I always love hearing people's predictions for Raceday 2019, and with it close at hand I'm wondering... what teams do you all think will place, and where? And will you be going to the races to see if you're right?

They can be seen and purchased here

We recently designed and made these items for CMU Alumni and friends for the upcoming Buggy. Sorry for the self-promotion, but we thought you guys might be interested in them!

If teams or groups are interested in multiple pairs, contact me here or my wife through the store and we can work on price. We might even be able to customize; but we are running short on time!

Posting this here because the BAA forums don't seem to allow registration of new members (and this has been the case the past few years, can't find any members registered since 2011).

Overall a very exciting Raceday, tight packing of men's times, emergence of CIA as a contender (and frontrunner for Women's).

On the Women's side it's pretty simple, CIA has the buggy technology to compete on the freerolls, and has a fast push team, not as fast as any of the SDC A push teams in the past well... 8 years or so by my stopwatch, but clearly lapping the field this year over SDC and Fringe. SigEp didn't make it to the line for their A team, and their A team pushers on Barracuda didn't overly impress (and they failed drops later anyways), so I think nothing changes in the top 4 with SigEp rolling a proper A team.

To be more specific, Fringe and CIA were about even through the front hills, stop sign, and CIA had a bit of a better rollup (but Fringe was almost right there with them on day 2), then their back hill pushers took it away for the win. SDC had pretty slow front hills, especially compared to themselves in past years, okay back hills (incredible hill 4, but not enough). Their chute turn on day 2 also was very messy and scrubbed off at least 4-5 seconds of time. SDC A with a clean chute competes with Fringe A for second, but no chance for first. PikA A had a blazing fast hill 1 but nothing special on any of their other hills.

On to the exciting (yet disappointing in ways) Men's races:

No real standout pushers this year other than Spirit's A team hill 1 and PikA's A team hill 1 (according to a chairman's email I was forwarded, he (PikA A) ran a 15.4 second hill 1 on day 1, I had him at ~15.7-15.8 on my stopwatch). Other than those two, nobody else was even close to a sub-16 hill 1 time, disappointing to see some of the top teams have ~17 second hill 1s, but it is what it is (I'll get back to this later).

Hill 2s were unpolished in general. SigEp A hung on to the buggy too long (a little long on day 1, way too long day 2), SDC A shoved too early day 1, still early day 2, PikA A had way too much lateral movement on the shove (day 1). Better hill 2s could shave off 1/2 to 1 second on that stop sign time.

Chute turns were actually good on day 2, all of SDC, SigEp, and CIA had clean turns with good rollups (good is relative to the condition of the roads of course), nothing close to the 2008-2011 rollups, but that's to be expected till the Mayor comes through with paving the road.

The back hills were also overall a little sloppy but mostly just really slow compared to past faster years. CIA A almost DQ's because their hill 3 pusher didn't pay attention after shoving off, SigEp A had way too much horizontal movement on their hill 3 to 4 transition too. SDC A showing their attention to detail with good transitions all day on all the hills, arguably made all the difference with their .3 second win over SigEp.

As mentioned, zero standouts on the back hills (or hill 2 for that matter), but I guess a shoutout to SigEp's hill 4 and SDC's hill 5, fastest on their respective hills, but still way slower (~1 second) than any of the fastest in previous years.

Stop sign times I have (faster of two days):

• CIA: 53 seconds
• Fringe: 52.5 seconds
• PikA: 51 seconds
• SDC: 53 seconds
• SigEp: 54 seconds

Given that it seems all of these 5 teams have similar speed buggies and wheel tech, this is basically completely a measure of their front hills. PikA leading of course with their king of the hill, Fringe A getting a solid hill 1 and veteran hill 2. CIA had an okay hill 1 too (mid-high 16s), SigEp also with an okay hill 1, but once again hill 2 pusher holding on to the buggy too long on both days killing their time.

Fun final note about the Men's teams we saw, PikA A rolled ~2:12.8 on day 2 on their exhibition heat. Their hill 4 was almost a whole second slower than he was on day 1 (hungover?). Compound this with a messier day 2 chute turn (fishtail) and you have to wonder if Pike could have won it all had they qualified for day 2. Even then, no chance for a sub 2:10 time.

