Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

In November Green1 and I operated radio net control for the Kananaskis car rally, something we’ve been doing for years. This time, at the banquet afterwards, the organizers for the Big White rally approached and asked if we were willing to come to Big White ski resort south east of Kelowna for their rally. This year being the first time they were having a rally there, they needed experienced radio operators.

After negotiating a deal for accomodations and meals, and exchanging over a hundred e-mails to arrange the operating and emergency procedures over the next month, the time came.

On a dark and gloomy morning on 04 December 2009, Green1 and I set out in his “new” 1994 Spacegear for Big White. The weather forecast had been for horrible weather, but when we woke up and set out from Calgary it was still snow-free. (Later that morning Calgary would get a windswept dump of snow that paralyzed the city for the next couple of days.)

By the time we reached Canmore, the road was lightly coated with drifting and blowing snow, and it got steadily worse from then on.

The Trans-Canada in photos
Coming up on the Kicking Horse rest area, drifting snow.
Golden, BC, even the sheep have come down from the hills.

A couple of views of the Roger’s Pass By the time we dropped down to Sicamous and turned off the Trans-Canada, the roads had improved. Until we left Kelowna and started climbing up to Big White. That road was quite icy, with poor visibility.
-- to be continued in part two

-- part two

After an evening meeting, Saturday morning, rally day, dawned snowy, cold (-16) and windy. We operate net control from within the Delica. Fortunately, we were able to plug in an AC heater, so the temperature was brought up to just above zero for most of the day. The Delica as net control central.

The rally was relatively uneventful – only two stages were cancelled – as was the banquet.

The next morning we headed back for home. As usual, some drivers overestimate their skills, and their vehicle’s traction.
We checked this Mazda pickup, but it was already vacant.
Later, somewhere near the BC-Alberta border, we had a slight delay as the TC was down to one lane while yet another semi was being pulled from the ditch. Hope the driver was okay.

After that it was a pretty uneventful run home. Thirteen hundred kilometres, at least a third of it in 4WD.

Praise Delicas!!

Cool story and nice pics.

What does "operated radio net control" consist off? Timing?

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.

Ya, what Green1 said.

Well if a Deli could even reach 130, it would give those guys a run for the money....

Nice work guys.

flyfishn wrote:Well if a Deli could even reach 130, it would give those guys a run for the money....

Oh, mine can do 130 in a straight line on flat highway no problem; but 130 on a windy twisty road? No. These guys can average over 100 on roads you would do 30-70 on. I wish I could drive like that. But I can't, so I'll just watch.

Erebus wrote:This year being the first time they were having a rally there, they needed experienced radio operators.

strange that they needed experienced radio operators... 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...
http://ocarc.linsati.com/

almac wrote:

Erebus wrote:This year being the first time they were having a rally there, they needed experienced radio operators.

strange that they needed experienced radio operators... 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...
http://ocarc.linsati.com/

The radio operators in the Kelowna area were excellent, and we really wish we could have them at most of our local rallies. However they all lacked rally experience, which is really a must for net control on this event. With some more experience working on car rallies I suspect that they would have no trouble doing this, however for the first time, it was necessary to have rally experience controlling the radio net.
Once again, don't misinterpret this, we were very impressed with the local radio operators, we would gladly have them at any of our local events, and in fact we found many of them to be better than many of the operators we usually work with.

^^^ what he said ^^^ Rereading what I wrote it didn't say what I meant... I was really only referring to rally experience, not radio experience. And as Green1 said, they did better than too many of the Calgary area operators who have done rallies for years. To some extent, all events are the same. The biggest difference is the stakes, in a rally, if you make a mistake there is a good chance someone dies. In many events, you make a mistake and the supply truck doesn't bring water in time. Not quite the same risk.

Maybe next year you will come out too? Then we can have more Delicas out!

FYI, OCARC's website is now http://www.ocarc.ca/

Erebus wrote:Maybe next year you will come out too? Then we can have more Delicas out!

this might be a possibility. being an avid photographer i would be interested in expanding my portfolio.
also like showin off my deli!

as I am an avid rally fan nice to see you guys doing this for such an awesome motor sport .... a buddy of mine shawn bishop organizes a lot of these events and I'm sure he appreciates you guys as well..... thanks for doing an awesome job boys.....

madmazda wrote:as I am an avid rally fan nice to see you guys doing this for such an awesome motor sport .... a buddy of mine shawn bishop organizes a lot of these events and I'm sure he appreciates you guys as well..... thanks for doing an awesome job boys.....

We know Shawn quite well as he is the rallymaster for many of the Calgary area rallies. We just need to get you a ham radio license and then we can have even MORE delicas out there! (we have 3 of us so far)

well Id love to learn seems like it would be fun and it would be cool to have a lot of delicas present....