flyfishn wrote:What does "operated radio net control" consist off? Timing?
To answer this, we need to start by quickly describing a Rally.
Rally racing involves "real cars, real roads, real fast" or so the slogan goes, basically these cars are racing on forestry roads, they do 130kph on roads that sane motorists would barely do 30kph on.
To make a safe event for all concerned, the roads are closed to all other traffic, and the whereabouts of every vehicle that could possibly be on these roads is carefully tracked. 3 course opening cars travel the road ahead of the competitors, all at varying rates of speed, up to and including race speed, to ensure that the roads are safe, and every possible side road or trail is blocked by a radio operator. As the cars race on these roads every car is tracked starting, finishing, and as they pass each blocking position along the road. And at the end of each stage a sweep vehicle checks the course to make sure all the cars have made it safely to the other end. If a car breaks down, goes off the road, or has any other issues that prevent them from finishing the stage, their whereabouts are established based on the last point they have passed, and light recovery vehicles, tow trucks, and medical personnel can be sent in as soon as the course can be proven to be safe.
The rally will consist of many separate race "stages" separated by service intervals and "transits" (where they drive on public roads between different race stages)
Our job as "radio net control" is to handle all the radio traffic for the rally, make sure the roads are closed, make sure the course vehicles are happy with the course, to keep track of exactly what is happening at all times, keep the rally flowing smoothly from one stage to the next, and coordinate whatever resources are required for any emergency or other contingency.
Officially all decisions are made by the race officials, however we transmit that information to the people who carry out the instructions, and in the absence of a race official, make any safety related or otherwise urgent decision for them.
As for "timing" we actually try to avoid handling this as we are much more interested in the safety of all persons involved in the rally, if there's enough time we will let the finish checkpoint relay scores on the radio, however we consider scoring traffic to be the lowest priority traffic we handle (the competitors find it important, but we'd rather they have to wait to find out who won, then for us to have to wait to find out someone needs an ambulance!)
The 2 of us have been doing this for every car rally in southern Alberta for about 5 years now, and have now done this winter rally near Kelowna as well. In that time we have dealt with everything from minor break downs, to vehicles that are on their roof 100 feet off the road, to coordinating helicopter med-evacs on 2 separate occasions. I have yet to work a car rally where all the cars that started the race made it to the finish, this rally was actually amazing in that we only lost 1 car throughout the day (though several more needed to be extracted from snowbanks)
For the rally we set the Delica up as a form of mobile office, with maps, schedules, competitor information, and emergency contact information attached by magnets to the walls of the vehicle, and the 2 of us with radios and clipboards working, one on the rear bench, the other in one of the middle-row captain's chairs slid forward and facing the sliding door, in this particular case we also had the rallymaster (the race official in charge of the whole event) sitting in the other captain's chair slid back and facing inwards. These are amazing vehicles with lots of room for 3 people as a mobile office.
"I could be just around the corner from heaven, or a mile from hell." -- Jackson Browne, "The road and the sky".
there are tons of operators in the kelowna area(i am one myself). as a matter of fact OCARC still exsists... as far as i know... 
