Pymatuning first race of the year under our belt ,were you there and what did you think of it ?

I'm not attempting to argue with you. I agree that it wasn't the smartest move, especially from a rider or father of a rider standpoint.

The point I can't seem to get across is to view things from the promoters standpoint. Perhaps it made some type of sense to them at that time.
 
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So I guess what your saying is whenever you race here every lap should be a cautious lap because there is always a chance it could rain on the faces and landings of jumps. Despite the sky being blue and the sun shining. Again. It's not the same. Does rain do the same thing. Yes. But you expect it when it's raining. Or when they do track prep between races. Not while guys are riding.


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Wait, water during practice because it was dusty? Did I read that right?
How about water BEFORE practice and it will not be dusty.
Want to water? Great. STOP the event. Do your watering. Heck water the crap out of the face of the jumps. Tell everyone on the line that you are watering and give them a sight lap.
Come back to the gate and start practice or race. If a rider goes down on the sight lap they its the riders fault.
Don't give a rider warning or a site lap? its the track owners fault. Regardless if they are "giving us a place to ride"
 
Hi Ed , your right I feel bad when ever a rider gets hurt on my track , and I'm sure sorry your son got hurt I don't wish that on anyone . But as far as the rest of that crap your trying to dish out your way the hell off base . Number one ,we are under a court order not to have any fugitive particulate matter into the air . That's right ,for those of you who don't what that is ( I sure didn't when I got a violation , and the first 1000.00 fine , it's dust and its agains the law in Pennsylvania to create it , our next fine is going to be $3500 , Second I'm the only one who puts any water on the track when there's riders on it and I'm very carefull to create a tacky surface and not a slick one , its the only way to keep from haveing to stop and water every half hour . Third we did get a complaint about the kicker on wednesdays practice and we did fix it ,sat I had not one complaint about that jump or the watering . Fourth its a practice , if you see an unsafe area or a guy with a water hose that shoots 150 feet in the air , for christ sake why the hell wouldn't you slow down ,it's not a race use some god given common sense , no one else went down and no one was hurt so that tells me it wasn't an issue , and for your info I don't worry about the party , the hotel does that for me and the kids are having a blast at them , I'm at the track doing prep . I'm starting to think some of you should actually work at a track for a day or two and you would see how ridiculous some of your statements are ,it always amazes me how the peewees and 60 riders can make it through these terrible kicker jumps without any problems at all and there all riding on the same watered track everybody else is , i'm very sorry your son got hurt and I'll be willing to talk to you anytime in person about some of our procedures and why we do it , and if you can give me a better way i'll be glad to adopt it . But as far as I'm concerned you're post was way off base and way out of line . I'm going to chalk it up to a distraught father ithat is upset that his son got hurt and for that I don't blame you I hope he gets better soon .
 
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Suggestion:


Sunday day race. Water all night Saturday. Until it's almost muddy.

Pros:
Split format for bikes and quads with some tweaking it'll get better. Transition time between needs to be quicker more fluid. You can fix that.

New layout looks better. Need more water laid down. Track has potential. Need more water.

I don't know. I don't run a track but atleast it's a start art. Keep making it better. It's possible.
 
Your right about the watering 100 percent, our system was down from a broken pipeline and we worked on it all through the nite to get it replaced that's why everybody was so cranky Sunday morning because we were up all nite doing the repair . It makes the conditions so much better when the water has a chance to soak in overnite , your both 100 percent right about that , that's why l was so upset Sunday morning because I knew it wasn't soaked enough and I kept trying to get the crew to lay down more water but most of the time were always giving them hell for putting on two much water on the jumps and faces too close to race time , so it was very confusing for them to understand the situation , I ended up taking them all out to the hotel after the race because it was so hard on everyone on two or three 16 hour days leading up to the race to get things finished up . The bad weather really can take its toll on you when your trying to make these kinds of changes in the spring weather conditions . The temps at nite were still getting into the teens so we couldn't test the watering system until the last minute and when we did it was our worst nightmare it had a broken line from the Winter freezing . I knew I was going to have to be out there all day by myself ,trying to control the dust and trust me it just no fun and very stressful because of all the reasons Ed just mentioned, just A few seconds with a hose in the wrong place and it can make for a very dangerous condition on that part of the track . The watering hoses we use aren't garden hoses ,their inch and and a half fire hoses operating at 100 lbs of pressure and can put out some serious water , so you have to be ever so careful when just trying to give a little love tap to knock down the dust on a hard pack section of track . On the Plus side is that seven guys on fire hoses can dump and entire water truck tank of water on the track every seven minutes that's a lot of water to get the track ready in really dry conditions like we have a lot of the times , and when we get all the sprinklers on line then we'll really be able to lay down some water ( 1200 gallons a minute ) now of course we have to increase our water supply source . It's just never ending if your trying to improve your operation , I guess that's why there are so few tracks out there that get it right !
 
ck1racerx said:
Wait, water during practice because it was dusty? Did I read that right?
How about water BEFORE practice and it will not be dusty.
Want to water? Great. STOP the event. Do your watering. Heck water the crap out of the face of the jumps. Tell everyone on the line that you are watering and give them a sight lap.
Come back to the gate and start practice or race. If a rider goes down on the sight lap they its the riders fault.
Don't give a rider warning or a site lap? its the track owners fault. Regardless if they are "giving us a place to ride"
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we do exactly what you just described everytime we water the track , this wasn't a bunch of guys out there with watering hoses while the race was running , it was just me touching up some problem areas and believe me when I tell you I'm very carefull in how I do it .
 
elisowski said:
Just to clear the confusion:

They watered the landing (top of a table top) during the practice. It was a step up to a table top. You can't see the landing area when your taking off.

