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17 Dec 2007, 21:50 (Ref:2090843) | #1 | |
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Conceptual Stages of building a motorcycle track IRL
So I have a desire to build a 1.25 to 1.5 mile long track with 30+ turns for my own amusement. I have absolutely no idea how to design anything outside of photoshop and Illustrator, but I'm taking a crack at SketchUp which you can get for free. I know there are CAD proggies and such, but that's way more technical than I want to get at the moment. Anyone have an interest in playing around and giving me input on your designs?
Also, I'll take any input on this thing because I seriously plan on building this in real life starting in September. Let's keep the facilities out this discussion, let's just talk about making a fun, yet safe track. Think of the dragon with run offs and kitty litter Let's have some fun! BTW, I'm not a troll. I'm on about 7 other forums, so checking all of them would be a huge time investment. Being that this forum is pertinent to the information I'm requesting, I'll check this thread regularly. |
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17 Dec 2007, 22:13 (Ref:2090856) | #2 | ||
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best advice ...Forget 30+ turns in 1.5 miles
Starting place...pencil and paper. |
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18 Dec 2007, 16:25 (Ref:2091370) | #3 | |
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No, the idea is to keep it safe by keeping it slow with a lot of turns and few straights. This will be my private track, so I'll make it how I like it
Has anyone here actually built a track? |
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18 Dec 2007, 17:09 (Ref:2091397) | #4 | ||
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It would be very slow, 30 turns into 1.5 miles (2400 metres) would be an apex every 8 metres. I know of kart tracks that are almost that wide never mind between apexes.
But as you say make it as you like. |
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18 Dec 2007, 21:02 (Ref:2091523) | #5 | ||
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Dont Use sketchup! Penicil and paper. Sketchup can get frustrating when you cant put textures in the places you would like to. Then mabey try it in ms Paint. Also, mabey less corners in 1.5 miles?? SOmetimes corners after corner after corner gets boring, Try and not make it too micky mouse like most Tilke Rings... But good luck! Sounds like an interesting project, but for ideas, I suggest looking at some other peoples tracks and to go through lots of possibilities for layouts, and then decide on the best, remember, you want a track that you will enjoy, with variaties of different corners. Good Luck!
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18 Dec 2007, 21:32 (Ref:2091557) | #6 | ||
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An apex every 80 metres SBF That assumes that each corner follows at regular intervals, which of course they won't.
An interesting brief that you've set yourself though Chest2Tank. Good luck, and welcome to ten-tenths EDIT: And no, I don't believe anyone has actually gone and built a real track of their own, lol. I think this is a forum for armchair enthusiasts of track design generally speaking! |
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18 Dec 2007, 21:59 (Ref:2091578) | #7 | ||
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hey I'm an engineer not an mathematician.
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18 Dec 2007, 22:48 (Ref:2091618) | #8 | ||
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LOL, engineers need maths more than anybody.
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18 Dec 2007, 23:06 (Ref:2091635) | #9 | |
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Hello C2T and welcome to the board!
A motorcycle track? Don't modern motorcycle tracks always have these large air-filled cushions in front of the walls at the end of the runoff? I think you can't build the track IRL without the help of an architect, because they are the people who know what information a construction plan must include. I'm not intending to discriminate anyone, but it's somewhat risky to let builders improvise. The architect is their choreographer, and this is something with which us armchair enthusiasts cannot help you. But regarding the design of the track's overall blot shape and corner shapes, we surely do have lots of ideas. As opposed to my fellow track designers, I still draw mine on paper, well, mainly because I can draw with a pen but not with a mouse. Additionally, on paper you can see the scales better. Using chequered paper should help you and the architect later on. Before you start drawing sketches, I'd look at the piece of land that you have available. Try to memorize its changes in altitude, or go there and draw your sketches right there. A track is a three-dimensional object, which is something that armchair enthusiasts including me sometimes tend to forget. I usually come up with the altitude changes after I've already completed the track design, but you can't do that in real life. Then, there are different genres of tracks you can choose from. I guess you've already decided for a mixture of a kart track and a national/club circuit. With that in mind, I guess the biggest challenge might be to avoid it becoming a Mickey Mouse circuit. Good luck with your project. |
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19 Dec 2007, 17:37 (Ref:2092085) | #10 | |
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Of course there will be arch's, engineers, consultants, etc. etc. What I'm trying to do here is nail down as many details as I can before I start paying everyone else.
Here's the hurdle now: I'm talking with people on two other boards and there seems to be interest in doing this, but no one knows about federal regulations. Actually, this won't be a private track - I will be making some cheese with it Who knows what laws go into making a track aside from local zoning laws? We're talking the US, btw. |
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19 Dec 2007, 17:59 (Ref:2092115) | #11 | |
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19 Dec 2007, 18:05 (Ref:2092120) | #12 | ||
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errr, i need to be a member...
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19 Dec 2007, 18:35 (Ref:2092136) | #13 | |
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19 Dec 2007, 17:40 (Ref:2092090) | #14 | ||
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No idea about US laws, but it would deffo be a "good luck" if it was in the UK. On the FIA and FIM's site you can look at their regulations for tracks, though.
