First, huge thanks to:
David Williams and the staff at the Hydroplane & Raceboat Museum for being such gracious and accomodating hosts;
Steve Montgomery for all his work putting this together, publicizing, and connecting us to the real-life racing community;
Chris Denslow and Scott Pryzybylski for their technical support which made the event possible;
The HydroModders who brought their machines for everyone to race on- Chris Porten, Joey Caines, Mike Halseth, Brian Montgomery, Court Johnston;
Dave Villwock, Brian Perkins, Kayleigh Perkins, Jeff Bernard, J. Michael Kelly, Greg Hopp, Ken Muscatel, Kip Brown, JW Myers for being good sports!
Friday afternoon, Brian and I met at my house to pick up Scott P at the airport and go to the museum. When we got to the museum, Chris D, Chris P and Mike were already there, set up and networked. I set up my gaming machine and set to work on my old machine which would be the projector source. Brian's video card came up dead, so he rode to Fry's with Chris Denslow (who wanted some new speakers) and came back with an nvidia 9500. I couldn't get my old machine to put out any sound, which was frustrating. I decided to bring my external sound interface the next morning. I was also going to bring my studio speakers for my racing machine, because the other guys had my screen speakers severely outgunned.
A little later, Court showed up with his laptop and giant flatscreen and Joey arrived. You should have seen his eyes light up after we put a Momo wheel on his machine! Joey like. The museum had a big screen on the wall in the library (where all our computers were) and we decided to hook it up to Scott's laptop and maybe use it for some scoring or judging.
Before wrapping up for the evening, we decided to run a test heat. No clocks for anyone! good thing we had Scott P with us. He knew exactly why it happened and how to fix it. He loaded all our machines with a couple of files from mod version 1.1.0.7 and we were fine.
When Scott and I rolled up to the museum at about 9:15 on Saturday morning, Brian and Kayleigh Perkins are already there, and Jeff Bernard, Kip Brown, J. Michael Kelly and Greg Hopp would also all arrive bright and early. We get them all started practicing while I set about getting my old machine at the announcer's table to work. Now it won't boot at all, a system file is corrupted. I hate computers. It worked fine at home. Like a dummy, I didn't think about bringing boot disks to this thing. Next time. So, we bring Scott's laptop out and connect that to the projector and sound system in the museum's main hall. RadioFace would run this machine and do the announcing, along with Mark Allen and Brad Luce.
Now the fun begins! Kayleigh is excited that we have her boat, Jeff is driving the Formula, Kip the 17/Red Dot, and Brian drives the 48 sometimes but doesn't seem too attached to it. I'm not sure if JMK was driving the 13. There were plenty of flips and hit buoys, but all of them picked up the rhythm pretty quickly. Dave Villwock arrives and sits down at Brian's rig. He's cool, but the differences between our course and the real course were throwing him off a little bit. Same with Ken Muscatel. He gave us some valuable feedback about the shape of our turns. The main challenge for the drivers was that they want to throw the wheel almost all the way over to get the boat around the turn. With our handling, that had them hitting buoys and going inside the course.
Once everyone had some practice and we got projection up, we started running some Celebrity heats. Jeff Bernard had some great starts on the inside, Kip, JMK, and Kayleigh were all solid, but the real standouts in my opinion were Brian Perkins and Greg Hopp. Greg had it flying on the outside in Aaron's piston Miss Rock! He won a couple of heats and I think Brian was 2nd, also running outside. The Celebrity heats were still a bit messy, so we decided to run a UHL exhibition heat. I don't remember what happened in that one.
After that, we decided to take care of the fans and kids. I think we had about 24 more people try the game, including Steve Compton from the Miss Thriftway and Dan Walters from the E-Lam crew. We ran practice sessions and heats, a UHL vintage exhibition won by Chris Denslow, and a couple of heats with the announcers. Oh! I had a good joke pulled on me. A group of 18-21-year old-looking guys came in and I invited them to drive. One of them sat down at my computer and I started setting him up and showing him the way around. I asked him his name and he said "Scott Little." That's him in the black T-shirt:
The Celebrity drivers started drifting away as the afternoon wore on, so we drew the remaining kids and fans into a race with 3 heat sections, then took the top 6 for a final which was won by Scott Little's friend Tyler.
It wasn't perfect, but overall I think everyone had a good time. We learned a lot by doing this and will be able to do even better next time. I think David Williams was relatively pleased. It's cool that the drivers are now familiar with the HydroMod! Jeff Bernard, Kip Brown, and Greg Hopp seemed to be the most hooked. Also, the feedback we got will help to improve the game.
For more, look at the story on the museum's website:
http://www.thunderboats.org/news/2009/HydroMod1.html
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Good to see some of the people I race against too.
Court just had to setup next to me with his monstrausity of a screen that made mine look even smaller. My external speakers also had problems. They weren't getting power, so I had to use the crappy speakers on my monitor. I found out later that I had the wrong power cable attached to the speakers so they wouldn't work. 
Maybe I should have went to Frys with CD and B to get new speakers. Oh well, I use the speakers on my headset anyway so I can wait to get new ones another time.
I will see you all on the water the twenty third. 
