Anyone in the Northeast Interested in Being a Rally Navigator for 2016?

I'm massively jumping the gun here, since the first event isn't for another 9 months or so, and the car is still on the other side of the country, but I'm bored at work and this is the stuff I think about.

This year I'm competing in NASA RallyMoto events- next year it's car time, and I'm going to need a navigator. The plan is to run all of the NASA Atlantic Rally Championship events next year (6-7 events assuming the schedule looks like previous years). Maybe a Rally America event or two for fun, if (a big IF) the budget can support it.

Does anybody want to do this? I'm perfectly happy to have a noob navigator, but if possible I'd like to have the same person all season, and do a TSD event or two this year to get a feel for the whole "there's somebody in the passenger seat telling me what to do" thing. You'll need your own gear and a willingness to experience a big berkeleying crash or two- not that that's the plan, but it's highly likely.

Also, before somebody tells me to post on SpecialStage or Rally Anarchy- I know, and I can, but honestly, the GRM community is awesome, and I see no good reason not to ask here first. When it comes time to look for crew, I'll be asking here as well, because as far as I'm concerned, this is where the car guys I want to work with hang out

I so wish I could do this, sounds like a blast!

You're still in the Lower Bucks area, right?

I was really planning to do more DH racing next year (since I just spent about $6K on a new bike and gear), but this is interesting as well. Might finally get me to work through that damn "left-right" dyslexia...

Plus, I have the (apparently rare) ability to be able to look down and read in a moving car without getting sick.

I don't have any gear right now, but buying it won't be an issue.

In reply to Ian F:

Yep, I'm in Quakertown, Pennsyltuckey

If you don't want to be in LOTS or crashes you'll really want to get that left/right thing sorted out though

Ian F wrote: Plus, I have the (apparently rare) ability to be able to look down and read in a moving car without getting sick.

That would keep me from doing it, I get queasy if I glance at my watch as a passenger.

In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:

If I'm reading, it will probably be a non-issue. Probably.

I know the Philly SCCA region runs a few road rallys. I'm guessing that would be a good place to start. I'd go back and re-watch the Targa Miata DVD as well and pick Keith's and maybe his wife's brains about this. I remember her comments about being a novice rally navigator being very insightful.

Anyway, keep me on the "interested" list.

In reply to Ian F:

There's an SCCA road rally by me on Sunday. Just saying...

pinchvalve wrote:

Ian F wrote: Plus, I have the (apparently rare) ability to be able to look down and read in a moving car without getting sick.

That would keep me from doing it, I get queasy if I glance at my watch as a passenger.

I guess I'm lucky. Or maybe it's a learned condition as I was taking long car trips in the back seat since I was a young child and usually had some sort of book to occupy me. Even today, if I go a long drives for work I'm happiest if I'm not driving and can just sit in the back and read to pass the time.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: In reply to Ian F: There's an SCCA road rally by me on Sunday. Just saying...

Ca ca... might have plans already for Sunday (mtn bike ride in NJ with teammates), but it might get rained out (forecast is iffy)...

The thought of sitting in the car next to you scares the shyte out of me. Then again, co-driving for anyone would scare the shyte out of me, lol.

May also want to hit up Matt Rhoades, who is pretty local to you. IDK how much Kevin is running these days, so Matt may be looking for a ride - or he'd definitely know of others who might. You pick up a car yet?

I'd love to but I'm far too much ballast unless you're making a lot of right turns.

I would, but I totally just moved across the country.

You are only 2 and half hours way...If you can't find anyone I would be happy to lend a left turn here and a right turn there.

Can't do the reading (motion sickness) but I'm in for the wrenching.

Man, I just moved to West Virginia so I'm not impossibly far away...Thus sounds like a ball of awesomeness. I'm still looking for a job here, I don't know what my vacation situation is gonna be once I get a job and even then there's a chance of moving next June. I'll pm you once I get my job situated.

Hit up Dave Shindel and or Scott Williams. Scott really needs to get back out on stage.

Scott Williams. Nice. I crewed for a team he codrove on.

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine:

He's a great dude and has tons of insight to provide on the vehicle as it regards to setup after shakedown and improvements to make going into the next event.

Shindle will have likely co-driven in that rx-7 already, instructs co-drivers who go on to become champions and has won cars in class several times.

Do it!

About the motion sickness - every codriver has a plastic bag tucked into their sock But my wife, who used to suffer pretty badly, had no problem at all during the Targa. One key is that she never looks up from the rally computer and the book - looking up to see where you are will kick your ass. Trust your driver to do what he's told Also, she was too busy to get sick.

The job of the navigator is to communicate information to the driver in a clear and concise manner. For us, that meant a limited vocabulary. We simplified instructions down to:
right
left
straight
y
t
square
easy
medium
hard
acute
hairpin
into
at
crest

Plus obvious additions like bridge. I've probably forgotten a few. It's not as precise as the pros use but it worked for us.

