FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 1999: Well, I picked up Gammonman from his Hotel at 7:00, and off we went to Vargo Speedway for HO Racing, some cold ones, and a lot to catch up on in the gab department. Dave was in Lisle IL for a Back Gammon Tournament. He told me he was 2nd in the Nation in 1996, and that he had been competing for 20 years. Wow. He's just as good at racing HO cars. School was in for us club guys at Vargo Speedway while we all watched Gammonman roast the track with a slew of some of his awesome HO cars. We got back  to my place, and some guys were there racing already.

Todd "cool man" Kuhlmann is the founding member of Vargo Speedway, and races weekly. He was the man responsible for bringing over an AFX track nearly 9 years ago, and setting it up on my living room floor. The rest is history. He also has a 70' 2 lane road course we have been buiding and detailing for the past 6 months or so. "Kuhlmanoco" will be featured on our upcoming "Chitown Racers" web site. His track has many custom features already, some of which were derived from building Vargo Speedway and improved upon. His 3 year old helps out on his track. His newborn son will soon be racing with us also! Todd is also an avid Rocket builder, living close to one of our large parks in the area.

"Crazy Eddie" McAuley here hasn't been racing for a while, and made a cameo appearence for the night. He was just as sharp as he was before. Ed is one of the original members of Vargo Speedway, and raced weekly for nearly 5 years. He built a 100' 4 lane track in his apartment years ago. On the floor!! It took up the entire place. I think his wife was ready to leave before he took it down a few months later.....LOL

He has plans for a large HO layout as soon as he takes care of some minor details like buying a bigger house.......and raising his 3 kids.

Gammonman brought out some cars with some really cool paint jobs. Dave does nice work. Some were done by Homer (Jeff Stillwell), and were also super cool. We were really impressed. The chassis's were even more impressive. Super G+ SS, Life-Like SS, (that was unbelievably smooth), Tyco Modifieds, and many more.

Poor Dave - It was a bad start at first for Gammon. After running a few warm up laps with some other cars, he put down one of his fastest drag cars, squeezed the trigger, and WHAMMO!!!, the car slammed into the wall not even 2 feet behind it before noticing the lane reversing switch wasn't positioned correctly. The chassis was glued from a previous accident, and was now rendered useless.

Anyone remember the Toad in American Grafitti? (sorry Dave, couldn't resist.)

After a couple of warm up laps, Dave was ready to drag out some fast and furious cars, and send us back to school! Let me tell you, this man can build cars, and build them fast and smooth. We were all at attention as Dave showed us some of his nice chassis's and bodies. Once he warmed up, we all had our hands full keeping up with his quick cars and skills.

As protection against any further explosions of bodies, shoes and springs during some short drag runs, we put up a pad at the end of the the closest straight in the case of over-exuburant throttle fingers. Previous to this, a few cars ricochet'd off of the tire barriers, and were caught mid-air numerous times by Eddie. Lots O' Laughs!

While we don't have room for a scale drag strip, we made the best of running some short runs with Daves quick HO drag cars. I'd love to see what some of them could do on a 40 footer. His one drag car was calculated at travelling 32 mph at Stillwell Raceway's 1/4 mile.

 Here is a start mock up with some of Daves cars, with the starting tower in the background. The Trakmate system worked well all night, and the LED starting tower always adds excitement to races. Everyone caught a red light at one time or another throughout the night. Todd pulled off the best reaction time of the night, with a .009. He also holds the record of .001.

Another shot of some of Daves awesome WSC and GTP cars leaving the starting tower. The Panose was one of my favorites, as well as the "splash" painted Porsche on the left. (Which I later acquired through a trade with Dave..)

Once the racing got under way, time seemed to fly. We ran mostly crash and burn heats for most of the night, followed by race and chase stuff. There were a few grudge wars, with some great head to head action down the straights. Every guy was fast, and the competition got intense at times. The sound of all 4 cars screaming next to each other was just as awes ome as trying to keep focus as the trees and mountains of the speedway rushed past.

Aside from Dave's wreck of the Vette drag car earlier, this was probably the worst crash of the night while racing. Todd with the Pennzoil came out of the Yellow lane in turn 6 with oversteer, hooked the car, and flipped on top of Dave in the White lane driving the Marlboro Honda. All in a split second they smashed into the starting tower and stopped instantly. It sounded aweful, but there wasn't any real damage. The tower will need some repairs, but it still ran fine the rest of the night. NASTY!

Eddie scans for another car out of our large selection, while Todd shows a bit of enthusiasm for the next race...He was busy in the shop area for some time, and wouldn't tell anyone what he was up to.

The racing went on late into early Saturday morning, with a couple of guys nursing soon-to-be blistered trigger fingers. Dave spent a good part of the night feverishly trying and succeeding to set a track record for the night. He had the best lap times overall, with a nights' best of 5.013 for the scale mile. Although I tried my best with Daves car, I mustered up a second fastest time of 5.18, with Todd getting a 5.28 in front of Eddie's 5.30. I couldn't even get near Dave with my cars, and Eddie was racing mine, since his old cars were left here to the 'wolves' a few years ago!! Perhaps if I had a better controller for Dave, he could have beat the track record with probably 3 or 4 of his cars.

Eddie recorded the fastest documented lap record to date at the Speedway with a 4.97 on battery power years ago. Recently I was able to set a 4.83 with a Mad Scientist rewind at 25 dg timing advance, and modified Tyco components, however this was achieved without a body or a witness.

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