Racing Report - DNFs but I do have Helmet Camera Video of Practice

Sunday Race Report:  Went to Brodhead, WI for some road racing in my vintage kart. 

Practice, went great.  I was very fast, engine was really strong for an 80cc on methanol.  I tested out my new helmet camera.  Still need adjusting and had the mount of the camera wrong so I ended up shooting a lot of footage really close to my feet and directly in front of me.  The kart has really skinny slick tires on it, which are per the rules for the class that I race in.  So you do slide around a bit.  We did not have a great turn out, so they grouped us all together.  I'm running in the slowest class of vintage karts, the sidewinders are a lot faster, wider, stickier tires, and many are running much larger engine displacements and producing more horsepower.

 

As for the actual racing:  Did Not Finish (DNF), every race.  Really stunk.  We thought at first it was just a fouled spark plug, put in a new plug, started the next race, nope, not the answer.  Started the feature after checking a few things, made some carb adjustments, was better, but not good, appears to be something going on with the carb.  Then came the rain, packed up and went home.

Next week, we take the vintage karts to Springfield, IL for the Illinois State Vintage Karting Races.  Hope things go better there.

Friday Night Race Report: 2 Many SPINS

So tonight was the first race on the oval track.  Really cool night, and I did not keep up with the adjustments on the kart as the track changed as the temperature dropped.  So I struggled a bit, but still qualified third for the feature, my dad ended up on the pole for the feature.  Oldest guy racing and he is out front leading us to the green in the feature.

Heat #1:  Started inside second row.  Before we even completed the first lap I spun it out after bouncing off someone in turn 1.  I only spun it out maybe 3 times last season.  So we get a complete restart, this time I was a bit more patient.  My dad got the lead early, I was not able to close up on him.  He wins heat #1, I was second.  The second group of karts duked it out and Joe won that Heat in his new chassis.

Heat #2:  I started on the outside of the pole with another veteran on the pole, in Fred.  We got going and I was good the first couple laps and then the handling went away and I started plowing the front end out of the corners.  My dad drove under me and away.  With about 3 to go Fred caught lap traffic and spun out, so caution.  He had to go to the back.  Restart came out and Fred charged hard, and I started to push again, he got me as we came to the white, tagged me in the rear pretty hard and I did an ultra cool power-slide through the corner as he passed me.  That became a common occurrence as I kept getting hit there.  My dad one the race, I finished third.  Meanwhile Bryan won the second group.

Feature Race.  My dad was on the pole, Bryan started second, I accumulated enough points in the heats to start third with Joe outside on the second row.  The race got going and my dad and I were one two for about the first five laps.  Then my push came back and I lost a spot then another, but dad was still going.  About lap 7 or so Joe got hit from behind and tagged me coming out of turn 3 and I spun out collecting another kart.  So all three of us got sent to the back of the field.  I restarted 9th in front of the other two karts involved in the spin.  Green dropped and the three of worked our way forward.  I started developing the push again and the Joe and the 29 passed me.  We then started catching all of the lap karts, caution came out again for some spin outs.  We were bunched back up on a two wide restart.  I made my way to 6th.  On the restart my dad spun out in second or third, I went high to miss him and then got up in the dirty stuff and spun out and did a complete 360 and drove out of it almost Danny Sullivan style.  Probably the coolest spin I've ever done.  On the restart I started 6th and got back to fifth in a lap.  I changed my line up to try and get rid of the push.  It worked a little bit, but it was also a slower line.  The front four got away from and my dad started catching me.  When checker flag came out I finished fifth, my dad was 6th.  Joe won the feature.  Joe struggled all of last season, it was good to see him get a Feature win.  Even though I struggled all night it was a hell of a lot of fun.  I'm going to the shop tomorrow to make changes in the kart, see if we can figure something out.

So in one night, I matched all of the spin outs from last season.  Not a good start.

Next weekend I race on the road coarse in the vintage kart for the first time this year.  I'm really looking forward to doing that.

