I'm sure that a few members here have been involved with course design for autocross before, but what about rallycross?
I have been lucky enough to find out that a friend of mine has a large open farm field that he literately cannot plant anything on. It will be open for a few friends to use through the end of the year and we are planning to build a rallycross style course on it for fun on the weekends. Problem is, none of us have any experience with course design. The land is on a rolling hill side with 2-3 feet of grass growing on it currently. We were planning to go out a few days before driving and cut the grass down 2-3 cars wide to build a course. The current rally vehicles are a Solara and Maxima, so no huge jumps are considered just some nice linked corners and long sweepers for sideways fun.
Jaynen
SuperDork
6/24/17 9:35 p.m.
I can tell you that my first rallycross was today and that the course was like a "flat" 8. the "bottom" and the "middle" straights of the 8 were varying slaloms/ or wider slalom type turns
Dealing with elevation I would be careful about anything that will make the cars do a lot of turning while going downhill
Remember to make it WIDE. Like three car widths minimum.
No down hill turns as jaynen mentioned. No really tight turns which lead to rutting which leads to tire demounting.
Some will depend on the type of soil. If you are running on the top of the grass it most like rut up and build up clumps.
Do it and have fun.
My club AMEC is holding one with another club next Sunday on a never run property. It will be interesting.
I Know Nothing But it seems if you leave the Tall Grass Aong the sides of the course it will help Slow the cars if you get Off course, Sounds like a ball.
Though we don't use them any more (State Department owns the land now), you can see our old rallycross courses at Summit Point that they still use for training government/law enforcement drivers.
Go to Google Earth at these coordinates: 39.240077, -77.962660 and you should see several courses.
The paved little course just to the south of that (39.236587, -77.963571) used to be dirt (but now paved). The other dirt courses have changed a bit but still are "rallycross-type" setups.
Find out where other rallycross programs run, and google their venues. Usually the courses are easy to see on satellite!
That grass could be hazardous to course workers. Nowhere fornten to run away...
Trackmouse wrote:
That grass could be hazardous to course workers. Nowhere fornten to run away...
Tall grass (or snow banks) around the course usually means less cones, which also means more flexibility in where you can put course workers. So that's not a big issue, just have to place the people in safe spots.
Except working the course in tall grass suuuuuucks. Can't see that gopher hole (bye bye ankle) or hard to see downed cones unless you have a TON of workers and one near every cone. No thanks, I'll take mowed fields 100 times out of 100 over tall grass....
Tall grass is very slippery.
Sounds like corner workers aren't an issue if it's just for a few friends. Get a truck and drive around where you think a fun course would be, when you have something laid out with no hazards just mow it and see how it feels.
Don't cut the grass. Just have them navigate the course through the tall grass. And when they see a cone or human, it's time to bob and weave.