Which is a good segway to Men's times compared to past year. No team had a chance in hell of getting a sub 2:10 time with the pushers they had and the road conditions this year. At best I could see Pike or SigEp getting into the mid 2:11s unless you magically grant them window 3-4 rollups from 2008-2011. I'd say this is 70% due to slow pushers, and 30% due to the continued deterioration of the roads in the past 2 cold winters.

But really, it's all on the pushers this year. Watch both of Pika A's races this year, and watch their race last year, same hill 1 and 2 pusher, same stop sign time, same flag times. This tells me that the front hills just sucked this year other than Pike and Spirit. Pike therefore with the only respectable stop sign time of 51 seconds.

As mentioned, the back hills also unimpressive. Fastest back hills on my stopwatch were around 50.8 seconds from SigEp A, a far cry from the 48.2 seconds of SDC A last year (the 2015 Raceday Preview has the entire layout of back hill times of last year).

Which leads to my last point, where a lot of alums have been commenting that the top push talent has been spread onto multiple teams rather than focusing on one to two teams (i.e. SDC, or SDC+Fringe). I'd say there's just less top talent pushing, period. I saw a grand total of zero sub 20 second hill 5 times, Bordick kept commenting "if this hill 5 pusher can finish in 19 seconds..." and nobody was even remotely close. Hill 4 was extremely disappointing with SigEp the only one with a decent time (low 16 seconds on my timer), still looked slower than SDC's hill 4 last year, I don't have his time because the replay footage is bad, but I was near the 4-5 transition last year and he smoked the field.

So either there's no top talent, or all the top talent is going to slower teams (i.e. Spirit and Apex). I know that Apex has a strong recruiting hold on the varsity soccer teams. Still, I think the effect of the ban on track and field pushers from the late 00s is still felt now. There's no culture of the fastest CMU students going to buggy teams anymore. Fringe can't seem to get football players like they once did, SDC isn't allowed to pick off the track sprinters anymore, and Pike not having a house on the quad severely hurts their rush/recruiting prospects.

Buggy's in a rut in terms of pusher talent, and it's clear as day now.

Also, somebody mentioned that SDC has been holding up the average for years now. Well, that's true for men's since Fringe lost their mojo, but it's not as bad as his figures show. Last year if Pike and SDC B make it through the chute that average is going to be sub 2:10. As for the women's average, well, yeah. Shockingly though, the winning women's time was closer to the winning women's time (~4 seconds slower) last year than for men's (~8 seconds slower), and the women's winner was CIA, not SDC. Also if you look at the 2013 top 4 finish averages, I'm 99% sure they'd be faster than 2014 or 2015. I would say that in 2014 every team except SDC dropped the ball and sucked ass, and now in 2015 SDC fucked up big time recruiting to replace graduated pushers, and the rest of the teams picked up some slack from 2014 (or a lot in the case of CIA).

Lastly, I also want to thank the commentators. Will, as always, bringing the exciting commentary, and Bordick and Connor were pretty on point all day. I'm liking the Will+Bordick+more recent buggy alum (Connor, Paccella) combo that we've seen lately.

Hey guys,

We're working on planning for Raceday events and the one thing we keep coming back to is the Truck Auction. We know some of you like it, but it seems like interest has been waning for the past few years. Either that or we've just been doing a terrible job promoting it.

So the question: Is anyone still interested in participating in the Truck Auction?

If you want to expand on it: why/why not? would something make you more interested?

The more input we get, the better event we can plan for you guys!

Alumni here from back in the day. Who's got the new buggies?

With all the new buggies that have been built recently, everyone's running out of storage space including us alumni.

I thought about it recently, and there's no reason that we can't rent a small storage unit for retired buggies. I know a few that could go there right off the bat and this could make it very easy to collect for events like homecoming, design comp, orientation, ect.

If there any student orgs are interested in storing older (maybe not yet retired buggies), we could get a larger one (or second one) and rent out spots to those orgs.

What do people think about this?

Seeing as there was a conversation about this on the forums, and I am forever stuck in a loop of "you need to log in/you have been successfully logged in/you need to log in," I will start a topic for it here.

According to Sweepstakes, the bylaws have not been physically amended because the original copy is some terribly hard to edit LaTeX file. Perhaps a worthwhile alumni project would be transcribing (read: copy/pasting and formatting) the bylaws into a Word doc for easier future amendment?