Race Report: Nothing....All's Quiet

Well last night was supposed to be my first race of the season.  I was very much looking forward too it.  But snow and sleet in the morning in May is not a good sign.  The race was cancelled, it rained, never broke 45 degrees, so no racing.   As a result of the cancellation they decided to add a race next week, which would have been an off week, that will kick off the season.   That's where I plan to be next Friday night. 

Old Stuff Wednesday - May: Black Templar on a Rock

Circa May 2004.  This is one of the few Black Templar Space Marines that I have ever painted.  I did a test piece prior to this for my Space Marine Templars and soon figured out that I did not like painting black and white, so I changed my color scheme to blue and white.  Later on I was commissioned to do a Black Templar dreadnought, so I painted this piece as a color scheme test.

 Not sure what I was thinking with that rock on the base, a piece of baked super sculpy.

 I still think this power sword really turned out cool.

I used to do collages of photos.

The back of the mini sported my stark highlight scheme, again from my Cerulean Templars.

Yea that rock looks dumb.  The tabbard was a sculpt by me, and not a very good one.  The black highlights look pretty decent.  I no longer have this miniature in my collection, as I sold it years ago.

Gas, Burnt Rubber, and Exhaust Fumes

Well went to the track tonight for the first time this season.   Open practice, ran around 60-70 laps on the brand new chassis.  Man, lot of fun.

I had a bet going with a co-worker who was very faithless in my driving ability and that I would spin out on the first lap at speed.  I'm proud to say he was wrong.   At around lap 28 I put the kart in grass down the back straight away, with only the left sides on the track and passed a slow kart, he kind of moved up in a spot that I really did not expect and my dad was underneath him, completely my fault, but nobody wrecked from that, so no harm, no foul.  I spun out around lap 45 going down on the dirty apron.  I did try to spin out early doing some powerslides through the corners.  Right on the edge, until I got some heat in the tires.  That's always good fun.

So things went pretty well.  My speeds were down a little bit from late last season, but I'll work on that a bit and the track is really green at the moment as this was the first really big practice.

Fun, fun, fun..... 

Back From Adepticon with some Coverage

Traveling down to Adepticon was not bad, the travel home on the Interstate 90 however sucked due to all of the construction and tolls, thanks Illinois, a simply dreadful state to visit. 

The Warhammer Ancient games were good, the people in the event friendly.  I saw so many people and ran into so many people, many of which that knew me and unfortunately I don't remember names well.  That's embarrassing when people come up to you knowing who you are and you remember their face, but not a name. 

I do want to mention a number of the people that run blogs and other such things, its always good catching up with the people you maintain contact with on the Internet and who's work you admire:

Mike Butcher of the "The Butcher's Bill", I spent basically the whole weekend with my buddy.  Mike ran the big Hastings Redux game on Friday night where 8 of us went at it with large Dark Ages forces for good fun.  And unlike history, the Saxons actually won the game.  I'm sure that there will be some pics posted up on that big game, this will probably become an annual event in different time slot.  Mike was playing Flames of War with these Stugs below:

All of the terrain for that big game was built by Mark at "Baddogz Engineering", Mark's blog link Bad Dogz Engineering.  The terrain's craftsmanship was gorgeous.  If you do not follow his blog I urge you to do so.  It was my pleasure to team up with Mark on the Viking side of things.  Unfortunately we could not get passed the dang river.  Below are pics of the various terrain pieces that Mark made.

I also ran in to Chris Borer of  Full Borer Miniatures .  It was good to see him, just did not get to talk to him long.

I spoke with Alex Akers of Akers Minis and Battleroad Games.  Good to see Alex.

I got to listen to Dave Taylor of Dave Taylor Miniatures  discuss cricket with a friend of mine, I don't understand the game, but it was good talking with Dave who was covering things for Wargames Illustrated, I'm sure we will see some great pictures of the big Civil War game that he ran.

I ran into Dave Pauwel's and Jamie from Gorgon Studios.  It was great to catch up with Dave.  We're all going to try and get people to play SAGA next year.

