTGs.  He had tasked me with helping out with the HFAY OLPS for our club.  Basically reading through the rules carefully, making sure we setup the track correct, helping organize the qualifying heats and Main races, and submitting the results. 

Well we got the track setup for HFAY OLPS #1 and started practicing around 7:40 pm.  We let everyone settle in and practice for awhile and finally started actually qualifying around 9 pm.

One big issue we ran into was we didn't have enough Core transponders for the CoreSpeedway system.  We had 6 transponders and 9 people who wanted to race.  We ended up sharing the transponders and tried to rename them as we went along hoping the CoreSpeedway system would sort it all out.  Unfortunately, we found out later this didn't work and I ended up resorting the results manually before sending it into HFAY.

Qualifying was a bit more mixed-up than usual as we had 9 people (most so far for our GTGs) made up of a varied mix of veterans, intermediate, and newbies.  We finally got qualifying done and the breakdown for the races turned out to be:

B Main:
 hobbycar/Norman (that's me)
 Will3kgt/Will
 Brad
 Mazda787b/Ryan
 Josh

A Main:
 Onrailz/Chuck
 Mini-Z/David
 Vaughn
 Draconious

It was around 11pm when we finally started the HFAY OLPS Mains.  We ran the 8 minute B Mains first and I was able to take first place in my first Mini-Z Main ever.  Woohoo!  Will was having trouble with his setup for the 2nd week in a row, otherwise I'm sure he would have given me a run for my money.  It was a bunch of fun and I personally enjoyed it a lot.  It took away some of the sting of just missing out on qualifying for the A Mains.

The 8 minute A Main was a great race to watch.  You can tell that these guys know what they are doing.  Chuck was driving like he was "onrailz" as usual.  Vaughn and David weren't too far behind and Drac was pulling good consistent lap times.  In the end it was Chuck putting in 79 laps (8:03.57) for the win with Vaughn barely beating David; both with 75 laps - Vaughn's 8:01.95 less than one second better than David's 8:02.76.  And Drac put in a very decent 69 laps (8:04.54).

Then being almost midnight we had to charge batteries and immediately run the HFAY OLPS #2 races after switching around the starting grid RCP tiles like required. 

This turned out to be a huge mistake.  With little/no practice times on running the same track layout except going the other way, our laps were way off the pace :-(

Without a doubt everyone would have posted much better laps and times had we dedicated a whole night to practice and racing.  Oh well, live and learn.

But even with this watching the A Main race was thrilling.  It was relatively sloppy racing as the drivers tried to find the right lines to drive during the actual race.  Both Chuck and David somehow found a groove by the 4 minute mark eventually setting up the dramatic finish. With less than a minute left, Chuck had a rare mishap and David was able to actually able to pass him to take the lead!  Chuck got back on his line and started to reel David in.  But after getting tangled up in traffic and time quickly running out it looked like David would get the hard fought win.  But somehow on the second to last lap Chuck caught and passed David in dramatic fashion.  Again David was bested by less than one second, this time the difference between 2nd and 1st.  Chuck ended up putting in 68 laps in 8:00.87 and David put in 68 in 8:01.83.

This ended the HFAY OLPS for the night.  After this we ran some cool 1/43 scale Epochs including some custom super-hopped up Epochs sent to David to test out.  Then we cracked out the extra RCP Wide L and expansion kits and put together a crazy huge Frankenstein track with jumps for shortcuts for our Mini-Zs.  It was crazy fun that went well past 2am in the morning.

As I write this we are all looking forward to the next Ann Arbor Mini-Z GTG.  The official HFAY OLPS results for January were posted and has fueled the competitive fires in most of us.  There has even been some good natured national trash talking going on in the Mini-Zracer.com Forums between drivers and clubs. 

You can tell by the HFAY OLPS results that there are a lot of serious Mini-Z clubs and drivers out there.  It looks like we will have to try to get a little more serious about the HFAY OLPS and try to catch the leaders.

Until next time, peace and happy racing!