Most recently published bylaws: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/arevak/buggy/bylaws-5-4-09.pdf

And, from a Sweepstakes email prior to this raceday, here are the two changes in the bylaws not reflected above:

4.4.1 Race Entry Fees

Race entry fees must be paid to the Sweepstakes Advisor, or anyone designated by the Sweepstakes Advisor, at least one day before the day the heats are selected for the prelimininary races unless otherwise specified by the Sweepstakes Advisor or Sweepstakes

Chairman.

● First Entry $50.75

● Second Entry $36.25

● Third Entry $21.75

● Fourth Entry $21.75

7.2.4 First Roll Speed Restrictions

All buggies must be bagged on the first roll of the semester for an old driver, the first day of rolls for the semester for a new driver, the first roll after being involved in an accident (as per rule 7.3) for all drivers, and any time the safety chair deems it necessary for the safety of the buggy's driver.

A buggy is considered bagged if it meets either rule 7.2.4-1 or 7.2.4-2.

7.2.4-1 It has at least one standard-size (volume of at least 2.5 gallons) plastic shopping bag secured to the pushbar such that the bag is open in the direction of travel of the buggy. The bag must not have any holes or slits in it except for the handles. Tape is sufficient to secure the bag to the pushbar.

7.2.4-2 It has a clearly visible and obvious drag-increasing device determined by the Safety Chair to have a similar effect on the buggy's speed as option 7.2.4-1. For the purposes of this rule, “visible” means visible from the outside of the buggy in freeroll configuration for Sweepstakes verification.

Definitions for inclusion in Section 2, as per the definitions given in 10.5.1:

Old Driver A driver who raced in a Sweepstakes race in the previous year is considered an old driver

New Driver A driver who did not race in a Sweepstakes race in the previous school year is considered a new (sic)

Soo since the forum on cmubuggy doesn't seem to be working, anyone who wants to can chat here. Let's talk about raceday!

Here's what's on my mind so far:

• When the hell will we get TWO days of races again?

• That crash was pretty bad... I like the idea someone had about prioritizing making the course more safe before the buggies. It will be easier to standardize, and more easily adapted to cover the wide range of possible incidents. But on that note, someone else made an (exaggerated) comment about the course being all straight made of clouds and soft things... I don't want it to go that far. Just maybe some more things to prevent hard impact at the hard parts. Thoughts?

• I also think maybe there could be some way of the sweepestakes safety chair testing the harness system beyond just the "pull test". What about say, clipping the harness in to the buggy and having something pull suddenly and sharply on it towards the front of the buggy, imitating a head on crash scenario? Some teams might complain that this would rip out their harness mounts, but if that's the case, it's really not safe to begin with, is it? And better to rip it out without a person involved.

• As a driver, I had an over the shoulder harness. I thought everyone did? You can get roofing harnesses at home depot or something, they're expensive but they're great.

• How bout them times and teams? Pika was going pretty darn fast. But when are they going to build again? How do you think Apex would have done with Ember, and how will that go next year? CIA seems to be getting faster as well, and has been building a lot.

I don't have too much to say, just thought I'd throw a few things out there. Talk about whatever you want.

-Rachel, past sigep driver and sweepstakes ass chair 2013

So,

At this point, we've started gathering times at rolls which will hopefully give us a view of how the teams progress over the season. This can also give us more footage of rolls in general to use for fun highlight videos.

The problem is that our current equipment is not designed for long term filming.

• Halfway through rolls the cameras run out of battery unless we have an additional battery pack.
• There is no way to preview the footage or the angle (without a lot of hassle).
• The cameras we use now split the video files if they get too big (formatting issues)

Our plan is to purchase at least 2 GoPros (or other "action camera") up to 4 if there is interest and this is how they'd be used:

• With 2 cameras, we would have one at the crosswalk and one on the hill 3 line.
• With 3 cameras, we could add one at the finish-line for backhills timing.
• With 4 cameras, we could add stopsign timing OR additional backhills timing, OR high-res chute footage (ect.)

Aside from solving most if not all of those problems, GoPros would allow us to easily set up timelapses, have higher frame rate for more accurate timing, and allow remote viewing.

Right now we've been looking at the GoPro Hero3 white, or 3+ Silver ideally.

