[oldmonk]

(I)

This is an account of my experience at Desert Storm 2011. There are no pictures, and the dash cam I ordered (Amazon.com: Digital Dash Camera: Automotive - don't buy this!) never worked, so no videos either.

I've always loved driving fast and often fantasized that I could be a good stage rally driver. But with no contacts, money, or any clue on how to go about getting into rallying, it was all a pipe dream until I saw this thread: http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travel...oad-rally.html. Now, I realized that this was TSD, and not the fast and furious rallies that I dreamt about. But something's better than nothing, right? And it even let me use my stock car and not spend money on building a rally car. And when this (http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian...-tsd-camp.html) happened, I was pretty sure that it was a sign that I had to get off my butt and do something about this rallying thing.

Asked my wife if she'd be willing to be my navigator in a rally, and she said yes (she still rues the day!).

--contd.

[oldmonk]

(II)

October - December was spent getting the documents ready, attending Sudev's camp and waiting for the rally regulations (SR) to come out. The camp was extremely good - we figured out 'TSD' calculations, looked at road books and also met some people who had rallied before and who shared their experiences. Needless to say if not for Sudev's Mughal Rally account, and more importantly the training camps, I would never have participated in a TSD rally.

Now, the boring part. A list of mandatory documents you need to participate in any big rally, and how we went about getting them:

(1) The rally application form - This one's simple, download a form from the website and fill it in. Depending on the rally, there might be more or less fields, but usually they ask for your personal info, details of the car, your medical details and photographs.

(2) Indemnity forms to be signed by competitors - download from rally web site, print on stamp paper (Rs. 20?), get notarized.

(3) Civil driving licence for the driver - obvious.

(4) Civil driving licence for the navigator - now this one's not that obvious. It was a shock to me reading this in the app form, because my wife didn't even know how to drive a car! But good thing was that, to get the early bird discount, I just needed to fill the application form, give copies of whatever documents I already had and transfer the fee. I still had more than 3 months to submit everything else. Anyway, to cut a long story short, wife got a LL, learnt driving in 10 classes, waited for a month, cleared her road test and was the proud owner of a driving licence by the end of December.

(5) Car RC, insurance, valid emission certificate - you'll have these already.

(6) Blood group certificate - get from any lab.

(7) Rally insurance - this is an add-on cover you have to get from your EXISTING car insurance provider. You have to get a letter from the rally organizers stating the dates on which rally would happen, and the insurance co gives you a sheet specifying these dates and that you are allowed to take part in motorsports, and the amount you are insured for. My insurer in Nov '10 was Royal Sundaram, and they clearly told me that they wouldn't do rally cover. Someone suggested I try nationalized insurance cos. Tried National first, they showed no interest. But Oriental agreed, after a bit of whining with the agent (and also promising my rally medical cover to him). So moved the car insurance to Oriental, got an email from Northern Motorsport (organizers of Desert Storm) with dates, submitted this to Oriental to get the rally add-on. All this took less than a week.

(8) Medical insurance - rally regulations will specify minimum amount to be covered, that it has to cover high risk activities, allow for hospitalization etc. Contact any insurance provider with those details and get the cover. Usually valid for 1 year. I went with Oriental.

(9) FMSCI licences - FMSCI (http://www.fmsci.in) issues new application forms every year, so had to wait till Jan for them to come out. Applied for individual competition licences (Grade C) for driver and co-driver, and an entrant licence. All of these came by post in less than 10 days.

Each time I got one of these documents ready, I would scan and email a copy to Northern Motorsport.

January came and the first draft of SR was out. Car didn't need to go through any mods, even accessory lights were not mandatory. So our focus was on buying all the other (recovery, safety) items - ISI branded helmets (open faced, and as light as possible), fire extinguisher (2 kg cylinder with clamps), rubber sheets to put under wheels for traction, tow strap and D-shackles, shovel, big mud flaps, bungee cords, 6th tyre and wheel, hydraulic jack, air pump etc. We also had to get stickers made of Indian flag/driver-navigator names/blood group, and arrows to point to tow hooks.

