Summit Point and Re: ACCA

[jensen@maxwell.mml.mmc.com (Jim Jensen)]

>>>>> "Eliot" == Eliot Lim <eliot@u.washington.edu> writes:

>> Reading the above made me think of the Quattro Club: Let's see,
>> $30 per year, 6-10 pages of news letter every 3 months, AND, a
>> real nifty key ring.  Gee, I'm not sure it was such a good deal!

Eliot> i signed up for 1 yr's worth of free membership..
  
>> I joined the Quattro Club because I wanted a source of technical
>> info for sorting out the occasional wierd problems on my TQC. Now
>> that I discovered this news group I think I'll ask for my $30
>> back!

Eliot> you can say that again.. i didn't think much of their
Eliot> newsletters though you have to give them credit for trying.  a
Eliot> couple of times i was really tempted to write in to tell them
Eliot> about the internet quattro list but never got around to it.

Just yesterday I gave Bill Bartlett (the editor of the newsletter) the
most recent meg or so of the quattro list archives, as well as a copy
of the parts and mechanics lists.  Given the forum that the newsletter
has to use (one issue every three months), I am not sure how it could
compare to the internet list, where there is essentially instant
turnaround...  However, if you have any suggestions for the
newsletter, or the club itself, send them to me, and I will get them
to Bill...  He seems very interested in any new ideas.  Should we have
them publish the quattro list subscription address in the newsletter?

Eliot> they also organize track events which i think is their main
Eliot> activity..  unfortunately i don't live anywhere remotely close
Eliot> to minnesota and so far there has only been one event on the
Eliot> west coast.

This is something that they focus on.  Mike Young and I just finished
two days at Summit Point in West Virginia, which was great, at
least in my opinion.  I can not compare it to any of the other sites,
as I have not been any where else, but we spent the first morning:
	learning the course
	doing a slalom course
	doing a threshold braking exercise
	following a set of cones through a turn to learn the best line
	playing on a wet skid pad.*
Then after lunch, we had two sessions of:
	drive for 25-30 minutes
	watched at the corners for 25-30 minutes
	class for 25-30 minutes

* on the skid pad we used their cars (chevy caprice)- last year we
used our cars, but I guess it was too hard to get them to skid:-). 


On Wednesday, we did the same drive/corner/class iteration 4 more
times.  It was a lot of fun to learn to drive the car to the limit,
and see how it acted when it got there.  It felt very safe, event
though it was not hard to go off the track, there was just flat grass
- nothing hard like a guard rail...  In all the driving (I reached
100+mph (like 100.5) with my 130hp), and others reached much higher
speeds with bigger engines and turbos, etc.) there was no car to car
contact, or car to immovable object contact that I am aware of.
several people went off the track into the grass, but there were no
problems.  One person also lost his 2nd gear synchro, but he seemed to
take the turns at very high rpm...

Eliot> finally, if i were to punt 4 wheel thingies around the track
Eliot> my preference would be to be on a kart rather than on my daily
Eliot> transportation appliance...  :)
I don't think that I would like to do this every weekend, but I
enjoyed doing it once.  I will probably do it next year, again - I
like knowing how the car will act at speeds and conditions that are
not available at 55mph.  The drive home was a lot more boring than
usual for some reason :-)  maybe I will become an SCCA groupie for a
while. 

	-Jim
-- 
   Jim Jensen                        
   Martin Marietta Laboratories      jensen@mml.mmc.com
   1450 South Rolling Road    
   Baltimore, MD 21227-3898 USA		(410) 204-2605