Those of you who were around back in the "early days" of the BAA may remember our very popular series of Thursday Poll posts leading up to Raceday 2010. With over 1,300 votes cast on 10 high-stakes topics we put to rest some classic debates, once and for all. (haha, yeah right)

I would really love to run a series of polls again this year, but I'm having a hard time coming up with new topics.

This post summarizes the topics we did in 2010

Suggest some new topics, and lets get some mid-week content going

I couldn't decide whether to post this as a Project or a Forum post, but Sam seems to be pushing this "Projects" area, so I'll post here. If I'm wrong, feel free to yell at me.

One idea that I've been wanting for a while now is for a live webcast of rolls. Admittedly, I don't know much about streaming live video, but I feel like it's relatively simple to do (I think there are sites that do this). As an alum, I typically wake up at around 7 on weekends, and I would love to roll out of bed, walk over to my laptop, and watch the day's rolls.

I'm not looking for anything very complex. Basically, my idea is a laptop with a webcam in the chute during rolls. I think the best place to put it would be on the flagger side of the street, down by the barricades. This way you can see the entry to the chute, the entire chute, and possibly part of hill 3 (though this would be way off in the distance).

In my ideal scenario, the site hosting the webcast would also have a live chat that accompanies the webcast. This would allow those of us watching to talk, reminisce, and just generally make comments about the rolls. But if that's not possible (again, I don't know how difficult streaming live video is, or what site options there are), it's not required.

Since projects are supposed to address the BAA mission goals, here is how I believe this project would accomplish some of these goals:

• "Provide a channel by which alumni can remain connected to and support the sport" - This should be obvious. Alumni can watch rolls (and possibly discuss in real time). This is even more useful for the Spring, as people can get a sense of how orgs are rolling, see some of the new buggies before raceday, etc.

• "Support and improve undergraduate participation" - I think there are two ways this goal is accomplished. (1) Individual orgs can introduce potential members to buggy by giving them the link to the live webcast. The hardest part of running an org, in my experience, was convincing people that it was worth getting up early on weekends to participate. If they can just watch from their rooms and get a taste, they might be more willing to come out and participate. (2) Sweepstakes can advertise that rolls are being webcast. Even for students who don't want to actively participate, this could get them interested enough to come out for Raceday.

• "Improve relations and raise interest in the greater Pittsburgh community" - Again, the live webcast could be advertised, and people may be interested in watching

• An additional benefit that isn't officially a mission goal is that I think it could benefit the orgs, and sweepstakes, that are out at rolls. Sweepstakes could bring a laptop out to rolls and watch the live webcast. If an incident happens in the chute, not only are they told by radio club, but the safety chair and/or sweepstakes chair will physically see what has happened. This will give a better sense for whether it was driver error, a mechanical failure, etc. Likewise, orgs can bring out laptops and watch rolls in their tents. This can let the people in the tents check the lines that their drivers are taking, see when the org before them (or 2 before them) is clear (thereby increasing efficiency in load times, etc.), and allows mechanics to watch and more quickly respond if there is an accident.

• Lastly, it could help with rolls reports, as Sam (or Zack, or whoever does the rolls report on a given week) doesn't need to sit in the chute to watch - In fact, an alum who is not on the course can give a chute update.

If this is a success, there are ways it could be expanded to be more viewer friendly (graphics to let the viewer know the upcoming buggy/org, a piece of paper doing the same, link to radio club's audio, multiple streams from different points on the course, etc.). But this would all be further down the line, and only if feasible (and if the webcast is a success).

Finally, I just want to address a couple of the "concerns." I don't think this would be a big time/effort/money commitment. Someone would just need to set up the laptop, camera, and connect to the live stream. If someone could stay with the laptop, that would be best (both to ensure no technical failures and to keep the laptop safe), but as long as it's by the barricaders/flaggers/people in the chute, I don't think anyone would steal/tamper with/damage the laptop. My technical concern would be that the laptop needs to hook up to the internet, but I would think CMU's wireless reaches that far (and if it's an alumnus's laptop being used, they could always get a current student to register it with the network).

Overall, I think this would be a great, easy, and cheap addition to buggy. I apologize that this is long, but I wanted to address some of the potential concerns now. Hopefully someone will be willing to set this up, as I really miss coming out to buggy in the mornings and want to watch some rolls.

