TeamD Adventures

This was it: our last chance to practice with the computer on a rally even remotely resembling the kind of scoring weÂ’ll see on the Alcan. Chuckanut Sports Car Club put on the Armageddon XXII Redux rally on January 25. This event was rescheduled from last
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Part 54 of the the TeamD Alcan Winter Rally training plan required that we get out and warm up our dusty TSD rally skills in advance of the rally. On Sunday, January 25th, over two months since our last taste of competition the TeamD Alcan crews headed north to Bellingham, Washington for the 22nd running of the Armageddon Rally. This was a short five hour all-paved event but served well to remind us how to drive the cars and run the Timewise rally computers. There were no surprises and this gentle rally was smooth from start to finish. Steve and I missed first overall by a single point with a score of 16. Even more satisfying was that we came in with almost half the score of future Alcan competition Glenn Wallace and Greg Hightower. Of course we’re all warming up but it gets us feeling happy. The Alcan Rally seems closer now.

I peered out the small starboard-side port on the Herc and it hit me: “Whoa! Are those Viggens? Or MIGs???? Did Willey forget to file the paperwork? And just how far off course *are* we???? And in what direction?” Järvi 17 sits inside an inactive artillery range, but very close to the border east of Lammasjärvi. The people at the Ministry are a bit touchy and you *gotta* do your paperwork!
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None of us was sure what to expect from the day as we set out in the early morning darkness from Seattle on January 19th. It would be a long day and our expectations were high that our day at the dedicated TeamD test facility, Lac de Glace (Ice Lake) would prove beneficial. Our rented C-130 cargo plane and flight crew were right on time and in just a few hours we were on the ground again and warming up for a day of trials and tuning on the ice.
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This past weekend (January 10-11) we spent a few hours crawling through and around the WRX. Here’s a recap of everything we did:
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