Archive for June, 2009

I just finished coding up a brand new practice tree program. I’m calling this version 2. It is a complete rewrite with many improvements over the old version.  Try it out!

Here is the link to download it: Herbold Racing Practice Tree 2.0

Important Update:

There four things that you need to download from Microsoft and install onto your PC in order for the practice tree program to run.  If you are running Windows XP, you need all four.  If you are running Windows Vista, you need only the last two (the first two are already part of Vista Service Pack 1).

1. Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package (x86)
2. Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 (x86)
3. DirectX End-User Runtime
4. Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable 2.0

Maybe some day I will write a proper installer for this program.  Who knows. 

And here is a screen shot:

Please let me know if you encounter any issues running the program, or you see something that wasn’t done quite right!  I’m always looking for ways to improve the program.

Andy and I took a trip down to SIR (Southwestern International Raceway) at Tucson so he could race my car. We got there and unloaded the car and checked things out. We initially entered into the Pro class without realizing that there was a Sportsman class (there is no Sportsman class in the ADRA) but we got that fixed and got the car into Sportsman. It became quickly apparent that we got there very early – at the time I checked SIR’s schedule out it had the gate time listed as 3 pm. But racing doesn’t actually start until 6 pm. However, we did enjoy checking out the big wheels racing event (little kids on trikes) – they used the tree and even showed the kids “ET” (actually 60 foot times) on the board along with reaction times. Very entertaining – you see the 3 year olds do stuff like “fender racing” and “pedaling it” (literally!). Lots of laughs.

Here are some random pictures of Andy and the car.  In the last picture, there is a brown truck in the background.  These people (a father and son) were quite nice and friendly and I am interested in getting in touch with them – so if they are you, then email me using “mherbold at cox.net”!  You can also see some of the storm clouds in the last picture.  We could see it raining in the mountains a distance away and were hoping that they would stay away.  The rains never came.

For the first two time only passes, Andy red lit with a 0.004 and 0.007 – which are very nice times.  We were surprised at how slow the car seemed to be, with a 13 seconds ET.  But in retrospect, it was all because of the high elevation and the storm front making the DA nearly 7000!  For the third time-only pass Andy decided to participate in the gamblers race.  His reaction time was an okay 0.065 but the ET was a razor close 12.902 on a 12.90 dial!  He ended up winning the gamblers race for the sportsman class and getting a bunch of cash, even before the real race has begun.  Nice.

Andy ended up making a total of four eliminations passes, making it into the quarter finals before finally getting eliminated.  The second elimination round was an interesting one – Andy hit the brakes on the car near the stripe and you can see a big puff of smoke come off when the wheel locked up.  He was shaking after that!  The car kept on getting faster and faster as the storm front went away and the cold air rolled in.  Andy ended up doing a breakout 12.807 on a 12.83 dial in his last run (probably because he was afraid to touch the brakes again!).

Without futher ado, here are the videos.  There is no outside video of the first time only pass (I didn’t have the camera with me) and no inside video of the last pass (digital film ran out).

Time Only Pass 1:

Time Only Pass 2:

Time Only Pass 3 (Gamblers run!):

Eliminations Round 1:

Eliminations Round 2 (Right front wheel locks up):

Eliminations Round 3:

Eliminations Round 4 (Quarterfinals):

In the above video, you can see me shake the camera mid-way through Andy’s run. This is because I was standing in the groove and suddenly realized the car behind me was doing his burnout – so I ran out of the way!

Not a bad race at all, considering this is the first time Andy has ever driven my car!