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Super
8: Bread Rally, part one
This is part of a series of articles based on images from my 1970s home movies. For more details, click here.
To this point Terry and I had competed in 18 SSCC rallies and had finished first in class in half of them. We had been first overall five times. Terry was the driver, and I was the navigator, using the specially-designed chart below to keep track of the numbers. |
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Below are folks I saw in the parking lot, and their vehicles. Four decades later Im no longer able to identify these faces, but I did find a lot of names in old editions of our Scioto Sports Car Club newsletter, the Exhaust Note. Here are some of the people active in the club around that time: Eric Anderson, Bob Arnold, Frodo Baggins (perhaps not his real name?), Mike & Sandy Chern, Jim Dietz, Carole Egger, Jim Fergus, Steve Gabay, Jim Halverson, Don & Sue Harsh, Knox Hazelton, Rick Howenstine, Tom Hunsinger, Paul Jaeger, Eric Jones, Bill Kasdorf, Phil LaMori, Dave & Carol Lindsey, Rich & Linda Merritt, Dick Messal, Ken Naylor, Judi Ramsey, Dave & Sue Rupp, Jerry & Debi Sproat, and Jan Zamana. |
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The Hillman/Beatty team, like jet pilots, painted their names below their cockpit window. Klaus included a steering wheel symbol after his name to indicate he was the driver, while Jim had a Curta calculator to indicate he was the navigator. The Curta was an eight-ounce handheld digital calculator with a crank. (Electronic calculators had only very recently become available, and they didnt like to bounce around in cars.) Imported from Liechtenstein, the Curta had originally been developed during World War II by an inmate at the Buchenwald concentration camp. How was it used in a rally? Mathematically! Below is an easier-to-see variation, a rectangular calculator called the Alpina, which sold for $148 in 1972. For the pictured example, suppose you know that you should be beginning a warmup leg averaging 50 MPH. Referring to a little book called Floyds Factors, you translate 50 miles per hour to 1.2 minutes per mile and dial the digits 1.2000000 into the window at the top. The warmup leg begins with your odometer reading 00.00 miles, when your clock should be reading 00.00 minutes after the hour. You set a zero into the Alpinas mileage counter on the left and another zero into the minutes display on the right. |
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You give the crank one turn. That adds one mile to the counter on the left, which now reads 01.0000 miles, and 1.2 minutes to the display on the right, which now reads 01.20000 minutes. Another turn advances the numbers to 02.0000 miles and 02.40000 minutes. Then you shift the carriage one click to the left and turn the crank once more. Because the decimal point has been shifted, that turn adds not one mile but ten to the counter on the left, which now reads 12.0000 miles (as pictured), and it adds 12.0 minutes to the display on the right, which now reads 14.40000 minutes (as pictured). Translation: the car should be at 12.00 miles at 14.40 minutes after the hour. At 12.00 miles the specified average speed drops to 24 MPH, which according to Floyd equals 2.5 minutes per mile. You dial 02.500000 into the window at the top and keep on cranking.
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