ORCA General Discussion

[dsgerbc]

We'll just have fun in the back of the pack while JohnnyP and DSG fight for the win at the lonely front of the pack.

Most of whatever pace I might've had in GT5 was from a crapload of practice. I expect to do a lot less practice for GT6, so expect to see me around mid-pack.

 

[BrandonW77]

Forgive me if I don't hold my breath waiting for that.

 

[RDAardvark]

My printer technician says "grins and giggles", he's not supposed to swear in front of customers but I know what he means. And I remember a movie that featured a German restaurant called Schnitz 'N Giggles.


I've been considering a re-boot of the group and going with a different name but I might end up sticking with the ORCA name since people already know it. Here's a new logo concept, slightly modified from another logo for a different name I had created, but I think it works for ORCA too.

View attachment 94690​

I like that logo - It would look well as an avatar.
Can I make a suggestion? No? Tough, I'm going to anyway. Could you do a wider version, with the ORCA all in a line? That may make a good banner for the top of a league table, etc.

 

[dsgerbc]

Gonna move my reply here, so that new people feel more comfortable in the event thread.

You're not venturing to work are you?
That looks like the perfect setting for a community snowball fight.

That time was yesterday, when the snow was wet. Today, no. Shovelling this morning was easier though, I'm still sore from moving all the wet snow yesterday.
I drove to work today, best commute in a while. Almost empty streets and lots of sliding around corners. Regretting my winter tire choices though.

 

[RDAardvark]

The BBC are reporting today (Tuesday 7th Jan) that "Indianapolis has banned driving".
Scary!
Keep safe and warm y'all! And don't forget any vulnerable neighbours.

Edit: RTE News says it's colder in the US than on Mars!

 

[BrandonW77]

The BBC are reporting today (Tuesday 7th Jan) that "Indianapolis has banned driving".
Scary!
Keep safe and warm y'all! And don't forget any vulnerable neighbours.

Edit: RTE News says it's colder in the US than on Mars!

It was illegal to drive in the northern 2/3rds of the state for most of yesterday and the governor of Indy was even telling business and schools to stay closed. As @SagarisGTB stated, it's no Canada but we haven't seen this kind of cold or snowfall in 20+ years. One of the newscasters favorite lines was "If you're under 35 years old (and never left the state of Indiana) you've never seen this kind of cold". Today they were saying we're colder than Alaska (by a lot) and Siberia. But it's supposed to be in the 20's tomorrow and 40F by Friday.

 

[dsgerbc]

Well, a stretch of the interstate I drive to work was pretty much all ice today, with everybody crawling <15mph on ramps and any kinds of curves or elevation changes. Feels like Russia, except for studded tires being banned.

 

[BrandonW77]

Well, a stretch of the interstate I drive to work was pretty much all ice today, with everybody crawling <15mph on ramps and any kinds of curves or elevation changes. Feels like Russia, except for studded tires being banned.

Hope you had your dash cam running!

 

[dsgerbc]

Hope you had your dash cam running!

I have one in my BRZ
Keep delaying getting one for my winter car. Had I not delayed buying one, would've captured some truck spinning right in front of me on the hwy and hitting concrete median divider about a week ago

 

[BrandonW77]

If I had a dash cam all it would capture is people in front of me driving very slowly. And the occasional tractor/grain truck.

 

[dsgerbc]

Yeah, that's what everyone thinks, until the moment you realize 'I wish I had a dashcam'
Seriously though, short of some bizarre t-boning at a traffic light w/o witnesses where both parties claim "I was going on green" I don't see how a dashcam could be useful in this country for daily driving. I mostly use mine for track days/autox either to look at stuff after it's done, or to have additional looks at the course at speed.

Rear-facing parking camera is higher on the priority list right now.

 

[OwensRacing]

Illegal to drive. Pffft. I was out a few times yesterday. Drove tractor across town to GF's and plowed her out. Went to the shop last night after midnight. My DLP bulb went and my spare wasn't a spare. Forgot to replace it. D'oh. So went after a 39" LCD I had there. Hey, I wanted to watch the recorded episodes of Street outlaws.


Had some fun though:

 

[RDAardvark]

...Drove tractor across town to GF's and plowed her out.

Is that a euphemism?

 

[OwensRacing]

LoL @RDAardvark

 

[BrandonW77]

If anyone is looking for some clean, fun racing on Sunday evenings (EST) you should check out @MC-Chase's LCC Rocket Series. No commitment, just a long spot race with some good blokes and I highly recommend it. The Rocket is raced in stock form (tuning prohibited) on SH tires, I thought some people here may be interested in such a thing. 👍

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/thre...ce-series-stock-january-12th-10pm-gmt.292181/

 

[MC-Chase]

Thanks for the shout Brandon! It looks like you guys had some really fun series going on in GT5, is there anything planned for GT6?

