Auto-X brainstorming needed

Good morning folks. [what the heck is up with the Preview pane to my right, it's distracting] anyway, I'm going to be auto-x'ing June 1st with AROC and this time around there's a twist. The course is on concrets as opposed to asphalt. This makes course marking difficult (did I mention the Preview pane is distracting?) so I'm trying to figure out how to mark the cones and course with something that will stand out against grey concrete. I thought about spray chalk but it's terrible expensive. Next up is using dry food coloring to color the flour. I also thought about charcoal. How would you grind the charcoal fine enough to mark the course or what kind of system for holding the briquettes would you use??? Looking for some brainstorming here..........

Why not regular or colored chalk?

MrJoshua wrote: Why not regular or colored chalk?

My thoughts on chalk were that it would make a fine line and you want one a bit thick so the line will stand out at speed (that speed in my case could be as high as a blistering 4 mph) and that with chalk you would have to have folks on hands-and-knees drawing about 2 miles worth of lines, not including boxing in the cone locations. But it is a logical choice. any ideas on how to get around these things anyone?

Do you actually line the course?

We use those yellow tire crayons to make cone boxes when we know it'll be wet. Hardly ever put down lines marking the course... when we do we use plain old white flour. Dry weather cone boxes are "chalked" with drywall...

Gearhead_42 wrote: Do you actually line the course? We use those yellow tire crayons to make cone boxes when we know it'll be wet. Hardly ever put down lines marking the course... when we do we use plain old white flour. Dry weather cone boxes are "chalked" with drywall...

Same here. On a really complicated and tight course we might mark some lane directions with flour for multiple passes through the same gate.

Cone boxes marked with drywall scraps show up just fine on concrete. I don't think I'd like getting charcoal dust all over my car either.

We use colored chalk from Crayola. They are BIG honkin' pieces of chalk.

Sidewalk chalk. Get it at the Dollar store. It's a plastic bucket full of big sticks of chalk, about 1" in diameter and they put down a nice thick line.

I don't like to use tire crayons because the marks take forever to wear off and some of the venues don't like that sort of semi-permanent markings on their pavement. Chalk wears off by the end of the event or washes away in the first rainstorm.

Black shoe polish bottles...marke the 4 corners of the cone base with a 'dot' of polish.

This stuff---> http://www.shoetreemarketplace.com/v/vspfiles/photos/116010-2T.jpg

You can mark outlines w/ charcoal or red/brown paver sand

Cut a drywall board into ~18"x8" rectangles. Send your course markers out with two of them, one in each hand. They can do the four sides of each cone in two strokes just by swiping the ground in a hash pattern. Takes about two seconds.

I don't know how it'll show up against really light concrete though. Remember, the drivers don't have to see the markings at speed; just the marshalls who are putting the cones back up and they are on foot.

• J

DrBoost wrote: Good morning folks. [what the heck is up with the Preview pane to my right, it's distracting] anyway, I'm going to be auto-x'ing June 1st with AROC and this time around there's a twist. The course is on concrets as opposed to asphalt. This makes course marking difficult (did I mention the Preview pane is distracting?) so I'm trying to figure out how to mark the cones and course with something that will stand out against grey concrete. I thought about spray chalk but it's terrible expensive. Next up is using dry food coloring to color the flour. I also thought about charcoal. How would you grind the charcoal fine enough to mark the course or what kind of system for holding the briquettes would you use??? Looking for some brainstorming here..........

As far as grinding charcoal it would involve a steel dog dish, a 3lb sledge hammer and a couple of hours worth of repetitios movement. dispensing would involve plastic catsup bottles (dollar store style)

I was not joking when I said sidewalk chalk. Take the kids out there and let them loose ;)

I'd say a big fat piece of sidewalk chalk. That seems to work fine.

Jay wrote: Cut a drywall board into ~18"x8" rectangles. Send your course markers out with two of them, one in each hand. They can do the four sides of each cone in two strokes just by swiping the ground in a hash pattern. Takes about two seconds. I don't know how it'll show up against really light concrete though. Remember, the drivers don't have to see the markings at speed; just the marshalls who are putting the cones back up and they are on foot. - J

Umm that will not show up on concrete. It will show up on Blacktop/Asphalt.

You could pick up a big bag of CHARCOAL (use for BBQs) :) Except everyone will be black and dirty! I also wouldn't use tire crayons on a lot. As someone said it stays for a long time, and it can really make some of the lot owners mad. Don't give them any reason to not to invite you back.