In a joint announcement, the newly formed Micro Sprint League of the Upper Midwest Sprint Car Series (UMSS) and Elko Speedway are pleased to announce the addition of the Micro Sprint League to Elko's Dirt Nationals on July 23-24. The micro sprints will join the outlaw sprint cars of the IRA and area modifieds to make this weekend an all open wheel show.
"We are grateful to Tom Ryan, the owner of Elko Speedway, for allowing us to compete during the Dirt Nationals," stated Ron Bernhagen of the UMSS. "The micro sprints are real race cars, and I know they will enhance the evening's program and surprise many people with their speed."
The Elko Dirt Nationals will be run on three consecutive weekends in July:
* July 9-10 - 360 sprint cars, late models, and area modifieds
* July 16-17 - 360 sprint cars, USMTS modifieds and area modifieds
* July 23-24 - IRA Outlaw sprint cars, micro sprints, and area modifieds
For more information on Elko, go to www.elkospeedway.com. For more information on the UMSS, go to www.umsprints.com or call Ron at 612-363-5302.
Friday, March 19, 2010
2010 Micro Sprint League Schedule Announced
The Micro Sprint League of the Upper Midwest Sprint Car Series (UMSS) is pleased to announce an eight-race schedule for its inaugural season. Created to bring affordable open wheel racing to the area and to provide a feeder program for the UMSS, the Micro Sprint League will race at both Kopellah Speedway and Elko Speedway in 2010. Kopellah will host six shows, mostly with the UMSS, and Elko will host a pair of shows on July 23 and 24 as part of their dirt nationals.
"Our schedule for the first year will help the Micro Sprint League bring their brand of racing to many people around the Twin Cities area," stated Ron Bernhagen from the UMSS. "Once people see these cars in action and learn how inexpensive it is to get involved, I know the Micro Sprint League will really take off."
2010 Schedule
May 7 - Kopellah - with UMSS
June 11 - Kopellah - with UMSS
July 2 - Kopellah - with UMSS
July 3 - Kopellah
July 9 - Kopellah
July 23 - Elko - with IRA
July 24 - Elko - with IRA
August 27 - Kopellah - with UMSS
The Micro Sprint League of the UMSS is a value-based micro sprint car organization bringing open wheel racing back to the Twin Cities area by establishing reasonable rules for the participant, an economical purse structure for the race tracks, and an affordable race ticket and fan-friendly program for the race fan.
For more information, go to www.umsprints.com or call Ron Bernhagen at 612-363-5302 or John Morris at 763-923-1031.
"Our schedule for the first year will help the Micro Sprint League bring their brand of racing to many people around the Twin Cities area," stated Ron Bernhagen from the UMSS. "Once people see these cars in action and learn how inexpensive it is to get involved, I know the Micro Sprint League will really take off."
2010 Schedule
May 7 - Kopellah - with UMSS
June 11 - Kopellah - with UMSS
July 2 - Kopellah - with UMSS
July 3 - Kopellah
July 9 - Kopellah
July 23 - Elko - with IRA
July 24 - Elko - with IRA
August 27 - Kopellah - with UMSS
The Micro Sprint League of the UMSS is a value-based micro sprint car organization bringing open wheel racing back to the Twin Cities area by establishing reasonable rules for the participant, an economical purse structure for the race tracks, and an affordable race ticket and fan-friendly program for the race fan.
For more information, go to www.umsprints.com or call Ron Bernhagen at 612-363-5302 or John Morris at 763-923-1031.
Micro Sprint League Rules Consistent with Miniakota's
The rules of the Micro Sprint League of the Upper Midwest Sprint Car Series (UMSS) will follow those of the Miniakota Micros of Northwest, Iowa, and be close to the rules run at Copper Creek Motorsports Park in Superior, Wisconsin.
