Hare & hound rally

We are considering a Hare and Hound rally for a club activity. I'm thinking miles traveled might be a way to score the thing - Who ever comes closest to the actual mileage?
Seems it might be better for suburban / rural streets rather than multi-lane city thoroughfares - quick lane changes might be dangerous. What to use for the "trail marker" - the stuff used in pool filters, stone dust, flour?
Any thoughts?T.T.

Trevor - I'm a dunce. What is a Hare and Hound rally?

Thanks.
Tom M.

We used to fill baggies with masonry lime, the hare would throw them out of the passenger window at speed, they would make a nice big marker alongside the road. But you could also staple or tape paper plates to poles, signs or trees.

A lead car sets off on a predetermined course to set a route. when I say pre-determined, it means the lead car, the hare, knows the route, not the remaining cars, the hounds. Using perhaps bags of lime or stone dust, for example, the hare drops a marker before an intersection. The hounds know to make a change of direction, but not which particular road. Several feet passed the intersection there is another marker indicating that correct route. So a four way intersection may mean three choices. One might get lucky and make the proper turn, or it may take an additional two turns to get back on the route.

That sounds like fun!

Especially fun after the sun goes down.

Once did a rally where everyone got lost at the first clue. The clue was to turn right when you saw Puff. Puff, as the song goes, is a dragon. Turned out this fire station had a big dragon painted across the 3 doors in the front. The guy who organized it didn't think that perhaps all the doors would be open the day of the rally, so it was Puff the disappearing dragon...

I worked with a guy who had been stationed in Europe in the late sixties.
The rally instructions were a series of pictures of the exit road of an intersection. You didn’t know how many intersections you had to go thru to find the next instruction. As an added bonus, the pictures were taken at a different time of year than when the rally was run. I always wanted m to do one if those but never got around to taking the pictures.

Another adventure rally I',\m thinking about is drive to a check point and then return to starting point and match the outbound time.

Back in the 1950s and into the 1960s, we had rallys several times a year and gymkhanas in local parking lots. All gone now except for occasional rallys, but with GPS and yes, the old Curta Calculators, the slide rules and pocket calculators are obsolete and no match. When the Curta came along, we even had non-Curta rallys. Do they still have rallys and gymkhanas in your area? Do you participate? I was never any good at gymkhanas. Was fast but always got confused by all the pylons and off the course. Result? DQ'd. I ran my Twin-Cam MG, then Porsche coupe and then, years later, a Datsun 510 sedan.

I went to gymkhanas while in high school, I didn't drive but watched. When I was about fourteen my mother drove to the gymkhana site - a shopping mall parking lot. She watched a while and then thought she could drive the event. Just as she was looking to sign up, she saw a Fiat 600 roll onto its side. She changed her mind. That gymkhana included a cloverleaf and a garage place. Drivers seemed to get confused and turn too soon out of the cloverleaf. The garage thing required backing the car into a slot - turning a ninety degree corner. At speed that's where the Fiat rolled.
In have participated in autocrosses off and on (mostly off) since the early 1970's. We started with an Opel Manta and did well; frequently we, my wife and I finished first or second. Now when I drive in a SCCA events I am dead last on actual time, but with the index a end second or third. At Triumphest I often finished first or second in class.
Triumphest also offers an event called a funkhana - a timed event but using two people in the car. There are activities in the event - throwing fan belt at a target for example. One year we built a bridge of sorts and gave the passenger a fishing pole with a magnet in place of a hook. The metal fish had numbers on them that would take seconds off the elapsed time. The big numbers on the metal fish were aluminum rather then steel.

pdplot said:

Back in the 1950s and into the 1960s, we had rallys several times a year and gymkhanas in local parking lots. All gone now except for occasional rallys, but with GPS and yes, the old Curta Calculators, the slide rules and pocket calculators are obsolete and no match. When the Curta came along, we even had non-Curta rallys. Do they still have rallys and gymkhanas in your area? Do you participate? I was never any good at gymkhanas. Was fast but always got confused by all the pylons and off the course. Result? DQ'd. I ran my Twin-Cam MG, then Porsche coupe and then, years later, a Datsun 510 sedan.

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Curta Calculators! Paul - do you have one of those? What a piece of history (and genius).

Interesting story of the man who developed them.

Tom M.

Never got one. Thought it was like cheating. For those that don't know, it looked like a small coffee grinder. I never used one or even examined one close up. There must be some on E-bay. All I ever used was a stop watch and a legal pad until pocket calculators came along. After that, I stopped rallying as local sports car clubs went out of business. For you youngsters who were born after 1960 or so, you missed the Golden Age of Sports cars when our LBCs were all over the US and we would wave to each other as we passed in opposite directions. Jaguars led the parade, followed by Allards, Aston Martin DB2s, Austin-Healeys, TR2s and TR3s, MGs, Jowett Jupiters, Lea Francis, Connaught, Singers, HRGs, Frazer Nash, Nash Healey, Morgan, Peerless, Sunbeam Alpine and later Tiger, and in the 1960s, ACs, AC Bristols, Arnolt Bristols, Lotus, Elva, Ginetta, Lester MG, Lister Bristol, Lister Jaguar, Jomar (later TVR) - what a time it was. Today? Aston Martin is still with us;so is Morgan and Jaguar,maybe TVR, McLaren and a few small specialty contructors whose cars never seem to get over here. What will happen when we pass from the scene we can only guess.

pdplot said:

What will happen when we pass from the scene we can only guess.

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I think for the following 100 years most people won't even know they are in a vehicle. They'll be glued to their I T equipment while the vehicle magically takes them to their destination. But yet I do believe the HOT ROD spirit will rear its face again and the youngsters will find a way to soup up and modify their bubble to make it unique and faster. Then they will race again......until at some point there will be no more roads.