321 GO!
	ARRA NEWSLETTTER; OCT 2003 www.arra.org.uk

MEGALOMANIAC, ME?

Firstly, a big welcome to all our Web-based Readers. Global circulation at last! Yesterday, West Lancashire, today The World – tomorrow – who knows? Tesco’s fruit and veg, actually.

SHOCK, SURPRISE, NEWS; THIRD SEASON SUMMARY

And so we enter the final season of the year – one of mists, mellow fruitfulness and no doubt some surface water on Red lane along the back straight. Don’t worry - it’s what those sponge tyres are for. And if you think that sounds challenging, some of us remember sheet ice on the track a couple of Winters back – yes, this is true. Forget Goop, think studs. No, not the ones for your nose, the ones used by Mr. McRae.

Season 3 is always affected by holidays so how does the Championship look post sun, sea and sangria or, for some of us clambering over Welsh mountains on English mountain bikes in Amazonian humidity/temperatures, sweat, sweat and sweat? (Drum roll here; thanks as always to Colin the Results Guru).

Well, I’m even more pleasantly surprised than last time to report that Team Croston (the place) have again managed to hang on to the overall Championship leads (Senior and Junior) but now only 7 points span Colin, Paul and myself for the Senior honours at the end of Season 3 and Mark C’s gaining, so it looks like we’re in for a fiercely fought cliff-hanger of a final season. John has an 11 point “cushion” over Mark K (but where are you Mark?) for the Juniors and then a sizeable gap to Jess.

Championship Class Leaders as at end of the 3^rd Season as follows;

1/32 1/24

Prod Saloon Sports Prod Gp 12

Senior Arthur Arthur Paul Charlie/Colin/Mark C Arthur

Junior. John John Mark K Mark K John

Racing has been characterised by increasing closeness (careful) especially in those classes where cars are “stock” – look at the 1/24 Production result above - and many of us have vainly tried for entire heats to close down gaps of a few hundredths of a lap, or vainly tried to extend an equally small lead. Whatever, close racing makes for good racing.

The open wheelers have been active too, mainly at 1/24 but quarterly at 1/32 - close racing with the wider 1/24 versions means cars interlocking wheels and/or clambering all over one another, and even other cars, which keeps the Marshals awake and keeps The Repairer in petrol money (increasingly costly, these days, I believe…….).

WEB NEWS Keep an eye on the website because our Webmeister tells me that video clips of real ARRA racing in all its awesome raw-ness are likely to appear in the near future. Now’s the time to book that special sunbed or waxing session you always promised yourself and have that nose-job done. I’m limiting myself to a new body (for the car) and clean socks (for me).

NEW MEMBERS Roger, Ian C, Craig and Jamie; Welcome to THE Club!

Thought I had a prospective new member the other day when my better half expressed an interest in dicin’. Turned out it wasn’t motor racing of any scale but vacuum cleaners she was talking about. And could it be that our purple Dyson was the inspiration for the pink’n’purple paint job on the TVR seen on the track recently? The Dyson certainly has beautiful lines and handles exceedingly well, probably because it sticks down better especially on maximum suction – vacu-dynamics I think. Watch out for this on the next generation of slot cars. Or maybe not. Yes, I’m losing it.

Anyway, the pink’n’purple is intended as a restrained’n’classy response to those who have suggested that I can only do unimaginative black paint jobs a la “Stealth” Toyota GT1! So there! Back to matt black for the next one then.

CHART NEWS

Yes, Muse have entered at No1. Oops, sorry, wrong Newsletter. Latest, revised, (improved?) Improvers Chart looks like this;

%
108
107
106
105
104
103
102
101
100
	CF	IF	EF	CC	AF	JF	PH	MK	MC	MR	JR	RT

(Improvements in Personal Bests (Laps/min) for 1/32 Production, run by all and a good benchmark)

The figures in the % column and corresponding colour blocks represent the 3rd quarter 2003 Personal Bests compared to the 2nd quarter figures – 100% means no change, the bigger the number/block is above 100 the more you’ve improved. Green means your improvement’s improving, blue means your improvement’s slowed since last time. Grey is reserved for the mass of racers who’ve plateaued out (who said we’re “over the Hill”). Members whose names don’t appear this time will be included as soon as you’ve raced long enough for me to make the comparison!

So this month’s priceless special mention in 3-2-1 Go! goes to Jess (watch out John, she’s gaining!).

BROKEN – ONE LAP RECORD

Yes, for the second time this year a lap record has gone. This time it’s the one for Scalex type cars and it looks like the lucky person whose name is to appear on the Great Black Board is, well, me. So luck is perhaps the word then. The time was, for the record (sorry), 5.645 laps/min. And thanks to Mike R for bringing this to our attention! Someone scrutinises the Results, then. The hardware might be humble but the company is distinguished. One basks.

TRACKWORKS

A Working Party spent last Friday doing much needed track sorting; Charlie/Ian F and Mark C/Craig working in pairs clambered about under and occasionally over the track searching for a short, which was duly located and isolated into submission. This should enable the track polarity finally to be reversed, bringing the rest of the UK slot racing fraternity into line with the ARRA Standard. Sorry, bringing us into line with them! We knew WE had it right really but you can’t buck a trend. Colin, Mike R, Jess, Ian C and AJF worked (mostly) above track cleaning and preparing where necessary for tape repairs done by our more skilled people, mainly Paul and Charlie.

So it all looks a lot smarter now and, more importantly, power pick-up should be noticeably better so we should see some fast times over the next few weeks. And sorting the short has cleared the way for installation of the new Race Control which should hopefully be monitoring our every push of the controllers any day now.

SLOT-TECH

A small group of us went up to Slot-Tech’s new track in New Longton recently and spent the evening learning our way round, picking up some pearls of slot-wisdom from Jim, and doing some “crash and burn” racing once we’d tired of checking out the computerised fastest lap updates on the monitor ie once our PB’s stopped improving.

We returned a couple of weeks later to put our knowledge of the track to the more serious test of a night’s racing against the Slot-Tech Team, the “Men in White” immortalised in the last Newsletter, and did fairly well, winning a few heats (losing a few more…) and managing a best overall placing of 3^rd on the night.

Very enjoyable, and well worth a visit but take Scalex type cars only – they run on Thursdays (mainly), Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Assembled by AJF; the car in front …………is the one to aim for (at?).