The consistent rules will allow any micro sprint in the area to run with the Micro Sprint League with no or very few changes. For complete rules, go to www.miniakotamicrosprints.com/rules/
The Micro Sprint League of the UMSS is a value-based micro sprint car organization bringing open wheel racing back to the Twin Cities area by establishing reasonable rules for the participant, an economical purse structure for the race tracks, and an affordable race ticket and fan-friendly program for the race fan.
For more information, go to www.umsprints.com or call Ron Bernhagen at 612-363-5302 or John Morris at 763-923-1031.
The consistent rules will allow any micro sprint in the area to run with the Micro Sprint League with no or very few changes. For complete rules, go to www.miniakotamicrosprints.com/rules/
The Micro Sprint League of the UMSS is a value-based micro sprint car organization bringing open wheel racing back to the Twin Cities area by establishing reasonable rules for the participant, an economical purse structure for the race tracks, and an affordable race ticket and fan-friendly program for the race fan.
For more information, go to www.umsprints.com or call Ron Bernhagen at 612-363-5302 or John Morris at 763-923-1031.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
What the keyboard jocks predicted vs reality and other meaningless ramblings...
Remember the controversies of a few years ago? DTRA, Goodyear, NASCAR, Rice Lake was gonna' take over Late Model racing in western Wisconsin and kick Cedar Lake's ass? What a difference a few years makes. The first thing to go at RLS was their weekly Late Model program and now they might not open for the 2010 season if they cannot find a buyer by the end of April. Now don't misunderstand me, I think RLS is a great track and I have enjoyed the few shows I attended there but my point is that the predictions of the armchair prognosticators have not come true, in fact the opposite has happened. When CLS left WISSOTA I went down on record as stating that location, location, location is more important than sanction, sanction, sanction. When people bad mouthed Goodyear I said that I've been around this sport since the days when the IMCA "Big Cars" ran Firestone knobbies on the Minnesota State Fair dirt. Quite a few called me an idiot and got pretty angry at me but I knew I'd be right in the long run.
I've been around a long time, I've seen sanctions and tires come and go and I could see the direction this whole thing was going in. Tracks out in the middle of nowhere were in my estimation going to have a harder time than tracks close to the bigger population centers regardless of affiliation. It's the law of averages, more people and more businesses concentrated in a small area, it makes sense that these tracks have a bigger pie to slice and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Common sense always beats loyalties and misdirected fervor.
I have received a lot of compliments on Midwest Racing Talk and I appreciate that. Along with the compliments I have gotten a lot of suggestions about who I might want to interview and what subjects to cover. MWRT is not sponsored and there are limits to how many interviews I can do. At this point I'm trying to build MWRT from the ground up, get some content out there and get established so that when some of the big special events happen drivers will want to be interviewed. Facebook is going to help with that because we're getting a lot of participation in the Minnesota Dirt Track Racing Group by some of the drivers and people we want to talk to. I'm probably going to take some heat this year because at times Midwest Racing Talk is probably going to seem like it has a Sprint Car agenda at times. Without going into a lot of detail, I do the sites out of my own pocket without sponsorship so that is also a factor. I'm sure you'll all agree that if you're paying for something out of your pocket and taking your own time to do it you damn sure are going to do it your own way. I'll never run banners on the sites but I would consider doing some type of commercials in the podcasts or simply mentioning a business name for a modest fee. I work full time so I'm not in a position to go around to the businesses with a clipboard and business card promoting the sites. If somebody asks I've got a basic idea what we could do but I think as most of you racers already know, podcast sponsors aren't going to come beating on my door.
I think as far as the audio site goes our best option is to take it at a pace I can handle from an administrative standpoint and see where it goes. I'm trying to put up quality podcasts with good sound and some thought provoking content and the rest will take care of itself. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post I'm not making "cold calls" on drivers I'm not familiar with so my interviews are going to be limited to people I know. If you're looking for interviews of Grand Rapids WISSOTA drivers you're out of luck, I've never been there and they wouldn't know me from Adam at the back gate. Not to pick on Grand Rapids but you get the idea, they race on Thursday nights, it's way up north and I live in Forest Lake and work full time in the Cities. Visiting places like that is difficult because I'm not setup everywhere so I never know what kind of issues I'm going to run into.