Nobody was able to clear the table top so they were all landing on the "safe" zone on top of the table top.

when it was watered during practice, it was made unsafe. Period.

Again, it was poor track management.
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Ed what would you suggest to hold down the dust on the top of that table top That would hold up for longer than five minutes , because I'm all ears !
 
elisowski said:
The track owners job is to provide a safe track to ride. If something becomes unsafe, they should fix it.

We've all been to tracks where something on the track is or becomes unsafe. Kickers form on the faces of jumps, landing zones become pushed out and dangerous. They fix them.

The Summit indoor track is built just a few days before the event. They test it, change it and open it to the public. If something becomes dangerous ( a steep landing, a bad jump face, etc, ). They stop the event and FIX IT.

If you know a jump is causing problems for your riders and is dangerous, why would you water the landing? Especially while bikes are on the track and have NO CLUE what you are doing.

You can't compare it to rain. That's ridiculous.

It's bad track management.

And multiple people went down on that jump, some got hurt as well.
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Again Ed , we did not get one complaint from the jump your talking about including you and we also did not see any one having problems with it and I personally put spotting riders out there to check our jumps because everything is new and unproven in race conditions, not to mention we ran the entire day sat after we fixed the jump Friday and NO ONE had any trouble with it .
 
I think pit racer is a great way to get rider feedback and you all know I welcome it ,good or bad and I'll take my licks too because I'll be the first to admit we don't always get it right . But if you think for one minute I'm just going to lay down and take an non deserved bullshit post than you people don't know me very well . As I said before when you son or daughter gets hurt its hard on everyone and we don't always have our clearest thinking at hand and that's very understandable,and that's why as a promoter we need to listen first then comment afterwards and try to see what went wrong ! We have a lot of video including drone video of most of the racing Sunday , I'm hoping to see the crash on tape to be able to learn from it what went wrong and fix it if it's fixable . We don't make any money from an injured rider and it's not the greatest publicity either . But most of all I care and feel responsible for everyone that goes out there and nothing hurts more than when I see a injury regardless of who's fault it is . Ed I really do wish your son a speedy recovery and if we contributed to his crash in any way , for that I'm truly sorry . ART
 
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Art - I enjoyed the changes to the track and would agree with Georgie that more water would be great. You mentioned to me at the track the pump went out, so there wasn't a whole lot that could be done prior to bringing out the old pump.

- The step up table it a neat feature. I am not complaining about it. After my site lap, I hit it to the right once and noticed that either I hit it wrong (always a possibility) or it shot me nose high. Simple solution was to not hit it there again. So, the next 20-25 laps, I hit it left of center and it was fine.

- Get the track wider in some corners. I like the quick turns and slight elevation changes in the new turns. If there is a way to put an inside finger or ant hills on some corners to create and inside and outside lane, please try it. Pack the heck out of that inside finger and make it high enough where one has to slow down for it or go outside. I noticed a few corners were wide enough to accommodate at least two lines, but it could have been that EVERY SINGLE RIDER is dumb and hits the same inside line on EVERY corner. I always liked the idea of using cones to force people to use a different line, but with today's riders, I don't think the riders would look up, process the fact there is a cone out there, and understand what a cone means on the track. During quad practice on Saturday I tried hard to make an outside line, but no one followed. Not all turns warrant the inside finger/jump, but some could use it.

- Power Rake - after disking and/or cultivating is there any way to run a power rake or attach a rake behind either attachment to break down the chunks? I wonder if riders run one line because the ripper digs deep and the dirt it too rough/chunky for them try two lines?!

- Round hound the start. I saw some massive rocks in the holeshot on Saturday. I do not know/remember if they were there on Sunday.

- Long term plan. I don't know how much water your pond can hold, but I worry that capacity won't keep up in the summer months and the amount of water required to keep the dust down (preventing fines). Maybe a back pond to hand watering the back sections!? I don't your pond/irrigation, but a long term thought.

Our machines will be back to moto again. I'm glad to see the changes and work in progress. We had fun. Thanks.
 
Makes sense with cones. But the problem is riders could implement that. But riders are riding. Not working it's hard to teach a track worker what to do if they don't ride.
 
I been following this post and some of the others for a while now. I grew up riding holeshot and always looked forward to racing their on Fridays and Saturdays with the guys from World of Wheels. It was close to the house and always had good turn outs. It sucks the track has gotten such a bed rep of the past years but everyone has a good valid opinion on here. Everywhere you go tracks damn near flood the dirt the night before. Disk water disk and water again. riders want ruts. I don't know if you have a set of rototillers but that will break down the dirt so it isn't so chunky. I grew up with a back yard track and my dad invested in a rototiller and that use to make for the best dirt. Mix in some mulch, sand, saw dust. Something that will hold moisture and keep the dust in. Taper out the lips on the jumps. Riders don't want to jump to the moon and risk landing on someone beneath. Wider corners and straights so riders can pass and have a race. Look at the layouts of tracks around you. they are fast, fun and safe. These tracks are getting great turnouts. Malvern's dirt has improved over the years but they are constantly adding to it. TV Land is always improving. Big Game did a complete 360 over the past few years and has turn out to be a great track. Art you have been around for a long time. If you build it they will come has been the saying for years. If you make the changes and work gets out you can have a good turn out. Take some time off from having practice and racing now that the weather is good and work on the improvements. If the track has sunk eight inches over the years you need to bring in some new dirt, mulch, etc to get a surface that will hold up throughout a race day.
 
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