 

[BrandonW77]

I'm working on something, just waiting for the so-called Community Update to see what features we are/aren't going to get so I can make the most of them. I wanted to spend some time with the game first too so I could get familiar with all the features and any oddities. GT5 had so many weird things you needed to be aware of if you wanted to run a quality group and they were always changing with updates, not always for the best. So far GT6 seems to be a bit more stable in these areas and quite a bit more useable.

 

[BrandonW77]

@RDAardvark, I hope your recovery is going well. Also, I hope the wife survived this ordeal safe and intact!

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/n...h-7week-erection-after-accident-29915512.html

 

[RDAardvark]

@RDAardvark, I hope your recovery is going well. Also, I hope the wife survived this ordeal safe and intact!

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/n...h-7week-erection-after-accident-29915512.html

It was hard recovering from that accident but a few stiff drinks helped ease the pain.
I'll leave the rest of you to make your own jokes about this! 👍

Thankfully this wasn't me: I'm neither 22 nor a keen cyclist!

 

[RDAardvark]

This is what I imagined @OwensRacing would be driving this winter.

 

[OwensRacing]

This is what I imagined @OwensRacing would be driving this winter.

Man that is waaaay cooler then what I use.

Ours is like this. We don't have a back hoe attachment. Drag blade and Snow Box for winter. Summer front loader and a few attachments usually finish mower.

 

[BrandonW77]

The high school I went to was in a rural/farming area. Certain times of year, usually around sporting events, we would have "pep days" where we were allowed to dress up and have fun, there was usually a theme. I remember one time the theme was something to do with farming and about a half dozen of the good ol' boys drove their farm equipment to school. I saw at least one of these in the parking lot that day.....

(I probably shouldn't have admitted this, Naptown's brain probably just exploded from a laughter aneurysm!)

 

[Naptown25rs]

As made evident by this year book photo of Brandon at one of his "pep days"...

 

[BrandonW77]

As made evident by this year book photo of Brandon at one of his "pep days"...

......and Naptown photobombing me with a belly-flop into the pool of pig slop.

 

[MC-Chase]

So ... What's the status on the ORCA series (or whatever it's going to morph into) . Got any series planned yet Brandon ?

 

[BrandonW77]

It will likely stay as ORCA, hopefully our past reputation attracts people and doesn't deter them. I have lots of ideas but a points series is probably the only thing that will attract a large group consistently so I suppose I'll pick a car and throw a points table together and call it a championship. If we can get our numbers back up then I can try to branch out into other things, but my success rate at doing anything besides a points series is poor at best.

Anybody got any car recommendations for running a series with? Race cars are preferred, especially of the vintage variety.

 

[MC-Chase]

Fair enough, you know my opinion on points series I'll still join though as long as time permits. In terms of car, perhaps the Tuscan race car? That has aero but tends to be a bit more squirrelly on the edge than most race cars - that makes it more fun i think.

 

[BrandonW77]

My opinion on points series is about the same as yours, but if you want to build a brand and attract a crowd then a points series is probably the best place to start. We had a lot of fun in our points series (even if the podium got repetitive) and didn't run into too many of the problems I see with a lot of other points series. But after running it long enough problems did appear and I decided to attempt alternate forms of organized racing, none of them did as well as the points series and at the end of GT5 it was 3-4 of us showing up for shuffle races.

Personally I like what you do with your group, pick a car and race it at a different track every week and 8-10 drivers show up on a regular basis. Do that for a month and then switch to a new car for the next month, rinse/repeat as necessary. But for some reason those things don't work well when I try them. Ze people, zey want zeir pointz!!! Once I find a happy medium between what I want and what the masses want then I'll be ready to kick something off. 👍

 

[Marcus Garvey]

I, personally don't concern myself with points. When ORCA ran points series I would make a few events, but not enough to place. I would also typically pull over in the last couple of laps so that I did not upset the points competiton.

However, many drivers are attracted to the competition that a points series brings. That said, there is a balance for most people between a desire for competition and a tolerance for relative performance. What I mean by that is most drivers want competition, but most drivers don't want to be uncompetitive, which is a real possibility in the context of some grids. That is why the ongoing efforts in some leagues to create a parity irrelevant of driver ability, and others separate into various divisions for levelling. How to balance those needs properly to appeal to the widest group of individuals? No idea haha. In all of my time online with the GT series I've only ever competed for points once, and that was in a very low profile relaxed series.

I dunno.

 

[BrandonW77]

^ That's why a season always starts out with full grids and finishes with partial grids. The reverse grid goes some way towards addressing this balance issue and generally my preferred method (just because it's simple). In the past we did a short sprint race and then had a reverse grid for the longer race.

One idea could be to do points races on Tuesday nights and Saturdays we use the same car and do a bunch of shorter fun races at different tracks. Registration would be necessary for the points races and Saturdays could be open to everyone. Kinda fits both needs that way.