SR also allowed GPS, so got a Garmin 76CSX. Had no clue how we were going to use it, but online forums and people we talked to recommended Garmin 76CSX/60CS for rally use. So bought one. Eventually it turned out that the GPS was the single most important device in the car. Note to anyone ever taking part in a TSD, if SR allows GPS without penalties, and if the rally gives route as GPS tracks, never leave home without one!

--contd.

[oldmonk]

(III)

Just after the New Year's, saw a Facebook event, 'corporate TSD rally'. It was conducted by a company called NVSAGE. Applied, and we were excited that we would have an opportunity to put theory into practice in a smaller rally before Desert Storm.

NVSAGE rally was on Jan 8th. NVSAGE is a company run by two young entrepreneurs, Adi and Raashid. The rally was very well organized. It exposed us to all the navigation fun TSDs can offer - trick TCs, TCs clubbed together, confusing lefts and rights etc. It also showed us that we were very underprepared as a team - wife had forgotten how to do the calculations and we hadn't set any duties for me, the driver. Which meant navigator had to do everything - navigation and calculation - while the driver just drove. We fared very badly - penalty was around 80 minutes (to put it in perspective, the winning time had a penalty of 48 seconds!). I was pissed, wife was disappointed, and off she went to another training camp conducted by Sudev (which fortunately was just a week after). Sudev was magnanimous enough to waive the fee, and my wife came back confident about the calculator. And this time she didn't rest - for the next 25-30 days, she was practicing TSD math every free minute she had.

An offshoot of the NVSAGE rally was that we met three really nice guys - Adi, Chidu and Raashid - who became part of the Tata Full Trottle team. They were very helpful - answering our queries, offering service help (though it turned out we didn't need any), giving tips and tricks, and generally being extremely supportive and encouraging before and DURING our Desert Storm campaign. Through them I met many other members of the Tata team too - a nice bunch of guys who were eventually very deserving winners of the Endure A category in the Storm. And from our point of view, very approachable and helpful inspite of collectively having more than 50 years of rally experience and countless trophies under their belt.

NVSAGE rally also introduced us to Terratrip, a must for any serious TSD contender. Though it has many features which might or might not be useful, the one feature we used was 'correctable odometer'. First, the concept of 'odo differential'. Whatever one does, one cannot exactly follow the route rally master has set. Which means often (sometimes in less than a km) the car odometer will be off from the odo shown in the road book. This difference ('odo differential') will keep increasing the way you drive - things like taking a wide corner, overtaking a bus, and obviously losing track and coming back - affect it. So everytime you want to navigate or calculate, you would have to subtract this difference from the car odo. The subtraction seems simple, but in a pressure situation while doing everything else, it becomes very tedious and distracting.

Road books have 'determinate points'. These are instructions which you are sure are unique. For e.g. crossing a bridge, intersection with temple on the left side, going on road with gates on either side etc. To correct your odo reading, pull over at any of these determinate points, go to where the odo reading was taken (in the road book instruction, a small slanting line denotes this point), stop the car, and enter the odo at this road book instruction into Terratrip. With practice, this whole operation shouldn't take more than 3 seconds. And if you do this often enough (say once in 2 kms), you now have an odometer in the car which will always show the exact reading as in the road book. No more odo differential!

Special mention to Adi and Chidu for teaching us how to use Terratrip, and to Red Rooster Performance for installing it in the car.

--contd.

[fiat_tarun]

Very interesting i must say. This is so insightful. Please carry on. Which vehicle by the way?

[oldmonk]

Originally Posted by fiat_tarun

Very interesting i must say. This is so insightful. Please carry on. Which vehicle by the way?

Thanks Tarun. We took part in the 4x4 category ('Endure') in a Grand Vitara.

[oldmonk]

(IV)

I'd never driven on sand before. Obviously "Desert" Storm meant lot of sand, so off we (me and couple of friends) went to Chennai looking for sand to practice on.

Chennai is big on turtle conservation, so the beaches were out. I am already carrying SUV guilt, didn't want to be called a turtle killer too! We drove towards Mahabalipuram, crossed it, and found an abandoned layout covered in sand. I drove for about an hour, got comfortable in sand, and said "let's puts da" and went to Mahabs.

Wife still hates me for that trip - since we were doing the rally together, she'd wanted to do all the rally related activities also together - and obviously me going without her to party with my friends didn't help matters..