~Barsham

One of the BAA's main goals is to encourage and support new participation. Given the recent decrease in the number of orgs participating, this goal is more important than ever.

Starting a new team can be hard because you lack the know-how, but often also the money to put together a viable first team. We already try to offer the know-how, but we should think about our role in helping with the money as well.

What does everyone think about the prospect of giving some money to new teams to help them get on the course?

I'll start the discussion with some questions as new comments ....

This idea actually came from sweepstakes but if we can we're going to help implement it. The concept is to spice homecoming up a bit for people in town but also for those following along at home.

If you're not familiar with fantasy sports, here is a really long wikipedia explanation. Basically you pick parts of real world sports teams and combine them into your "fantasy" team and compete with other fantasy teams based on the real world outcomes.

Seems like it could be fun to try out fantasy buggy. How to do it ...

Here are some thoughts I've had so far:

• We are limited by the real-world stats we can collect. Unless many people want to volunteer, I think it's only realistic to get 2 times per roll: freeroll and backhills.
• Over the course of the weekend each org will probably roll each buggy 2-5 times (Prob Saturday only because of halloween). Each roll can be treated as a separate "player" to pick.
• We'll want to make it tough to figure out the winning picks so there has to be some reason to pick someone other than the obvious favorites.

Take it from there, let's put this together (and quick, we're 2 weeks away).

We made a batch of shirts in 2009 when we were first getting started and they were pretty popular. We are pretty much out of them now. Let's make some new ones.

Goals:

• Shirts are good for publicity; getting our logo and url around is good
• Giving people a shirt to buy and wear increases their connection to the BAA
• We may make some money selling them depending on the cost and price point

Tasks:

1. Get an idea/design/tagline
2. Get the concept designed for production
3. Decide how to make them (on-demand printing like cafe-press vs. up-front order for silkscreen)
4. Do it!

Update January '12 We didn't quite get our act together in time for Celidh, but we should for Carnival. Same tasks apply. Come up with an awesome design and get the merch made! Innovative ideas on: how we should make them, sell them, other things we might want to make ... are all super welcome!

This subreddit doesn't seem particularly active, but I linked you in the sidebar over at r/cmu. Figured I'd let yinz know!

Since the BAA helped to introduce the first jumbotron at raceday in 2009, they have become one of the most popular new features of a 90 year old tradition. The only problem is that they are not cheap.

Prices vary a bit from year to year, but the cost for two jumbotrons in '10 and '11 was around $8000 each year. The BAA raised and contributed $1000 each year, and Alumni Relations also made a contribution. Sweepstakes has, however been saddled with the majority of the cost, and it doesn't seem sustainable. They were well over their JFC funding last year, and the Jumbotrons are not an essential expenditure.

Rather than take a step backwards, let's find another source of financial support. It seems to me that the space around the jumbotron screen would be perfect for ads by companies that would love to get the eyes of the CMU/buggy crowd for hours.

The project would entail figuring out how much space is available and how to hang signs effectively, and then selling the space.

Update January '12 I'll do a news post with more details soon, but this project is getting realer and bigger in a hurry. cmuTV is dreaming large on bigger awesomer jumbotrons and more. The physical logistics will likely be largely taken care of so the task will be more about finding and convincing corporate sponsors to support buggy. More details soon, but also any ideas or expertise on ad sales / big fundraising very welcome

Haybales do a reasonable job protecting drivers from high-speed impacts with the curb, but it seems like we could do better. Haybales are far from free, degrade rather quickly, and require huge amounts of labor to put out and remove every weekend.

Many other races use haybales but in most cases they are only needed for a single weekend and are then disposed of. I would guess most other events are also covering larger areas with less predictable crash profiles. Buggy has different design requirements.

Can we find or engineer a solution that does a better job?

The CMU Buggy Alumni Association is an awesome organization, but sometimes its hard to figure out what we should be working on next. Lots of ideas get thrown around, but it's hard to know what would be the most popular and helpful or what people would want to help out with.

I was going to build a whole new section of cmubuggy by hand to facilitate proposing and discussing project ideas, but I thought this might work almost as well and be much easier to put in place.

So, what do you think? If you've found this already you're probably a pretty big redditor and cmubuggy fanatic, so I trust your opinions.