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19 Dec 2007, 20:01 (Ref:2092193) | #15 | ||
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Chest2Tank:
I studied for two years to be an architect, which would probably make me the most qualified of any of the contributors here to comment on the subject. Granted, I found out at the end of those two years that I enjoy observing architecture more than designing it, that I enjoy sleep more than slaving away in studio for three days straight without food or rest trying to configure a public bathroom, and that architecture destroys one's ambitions enough to send him fleeing away to an easy degree in communications than to not give up on his lifelong dream, but that's all water under the bridge. Let me tell you, though, that if this is something that you really want you to pursue, you have to know one thing. In real-life design, the most important factor above all others is the site you have to work with. For most of what you see in this forum, the site is whatever we make it, so there are few constraints in the designs. In real-life, though, none of the advice that we can give is practical until there is land to put those ideas and principles to good use. So my question to you would be, "Do you know where you are going to build this track?" If you have a location in mind, the first step in the process is to do some extensive surveying. Find out exactly what there is to work with: the borders of the property, the topography of the land, how much earthworks can be done considering the soil levels and water table. As long as you know the dimensions of the property, you can make some preliminary sketches on what you want the layout of the track to look like, but you must know all of the characteristics of the land before you can make any final decisions. |
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20 Dec 2007, 15:49 (Ref:2092749) | #16 | ||
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Quote:
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20 Dec 2007, 19:04 (Ref:2092897) | #17 | ||
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I would probably take Fish's advice C2T.
Frankly, if you are deadly serious about doing this, I would seek better informed advice than the majority of the members here can offer you! I'm sure once you have some more solid ideas though there would be many here willing to at least offer their opinion on the physical layout if nothing else. |
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29 Dec 2007, 21:02 (Ref:2096298) | #18 | ||
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Chest2Tank,
is that 2249*792 on that sketch the dimensions of the site available? bio |
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30 Dec 2007, 01:01 (Ref:2096396) | #19 | ||
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I have something here.
First of all, of course it's only a game. Neither have do I have any skills or qualifications to plan a motorbike racing course, nor do I know anything about the actual site, its topology, for example. I took all the data I could obtain and gave it my best shot - that's all it is, nothing less, nothing more. What data did I have at hand? about the track: - the track should be no longer than 1.2 miles - there should be at least 30 corners about the site: - based on the info written on the sketch you provided the area is 40 acres which converts to (let me use the metric system, I'm used to that) roughly 0.17 square kilometers. - also, the track plan on the sketch is in a 6*17 rectangle. From the area size plus the ratio of the sides I calculated that it's roughly a 239*677 (meters) site, so that's what I used. Here should come the track itself, but at the moment I don't seem to be able to attach any images for reasons unknown. I know, of course, how to upload, have done it a couple of times but whenever I'm trying to do it it says upload error: attachment in progress. I don't see why attaching being in progress should be an error, though... Until then, here's a link: http://supremacy.hu/groundzero/pix/40_acre_course.jpg bio |
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30 Dec 2007, 01:18 (Ref:2096398) | #20 | ||
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Oh, forgot some specifications...
The track is 1.5 miles long practically to the meter. The track width is 14 meters. The start/finish straight is 185 meters long. The paddock is 110 meters. There are 31 turns on the track, 14 right turns and 17 left turns. There are four big turn-clusters, one right after the start straight (turns 3-11), one midtrack (turns 13-18) and two at the final third (22-26 and 27-31). From the dimensions given it was pretty obvious that most of the track would be turns upon turns but I also tried to include straights as well. There are 4 straights, a 64-meter, a 118-meter, a 122-meter and a 105-meter - plus the 185-meter start/finish straight, of course. I liked mith's idea of an extended long straight so I borrowed his idea and put something like that in my track (521 meters long), alongside with some more alternative sections. bio |
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31 Dec 2007, 00:35 (Ref:2096847) | #21 | ||
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By the way... Does anyone know why the vast majority of the F1 and cycling - tracks go clockwise? Really only one or two of them don't. Why?
bio |
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31 Dec 2007, 06:46 (Ref:2096957) | #22 | |||
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Quote:
The Gordon Bennett Cup of 1904 held around the Irish town of Athy was probably the first major closed-circuit road race. A full lap of the circuit consisted two loops -- one clockwise to the town of Carlow and one counterclockwise to the town of Kildare -- which eventually met at the city center and shared the main road out of Athy. Meanwhile, the French Grand Prix was first run in 1906 around Le Mans on a 64-mile counterclockwise circuit; the circuit through Dieppe which alternated with Le Mans in the earliest days of the Grand Prix shared its orientation. The Targa Florio was established the same year in Sicily, and that race was always run counterclockwise until its demise in the 1970s. The circuits in and near Brescia which hosted mainland Italy's biggest race from the turn of the century until the early 1920s were all run anti-clockwise. The first premier permanent racing facilities in the world -- Brooklands, Indianapolis, and AVUS -- all were predominantly left-turn circuits. I imagine, though, that the tradition of road racing being a clockwise affair came with the establishment of the "classic" European venues that came to fruition in the 1920s, beginning with Le Mans' Sarthe circuit in 1921 and continuing with Monza in 1922, Montlhery and Pescara in 1924, Reims and Spa-Francorchamps in 1925, the Nurburgring in 1927, and Monaco in 1929. Those names represent motorsport in a nutshell even today, and all of them ran clockwise. The circuits which still operate today continue to do so. With these tracks being the spiritual homes of road racing, organizers and track developers who came after them just followed their example. |
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31 Dec 2007, 15:53 (Ref:2097135) | #23 | ||
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So it's mainly tradition.
Thanks for the info. bio |
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5 Jan 2008, 14:20 (Ref:2100097) | #24 | ||
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5 Jan 2008, 14:20 (Ref:2100098) | #25 | ||
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Wow, at last I managed to upload the damn image
bio |
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