An update....


Hi All,

I just wanted to give you an update on the status, with about 4 weeks to go before the rally.

As you may have already seen on the LHFR website, some competitors have already registered to compete. As in past years, we expect to get close to if not exceed our maximum entry. This year, we've set up the schedule to handle 30 entries, up from 25 of last year.

The final preparations are under way with finishing touches being made to the instruction route book, which will be green-crewed in the coming weeks. The organizer has driven the road recently, and although it was still covered in snow in shady spots, an AWD vehicle could get through and the reports are that the road is mostly in good shape. If some of you were not aware, the section of the road north of Gemmills is not maintained in winter.

As of today, we have 47 registered volunteers. From all of us on the organizing committee, a big thank you. As most of you are aware, the Lavant Mill road, requires a lot of volunteers because of the large number of trails and cottages that need to be supervised during the rally. In the first two years, we were very lucky in recruiting all the help that we needed, and this year is coming along very well. We still need 20-25 more workers, especially a few more HAM radio operators, you can never have enough radios.

Also this year, we have a specific target in that we would like to overstaff the stage ends, i.e., we want more start and finish marshals than we really "need". The Ontario rally governing body, Rallysport Ontario, has purchased an electronic timing control system that it plans to use at future rallies. Before widespread use of the system, however, they would like to test the new system in parallel with traditional timing methods at a couple of events. So what we would like to do is run parallel timing control procedures at each stage end, both at starts and finishes. This is in part to determine best practices with the new equipment, but is also a way of training stage end marshals in using the new system. The plan would be that the workers at the stage ends would swap roles from stage to stage, sometimes using the new system, and sometimes the old.

We are currently looking into possibly holding an on-site demonstration to interested marshals on the Friday evening before the rally, and I will keep you posted about that. If you are particularly interested in attending that, let me know by e-mail, and we'll gauge the interest. We need some personnel there Friday anyway to prep and tape the road, and supervise Friday evening recce. If you're interested in helping with any of those things, let me know.

That's all the news for now, I'll be e-mailing you again shortly with more details about roles and specific needs that need to be filled, as we being to allocate workers to tasks.

Thanks again,