[200q20v] Re: NEQ Winter Driving School photos

[Brett Dikeman]

>Looks like a few cones down here, did anyone graduate?

Just so there's no confusion, the cones were -all- tipped ;-)

The NEQ folks tip the cone to indicate which direction you're
supposed to go through the slalom.  This led to some interesting
situations when the cones were hit.  At one point, one of the cones,
2 feet from the outside edge, pointed directly at the snowbank 2 feet
away, until we reset it.  There was a somewhat amused comment from
the instructor over the radio after that particular lap.

Students were remarkably good at judging when the car would fit and
wouldn't; very often, unless it got -really- tight the students would
happily follow however we(or they) set the cones.

I've come to the conclusion that the "perfect" cone for this sort of
thing is one that has a -rather- heavy base(keeps it from going -too-
far) but a very soft top, possibly with a teflon coating on it so it
doesn't leave a mark; something like Viton would be perfect except
that the cones would cost $500+ apiece :-)

   The problem here was that the cones were rock hard because it was
around 10 degrees F, and so they took out a few body pieces here and
there; the plastic inserts in the A4/S4 grills were a favorite
"casualty", and one S4 lost a crosspiece from the bumper itself;
snapped right off.  I found half of it on the source; the other half
was nowhere to be found.  A lot of cones also really got trashed,
because they too were very brittle.

The owner did not take us up on the offer to remove the -other-
crosspiece to match it, despite our insisting that "it looks much
nicer without that little bar, you should make the other side the
same!"

Brett
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