Mike and I had the pleasure of playing one of my local good buddies who was teamed up with Rich of the Chicago Terrain Factory.  Rich is one of the Adepticon guys organizing many things, it was good fun to get in a game against him.  Chicago Terrain Factory

I played against Bennett Blaylock-Doane of Bennett's Blog.  Bennett's Huns engulfed my poor Vikings, too fast, too many arrows, and a big 0 points for me in that game.  Although it was a pleasure to look at his beautiful Huns.   I think I only killed like 5 of them in the game.  Bennett's paintwork is fantastic, and he puts on many seminars on his painting.

I also ran into Domus, Ryan, and Tom of the   The Magnificent Bastards blog      playing some fantasy.  Below is the funny army that Domus and Caius were playing. The minis have a strange resemblance to Domus

Ryan aka 'Bear' in action, with the infamous uninterested bearded fellow known as Legend.   I'm not sure who bought Ryan that shirt, but I would not wear those hideous colors.

And a pic of Tom on the right next to Alex who has ran the Fantasy Tournament in the past.

It was good to catch up briefly with these guys.  Ryan is actually Bear on Pointhammered Podcast: http://www.pointhammered.com/.  Also a pic of Ryan's ogres.

I also ran into these guys: 

Ben Cone looking very happy from Madison, WI who does the WiscoDice podcast: http://wiscodice.com/

Cool Mini-or-Not was there and running the Crystal Brush mini painting contest, some amazing stuff in the cabinets:

 



When I got on-site Friday I took a walk around and shot some pics of the Big Hall, where all of the 40k madness was going on.  This hall is simply crazy and packed all weekend long.

Friday was team tourney.

I was surprised to see a contingent of Star Wars games being played all weekend also.

Above you had already saw some of the Fantasy Team play on Friday.   That hall had 100 tables set up for the Singles Tournament.  Not sure how big the 40k Hall was.

Flames of War had a huge presence also at the event:

And Bored of the Rings still gets played??

I'll be quite honest that the main Warhammer Fantasy tourneys are nearly too large for me and the 40k main events have gotten way too large for me.  Not pictured was the Warmachine games being played and dozens of small games and demos that were going on.  I played Warhammer Ancients Battles, the singles and doubles tourneys.  It is always a smaller event, much more to my liking.  Even though the game is no longer supported, we still have a good core of players, but it is clearly dying as the doubles tourney only had 4 teams, singles had 12 players, 14 registered and two did not make it.  Its clear in my mind that Hail Caesar, while popular in some regions for being a friendly get together, is not a good game for tourney play as its rules are way too loose and open to interpretation to my liking.  And quite frankly I personally don't like the game at all, I very much prefer the warhammer based rules systems. 

Adepticon Bound

Well, I'm off to Adepticon for the weekend.  Finishing touches on this batch of Vikings are done.  I'm happy with the looks of them.  Played some practice games with them a few weekends ago they are hard, but have quite a few faults in the army build.  We'll see how I do.  I have preordered the new Gripping Beast plastic Dark Ages box, and begun building a few Saxons also, in addition to some new Viking characters.  My expansion will be into some Bondi and Saxon allies, all of which will double for my playing of some SAGA in addition to WAB and hopefully some Clash of Empires.

For Adepticon, I'll be playing the big Hastings game against some Saxons and Normans Friday night.  On Saturday, I will play the WAB singles tournament.  Then on Sunday, Mike Butcher and I will team up in an attempt to win the WAB Team tourney for a second straight year. 

Friday night coincides with the first open practice for the kart season, which I'm going to miss.  Is it ever going to warm up, forecasted High of 43F, and we are supposed to have snow most of the days this week???  Well, my dad is going to shake-down my new racing kart, I helped him finish up his kart this past weekend.  We still have all the body work repair to do on both of them, just ran out of time with too many things to do.  Season begins May 3rd.

So if you are at Adepticon, swing by and look for my Vikings.

When I get back I'll probaby take a short amount of time off, recharge my batteries by doing some racing.  Then I've decided to take a spin down the road to doing some Flames of War with a couple of buddies.