Aluminum PWD Tracks

[ronvo]

Does any Pack represented here have an aluminum track?

 

What brand do you have? What length? I hear it should be longer than wooden track because it is faster.

 

How do you like it?

 

We are looking at the track from Piantedosi www.pinewoodderbytrack.com

 

And a Fast Track Timer from Micro Wizard - Anyone use one of these?

 

Thanks for any advice you have

ronvo

[Scoutndad]

Can't speak for the aluminum track but I am part of a small team for our Pack that is looking at purchasing an integrated track timer and the Micro Wizard was highly recommended.

 

It is able to interface with our existing Derby Assistant software and will let us race more heats (always great for the boys)in the same amount of time without manually tabulating or trying to figure the heat winners.

 

Our District PWD guy uses the Fast Track and his lap top and I have witnessed this software in action and it seems to work very nicely.

 

Good luck!

[mbscoutmom]

I asked my husband, and here's his response:

 

We don't use that brand, but in general, we really like our aluminum track. It is very fast, and you really need something on the end to gently stop the cars. I don't know the brand of track we have, but our timer is the Lane Brain, and it works very well. The nat'l museum also uses a Lane Brain on their aluminum track.

[OneHour]

We bought the 6-lanes aluminum track from Best Track and bought the timer from Micro Wizard. This January will be our 5th year with the track. So far it has been great. We used to have a wooden track, but the Houston humidity did a number on the track ... resulting a lot of "flying" cars. We swapped over to aluminum and loved it. It's easier to put together and it is fast! We even bougth an extension to conduct our open "18-wheeler" class. The Best Track guide rails are hollowed in the middle. So, we don't have to worry about cars with weight mounted on the bottom. The only negative is that the curve is not as gentle as that of the wooden tracks. So if the car is back-heavied, it will pop a wheelie. I understand that Best Track as revised the curve section to have a gentler curve. Best Track will predrill the starting gates and finish line holes to fit the particular gates vendor that you have bought (ours happened to be Micro Wizard - Fast Track).

 

As for Micro Wizard, it has been good so far, except for two years ago when the starting gate laser decided to fail on race day. It turned out that there were a bunch of starting gates from Micro Wizard that have bad batch of laser installed. They replaced the laser and even provided a manual starting gate. Our finish line is Micro Wizard K2 gates that have large LED of the places. Best Track has a sticky foam stop section at the end that works decently. We still have a comforter at the end to catch the ones that get away!

 

As for software, we bought Derby Master from Micro Wizard. It has a variety number of race options and variations.

 

So far ... so good! It is kind of pricey, but not much more than the wooden tracks from Piantedosi. For our area and the lack of air conditioned environment to store the wooden track safely, aliminum track is the right choice for us. It shaved about 1.5 seconds off the fastest time compared to wooden tracks.

 

Good luck,

 

1Hour(This message has been edited by OneHour)

[Prairie_Scouter]

We use a Piantadosi track; have had it for 3 years now, with a Micro Wizard timer and starting gate. Also use Derbymaster. It's all worked very well for us.

 

For any track with lower friction, be it aluminum or plastic laminate or whatever, there is the issue of possibly needing additional length to separate the cars. Even our our wooden track, the fastest cars are now only separated by several thousandths of a second. I wonder, really, if we need that kind of resolution on the timers. Cars that are that close at the finish are essentially tied. Does a kid really want to watch his car battle all the way to the line, look to be exactly tied, and then find out that he lost by .002 seconds? I dunno, maybe I'm just getting too old, but at some point, it's supposed to be mostly fun. I wonder if the technology is starting to get in the way of that.

[OneHour]

Prairie ... agree with ya. The problem is that there are too many well designed and constructed cars (due to the proliferation of information and "short cuts") that the results are very close to each other (to the 100th and 1000th sec). We run Stern's method to ensure all lanes are run by each car. The average time is then counted for the standing. The hardest part is to explain to the kids the average time method. We always ended up with one or two kids wanting to know why his car finishes first in one or two heats but he doesn't place overall!

 

Forever is the battle of fairness in pinewood derby. The laser starting and finish line beats the heck out of eye-ball these fast racers any time and the headaches of determining who came in first, second, ...

 

1Hour