Anyway, experienced first hand a few things about driving on sand which were useful at DS:
1) Don't half-clutch. One can burn out the clutch in minutes.
2) Don't brake hard, rev hard, or take sharp turns.
3) Momentum, momentum, momentum.

--contd.

[oldmonk]

(V)

Feb 18th had arrived. We were all packed and ready to go. Plan was to drive non stop from Bangalore to Ahmedabad, some 1500 km. Nothing eventful happened, and with a 2 hour sleep break in a petrol bunk just outside Mumbai, we were in Ahmedabad in less than 24 hours. Checked into a hotel, the same hotel where rally acco would begin from the next day, and went looking for a mechanic to fix mud flaps. Mud flaps required according to SR were big and flappy and were getting into the wheels at high speeds, so hadn't fixed them yet. Found a road side mechanic who did the job. Night, caught up on much needed sleep.

Feb 19th Sunday was Day -1 of the rally. Rally office was open, and they were allowing cars to go through early scrutiny. Announced our arrival to the secretary of the meet (Philip, and who I later discovered shared common roots at our "naiteeve". Small world!), paid cash to book fuel at camp (Legs 1 and 2 were in the Rann of Kutch where rally had set up camp some 70km from the nearest fuel pump) and got competition IDs, scrutiny card and stickers.

Next was document scrutiny, which went smoothly. We had photocopies and originals of all relevant docs, and going through them and getting scrutinized was a breeze. We were now ready for car scrutiny, so the first thing was to paste all the stickers given to us. Mostly competition nos, Desert Storm stickers and some sponsorship stickers. Were done in half an hour (tip: use Colin to clean the surface and use a credit card to remove air bubbles) and were the first car in for scrutiny.

Scrutiny was fast, scrutineer going around the car ticking off the checklist. It went on smooth until he pointed out that I hadn't laminated my windows. Bummer! There was also confusion about the item 'loop around the drive shaft' - which meant tying a loop around the car's propeller shaft using a tow strap kind of material so that in case it breaks, the shaft doesn't jack knife the car off - but that was solved once I showed him the skid plates that were covering practically the entire under body.

It was a Sunday, and now I had to find someone who'd sell me tints. Went around the hotel in an outward spiral, asking people if any car shop would be open. Ahmedabad practically shuts down on a Sunday. Every shop we found via Google Maps or from asking people was shut. After couple of hours of roaming around, and on our way back, saw a 'car spa' open with one car outside being worked on. Ran in, was met by the owner who showed us swatches of tints. Chose the lightest one (I hate tints!) and then figured out that 'applicators' don't work on Sunday. Pleaded with the owner. Told him about rally, scrutiny, 24 hr drive from Bangalore etc. and he agreed to try and find an applicator. Actually 'Bangalore' touched a chord with the young owner, he apparently did his Engg at BIT. Awesome! He was extra nice to us afterwards, so much that, when he did find an applicator, he went himself in his car to fetch him.

So the tints were done, and we were back at scrutiny. Scrutineer signed off and a major hurdle was crossed. We were going to start the rally!

I also ran into @ramkya1 at the scrutiny section. Ramky was an official, and I recognized him from the T-BHP mug shot. I introduced myself, he was nice, we talked a little, but I didn't want to hold anything up since he was an official, so moved on.

Now we had to address the next major concern. How to use GPS. Someone had sent us last year's tracks, and I had uploaded one of them. But had no clue what to do with it. Enter Musa Sharif (we got an intro through a friend - Ankur who we met at Sudev's camp) and Ashwin Naik (turned out he went to college with my wife) - both INRC navigators - who were extremely helpful and patient in taking us through the GPS functions. They dumbed it down for us, just showed the essential tools for navigating in DS, and we were comfortable with using GPS in less than half an hour.

Evening was the driver's briefing. It was quick and painless, mostly organizers warning drivers to be safe. We also copied the GPS tracks for the next 5 days into an USB drive. Asked about road books, and were told that they (along with the day's speed chart) would be given just before each day's start.

So that was it for the day. Went up to the room, freshened up and came down for dinner. Met with some competitors, almost everyone had advice for us (we would proudly announce our newbie status wherever we went!), met some officials, many from Mangalore it turned out, so my wife got a chance to practice Tulu on them. Nothing like regional language to bond people in a foreign place, and the M(&B)angaloreans were generally nice to us throughout our stay at the Storm. Thanks guys!