I'd usually go over the tulip diagrams before the start of the day and if there was something really weird, I'd figure it out and we'd give it a name. You can hear it in the DVD right near the beginning, there's a call of "funky bridge" which was one of our codes.

Vidjo! Here's a subtitled version of one of our stages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXKFnPziVcM

Now here's another team on the same stage. How not to navigate. Janel was watching this and immediately said "he's looking up", which is why he got lost. Never mind the extraneous information and general conversational tone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gELOuFn7SkU

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: . This year I'm competing in NASA RallyMoto events

By any chance were you at BRS last year? Hanging out with us at Goose Pond out in that crazy downpour?

In reply to BobOfTheFuture:

I'm pretty sure that was me! The stage was interesting post-downpour, I got my feet yanked off the pegs by more than one DEEP puddle

captdownshift wrote: Hit up Dave Shindel and or Scott Williams. Scott really needs to get back out on stage.

The thought of Chris and Dave Shindle in a car together makes me chuckle.....

I 100% disagree with Keith.

Looking up is incredibly important to confirm that you are in the proper location of the notes. Note I said "notes" not "tulips" as many rallies in the USA (and all in Canada) run pace notes. He's not talking about Targa, its not the same thing anymore. Until you are good enough to establish what the car is doing through feel, which is a monumental task that requires years of training to understand the feel of a car from the co-drivers seat due to such little feedback, you will look up. It is necessary.

Tulips are nothing like notes. End of discussion. They have to be approached differently. And you should be looking up to insure that you are not getting too far ahead and confirm where you are at. Proper co-driving (and driving) in rally starts from the beginning. Doing it "wrong" just because it is easier is not a good way to set yourself up to go far.

I'd like to think I know a thing or two (or 50) about this...

Yes, tulips are an old-school way for the organizers to provide the route information. And those tulips were translated into notes as you can't vocalize a diagram. The fact that the book had tulips doesn't really change the way you communicate the information.

So your navigator relies more on visual cues than the odometer? We worked almost exclusively off the computer - the only time it became a problem was on long country stages where the racing line would throw off the distances a bit. Janel would look up on these less frenetic stages and compensate for the accumulated errors. It's quite possible that the street stages of the Targa are a lot busier for the navigator than the typical forest stage, and looking up in those is a sure-fire way to get lost. It's pretty easy for even a novice navigator to tell when you've gone around a sharp corner.

Keith Tanner wrote: So your navigator relies more on visual cues than the odometer? We worked almost exclusively off the computer - the only time it became a problem was on long country stages where the racing line would throw off the distances a bit. Janel would look up on these less frenetic stages and compensate for the accumulated errors. It's quite possible that the street stages of the Targa are a lot busier for the navigator than the typical forest stage, and looking up in those is a sure-fire way to get lost. It's pretty easy for even a novice navigator to tell when you've gone around a sharp corner.

Keith, I've competed nationally co-driving in Canada, the USA, and done one race in Mexico. I have a couple championships to my name, and get calls on the regular (that has slowed down the past year as I no longer co-drive... for now). I now drive myself, and have extremely high standards as to who I chose to co-drive for me. And I ain't slow I've taught, mentored, and in general help many newbs get it together. And I hate the "start off slow" approach. Nope. I teach it correctly from the beginning. Go hard or go home is my motto, if you want to co-drive, you better damn well co-drive, this isn't driving miss daisy (I'm a bit passionate about co-driving since the lot of us, myself included at the end of the day, suck so bad at it compared to our european counterparts).

A co-driver should be able to multi-task. They should be able to read ahead in the notes, continue providing the notes at a proper pace relative to the particular section of stage they are in all while glancing up to confirm nothing is amiss or the driver (since lets be honest, us drivers are dumb) aren't going the wrong way. And to confirm that said dumb drivers are actually listening to the notes if somehow you've gotten off notes/skipped a page, etc.

In a tulip rally, just like a proper TSD (one that stretches your driving ability to maintain the average speed) you will require more odometer focus as the notes do not entail everything. There is a lot more seat of your pants action, which requires the odo to make up for the lack of actual detail.

Odo's are useless in stage rally except for transits and confirming if you are majorly lost in the notes or if something has happened (you crashed, got back on the road, and lost your position in the notes for instance). I haven't had an odo in my rally car in years because 1) I have every national rally in Canada memorized as well as all the western regionals and 2) organizers have been forced to provide better transit and recce instructions... which takes some of the adventure out of things but also allows me to not stroke out.

Anywho, my main concern is that Targa and tulips are not the standard anymore. Even then, there are plenty of things a co-driver needs to be looking out for on tulips as drivers have one mission, and that is to plant their foot and listen to what the co-driver tells them. The driver should not be using their eyes as to what is in front of them, but to utilize what is in front of them to address what is coming up. The co-driver's instructions are the driver's eyes so to speak.