My schedule is made up entirely of Sprint Car races this season so that's going to have some bearing on my interview subjects. I will see Late Models a total of five nights this season, at the Billy Anderson Memorial and Masters at CLS and two nights at Elko. There aren't any Sprint Cars on the Thursday of the Masters so I don't plan on going that night and the USA Nationals are not on my schedule. As far as the USMTS I'll see them two nights this year along with the IMCA/UMSS Sprints at Elko so there is an opportunity to interview a few of those drivers. I spent the last eleven seasons going to a lot of Cedar Lake weekly shows and still have my connections out there so I plan to do some phone interviews with some of the Late Model and Modified drivers as time permits. Perhaps Dan Plan will cover some of those too as he will be closer to that racing this year than I will. I'm putting all of my eggs in the Sprint Car basket and will do everything I can to promote that type of racing. I'm not out to garner huge numbers of website hits or cater to any particular group of racers or please any sponsors who might happen to think their money buys their agenda on my sites. That is the advantage of doing this on my own, if it was a business I would be obligated to follow the money and that would no doubt lead me a direction I do not want to take this in.
No, I'm not trying to be everything to everybody with the audio site or with MDTR. Especially now that I'm on Facebook it doesn't seem like there's any shortage of daily email notices from the various racing websites. Blog updates and seemingly endless press releases have made it a challenge to not block some of those posts. As a matter of fact, I'm following my own advice on this one and will never post on a daily basis. A few press releases, notices when there's a new audio file posted and I'll announce the new photo galleries. I know how I feel when I get multiple daily email notices from some of these racing sites on Facebook so I'll try to go easy on you in that regard. Think of this blog post as part information and part my personal therapy and you'll get where I'm coming from. Sometimes I just have some thoughts I want to jot down and this is my outlet for that. If you're looking for daily racing content there is plenty out there. If you want to know what kind of bullshit Stan is spreading today you can stop here and check it out.
When racing starts and I've got more to say than I can fit in a Facebook post I'll write it here and announce it on FB and the message boards. Speaking of Facebook, I'm seeing a trend of the traffic on the traditional message boards dropping off from what it was in it's heyday. I think that Facebook is taking over in that area and I must say, compared to the racing boards it's a much more efficient way of doing things. The added bonus is that some of our favorite professional race drivers are keeping us up-to-date on their Facebook pages whereas they would have never posted on the message boards. Facebook offers them a layer of protection that the boards don't and lets them get the word out without having to take any heat. Some people say they like Twitter for that reason but from what I have seen Twitter is a little too invasive into a person's private life for my taste.
Well, I'm looking forward to racing, how about you? Keep an eye on MWRT because I think we're going to get busy with a video interview pretty soon here. More on that later.
I've been around a long time, I've seen sanctions and tires come and go and I could see the direction this whole thing was going in. Tracks out in the middle of nowhere were in my estimation going to have a harder time than tracks close to the bigger population centers regardless of affiliation. It's the law of averages, more people and more businesses concentrated in a small area, it makes sense that these tracks have a bigger pie to slice and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Common sense always beats loyalties and misdirected fervor.