Also met Nekzad (another of Sudev's students and auto journalist/garage owner/drag racer from Mumbai - see Speedway '11 results) and Sunil (his driver, another major petrol head - see last year's TPC results), had dinner, talked about navigation, rallying, cars. As it turned out these guys would be our constant companions for the next couple of days.

--contd.

[manolin]

This is beautiful stuff. Keep going on. I hope to start with a TSD rally sometime this year.

[oldmonk]

Originally Posted by manolin

This is beautiful stuff. Keep going on. I hope to start with a TSD rally sometime this year.

Thanks manolin. I'm sure you'll find it addictive.

[oldmonk]

(VI)

Feb 20th, Monday. Flag off! Nervous tension, butterflies, I'd hardly slept. Wife was calmer, she was treating this whole exercise like a vacation. Actually the way I'd sold the rally idea to her was - "it'll be a break for us", "something we can do together", "better than a road trip" etc. And her condition was that I couldn't be competitive, and that I had to live the moment, and that we should have fun. The stress was on "don't be competitive!".

Yeah, right! There was no way I was going to attempt something and not give it my best shot. Obviously I wasn't going to tell the wife this. Me to her always was "yeah babe, we are here to have fun" -

Anyway, we checked out of the hotel at 10 AM, collected the day's road book and speed chart and went to the parking lot where cars were being lined up for the ceremonial flag off. Had to wait around for a couple of hours before our turn at the flag off ramp came. Saw a Garmin salesman and bought a GPS holder and an external antenna.

Then we started. First 300 odd kilometers was a "free zone" - one still had to keep time, and be on time at the end of the zone - but (i) it was guaranteed that there wouldn't be any time controls (TC) on the way (ii) average speeds would be low enough for one to take food/bio/fuel breaks and still make up for lost time. This is equivalent to a transport section the extreme cars go through in between stages. Our target time to start the competitive section was 2015. We had some 8 hours to do 300km. Roads were good, we stayed 120+ most of the way. Which meant we had had time to take many bio breaks, a fuel break, and a long lunch break at a dhaba.

We reached the odo reading where the section was about to begin went about a km back and parked on the side of the road. We had couple of hours to kill. Tried taking a nap, not happening. We spent the time talking, and going over navigation related stuff.

Our strategy was going to be:
1) Navigator: Always keep to GPS track. Under duress this would override everything else.

2) Navigator: At every determinate point in the road book, check Terratrip odo reading and compare to road book reading. If it was more than 50m off, make note that we have to pull over and correct the Terratrip value at the next determinate point.

3) Navigator: Every 2 kms (sometimes, depending on work load, every km), calculate ideal time for a point 200m from where we were at. Then shout out that time and odo reading. Driver: Calculate the number of seconds (ideal time minus current time) required to do that 200m, and go faster or slower and be at that point on time. Repeat loop until TC.

4) Navigator: At TC, note down checkin time, new start time (if none specified by the marshall, checkin time + 2 minutes), odo reading.

This was it. Simple, right? -

--contd.

[oldmonk]

(VII)

2013 hrs. I start the car and drive slowly. Average speed in this section is 34.85kmph, so it's a crawl since we are 2 minutes early. Lets us focus our thoughts, warm up the car, allow the butterflies to settle. We enter the competitive stage exactly at 2015 and I steady the car at 40kmph (it's best to drive a little faster than the prescribed average speed - easier to slow down than go fast!)

After about a km, wife says: "I want to pee". "What?" "I have to go, now!" I was like "Woman, didn't we sit around for 2 hours just now? Why the hell didn't you go then???!!". Ok, I didn't say that out loud. But smiled and said "no problem, try and make it fast". She was done in couple of minutes and we were back on the road. Now I had to make up 2 minutes of lost time, but at 35kmph average and an empty road (we were still on the state highway), it was a breeze. I was actually happy to drive fast. Very soon we were back on time, and back at 40kmph. Within five minutes we saw a car pulled over on the side with a fluorescent sign of a clock placed on the road. Our first TC!

