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Thanks for the heads up Steven. I am going to hold off on the meeting until the end of the night. That should give us the maximum participation in discussions.

The racers at Rob's Redline are friendly and always willing to help out new racers in getting up to speed. Track owner Rob gave Ray some good tips.

Mike G. had a great night, winning the Womp race and placing second in the Flexi race!

Bill H. also ran well. He has been away from racing for most of the summer, but by the end of the race he was back in the hunt!

Kona, a rookie last season, showed up with a new controller and demostrated what a difference good equipment can make! Fifth in the Fexi race is his best finish to date!

That's a good question Steven. I think at this point it is play it by ear. We can discuss more on Monday.

While I am at it, we discussed rules for the Midgets just a bit. The plan is to race them as close to "out of the box" stock as possible. 

Here is a first draft of some rule considerations:

- Cars must be built using Mid America Kits parts.

- The cars come with those old crappy Cox plastic crown gears. These crown gears can be replaced with another plastic (i.e. Parma) crown gear. The original kit crown gear is a 29 tooth. Replacement gears must be 28 tooth to 30 tooth only.

- Mike Guthrie has made some brass weights to use as ballast. They are made out of "of the shelf" .092" brass strip, 1/2" wide and cut to 1 1/4" in length, with a hole drilled in them for the body mounting screw to pass through. They brass piece weighs 6 to 8 grams and sits in the bottom front portion of the chassis. The piece cannot be soldered or glued in place (must be left to rattle loosely). We plan to make these up and have them available for racers. This will be the only additional weight allowed - NO LEAD!

- Front wheels/tires can be made to rotate independently.

- The stock tires are approximaitely .915" diameter and .415" width, both front and rear. Bob Nakamura stocks Pro_track Daytona fronts that are .900" tall with a width of .340". These will be allowed as replacement front tires. Front tires must be kept close to .900" to maintain minimum ground clearance.

- Minimum ground clearance at the lowest point under the car will be .062".

- Overall width is 3.0" (determined by track width).

- Motor must be the stock Mid America 25K motor supplied with kit. Motor pinion gear must also remain stock as supplied.

Again, these are first draft considerations for rules. Voice your opinions and concerns now!

Today after prepping the track fro Monday's race we did some testing of the Mid America Midget kits. It looks like these things are going to be a lot of fun! They handle a lot better than I ever thought they would!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghHMz55_5_0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98Xo1pGhRjQ

I have some Doc.

The TooBad Motorplex track has been acquired by Ken "Gearloose Jr." Palefenier and moved to his location in Beaverton. With the help of Frank Lynn, they have come up with a revised layout to fit Ken's available space. I was invited over to Ken's last night to check out his progress.

The redesign of the track layout fits the room well. Almost all of the original track pieces are incorporated into the new configuration. Ken had built a new "tabletop" and frame work to support the track, which he anchored up against and to two walls. The platform and framework are extremely stout! Underneath an old pool table provided a base of support for the middle of the tabletop. On the opposite side of the table from its anchor point to the wall, a pair of old heavy duty dressers provide the support.

Our first topic of disussion was how the track could be marshalled for a race. After discussing different options it was decided it might be best to move the track away from the end wall enough to leave room for turn marshal access. Ken and I are a lot alike in how we build things. The table is extra sturdy with 2 X 6 deck type construction. It took some doing for Ken to first get it loose from the walls.  Once we had the tabletop loose we felt we could just slide it a couple of feet away from the back wall, and then reattach it to the side wall. It was a great plan.......

In the process of performing "the slide"...........the pool table (support structure in the middle) did not slide.....We broke three of the four legs off of the pool table. The track and tabletop fell to the floor on one side emitting a very loud BOOM! Amazingly, aside from the pool able legs there was no damage! Our dialog then switched to fixing what we broke. Ken immediately came up with a solution, and although I felt bad contributing to the destruction, I left for home leaving Ken with a much bigger mess than he had when I arrived. There is no doubt in my mind Ken will have the tabletop back up and remounted in no time! Ken's construction working ability is impressive!

It's a tight fit but Ken has the track in his living room. I love the banners he has on the walls! A very cool track room!

This portion of the track will probably look familiar to those that raced on the original layout. What you can't see in the photo is how Ken banked the outside turn. It came out really nice!

This portion of the new layout will have an overpass.