We pull over, roll down the window, give our time card. The TC marshall needs to note down the time on our time card, enter the same value in his register and get the navigator's signature. It is up to the navigator to make sure (i) time being written is in the vicinity of what she sees on her clock - in our case we used the GPS time for all calculations (ii) the times written on the time card and marshall's register are the same (iii) time written on marshall's register is legible - since this is the time they would use for results calculation. The entire process takes not more than a minute, so we still have 1 more minute of dead time before we are back in competition. Marshall (it's the Bangalorean we met in Ahmedabad, a pleasant and helpful guy) wishes us luck and we pull out into the road.

The 'road book' is a very important document, it contains instructions that aid in navigation and calculations. Each instruction has a serial number, odo reading, direction which the car needs to go in, drawings of any permanent structures that are at that instruction, and caution notices. When GPS tracks are given for the entire leg (like in Desert Storm), road book loses its importance as a navigation aid. So if you don't care about being on time and just want to do the course without getting lost, you don't need the road book - you can look at GPS, make sure you're on track and just drive. Road book comes in handy for (i) calculations - this is the only place which shows odo readings, and you need to know what odo reading you are at, to calculate ideal times, and (ii) cautions - level of caution is denoted by exclamation marks. "!" is ok, while "!!!" is pretty serious. There is also text next to the caution marks which tells you what kind of obstacle it is - ditch, S curve, sand dunes etc. Very important even when one is doing the lower speeds of TSD.

My wife calls "getting off tarmac in a km". Yeah baby. Bring on the dirt! We reach the turn off soon, it is very obvious, and I make the right and enter a dusty track. "Keep leftish". "Keep going straight". One thing we hadn't worked on was the navigation calls. Since we had never driven using a GPS track, we weren't clear on how to call out turns. So "keep leftish" made me look at the GPS (it was mounted on the navigator's side, probably an error in strategy) and correct the car to be on track. The track was bumpy and didn't really look like a track. On we went for a couple of kms, the terrain was just dust, packed mud, small pebbles and shrubs and bushes. No buildings, landmarks, bridges, temples. Where the f..k are the determinate points?!

I ask the wife - "how do we reset Terratrip?". Quick look at the road book reveals that we are not going to find determinate points in the traditional sense. She tells me (Old Jungle Saying: in TSD/life, when navigator/wife talks, driver/husband listens.) that she's going to treat every road book instruction as a determinate point and check and reset Terratrip. And let's see how that pans out. I don't care.

"Sharp right". Car bounces off a rut. "You were 30s late back there". Increase speed to 60. There is no road. "Left, left, left, left, ok now you're on track". "Right, right, sharp left ahead". How the hell am I going to keep going at 60?

"Right, and straight for some time". All I can see is dust - probably thrown by the car ahead, can't see his tail lights though, and tall(er than the car) shrubs on either side. The track is so narrow that the shrubs are scratching the car. "I think you were about 10 seconds late at that left we took". I'm doing 70 now and shouting "tell me next time" (== give me HHMMSS for the next 200m mark). Wife is sneaking looks at GPS to make sure we're on track while hitting calculator keys. Car is being bounced about, I'm running blind, have no clue about the road surface, all I can see is light reflecting off the dust in front of me. And still trying to do 70.

I am a staunch agnostic, but I probably said a little prayer then.. We were in a Storm.

--contd.

[ihrishi]

Keep it coming Old Monk. This is just superb.

-Hrishi
Comp #151 in DS11

[Fordmanchau]

Damn!! Exciting account of your Desert Storm Rally.
Couldn't move an inch before reading through the entire details. Please keep on posting. Amazing read. Getting excited here reading your account .
You carry on with the details while I get home and login again .

[oldmonk]

Originally Posted by ihrishi

Keep it coming Old Monk. This is just superb.

-Hrishi
Comp #151 in DS11

Thanks Hrishi. Just checked the results, you guys were 4th! Congrats!!

Originally Posted by Fordmanchau

Damn!! Exciting account of your Desert Storm Rally.
Couldn't move an inch before reading through the entire details. Please keep on posting. Amazing read. Getting excited here reading your account .
You carry on with the details while I get home and login again .

Thanks Fordmanchau.

[Samurai]

Wonderful account so far... you finally found a way to justify your expensive skid plates. You probably had the best underbody protection in the event.

Disappointed there are no photos, but the words are making up for it.