I have received a lot of compliments on Midwest Racing Talk and I appreciate that. Along with the compliments I have gotten a lot of suggestions about who I might want to interview and what subjects to cover. MWRT is not sponsored and there are limits to how many interviews I can do. At this point I'm trying to build MWRT from the ground up, get some content out there and get established so that when some of the big special events happen drivers will want to be interviewed. Facebook is going to help with that because we're getting a lot of participation in the Minnesota Dirt Track Racing Group by some of the drivers and people we want to talk to. I'm probably going to take some heat this year because at times Midwest Racing Talk is probably going to seem like it has a Sprint Car agenda at times. Without going into a lot of detail, I do the sites out of my own pocket without sponsorship so that is also a factor. I'm sure you'll all agree that if you're paying for something out of your pocket and taking your own time to do it you damn sure are going to do it your own way. I'll never run banners on the sites but I would consider doing some type of commercials in the podcasts or simply mentioning a business name for a modest fee. I work full time so I'm not in a position to go around to the businesses with a clipboard and business card promoting the sites. If somebody asks I've got a basic idea what we could do but I think as most of you racers already know, podcast sponsors aren't going to come beating on my door.
I think as far as the audio site goes our best option is to take it at a pace I can handle from an administrative standpoint and see where it goes. I'm trying to put up quality podcasts with good sound and some thought provoking content and the rest will take care of itself. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post I'm not making "cold calls" on drivers I'm not familiar with so my interviews are going to be limited to people I know. If you're looking for interviews of Grand Rapids WISSOTA drivers you're out of luck, I've never been there and they wouldn't know me from Adam at the back gate. Not to pick on Grand Rapids but you get the idea, they race on Thursday nights, it's way up north and I live in Forest Lake and work full time in the Cities. Visiting places like that is difficult because I'm not setup everywhere so I never know what kind of issues I'm going to run into.
My schedule is made up entirely of Sprint Car races this season so that's going to have some bearing on my interview subjects. I will see Late Models a total of five nights this season, at the Billy Anderson Memorial and Masters at CLS and two nights at Elko. There aren't any Sprint Cars on the Thursday of the Masters so I don't plan on going that night and the USA Nationals are not on my schedule. As far as the USMTS I'll see them two nights this year along with the IMCA/UMSS Sprints at Elko so there is an opportunity to interview a few of those drivers. I spent the last eleven seasons going to a lot of Cedar Lake weekly shows and still have my connections out there so I plan to do some phone interviews with some of the Late Model and Modified drivers as time permits. Perhaps Dan Plan will cover some of those too as he will be closer to that racing this year than I will. I'm putting all of my eggs in the Sprint Car basket and will do everything I can to promote that type of racing. I'm not out to garner huge numbers of website hits or cater to any particular group of racers or please any sponsors who might happen to think their money buys their agenda on my sites. That is the advantage of doing this on my own, if it was a business I would be obligated to follow the money and that would no doubt lead me a direction I do not want to take this in.
No, I'm not trying to be everything to everybody with the audio site or with MDTR. Especially now that I'm on Facebook it doesn't seem like there's any shortage of daily email notices from the various racing websites. Blog updates and seemingly endless press releases have made it a challenge to not block some of those posts. As a matter of fact, I'm following my own advice on this one and will never post on a daily basis. A few press releases, notices when there's a new audio file posted and I'll announce the new photo galleries. I know how I feel when I get multiple daily email notices from some of these racing sites on Facebook so I'll try to go easy on you in that regard. Think of this blog post as part information and part my personal therapy and you'll get where I'm coming from. Sometimes I just have some thoughts I want to jot down and this is my outlet for that. If you're looking for daily racing content there is plenty out there. If you want to know what kind of bullshit Stan is spreading today you can stop here and check it out.
When racing starts and I've got more to say than I can fit in a Facebook post I'll write it here and announce it on FB and the message boards. Speaking of Facebook, I'm seeing a trend of the traffic on the traditional message boards dropping off from what it was in it's heyday. I think that Facebook is taking over in that area and I must say, compared to the racing boards it's a much more efficient way of doing things. The added bonus is that some of our favorite professional race drivers are keeping us up-to-date on their Facebook pages whereas they would have never posted on the message boards. Facebook offers them a layer of protection that the boards don't and lets them get the word out without having to take any heat. Some people say they like Twitter for that reason but from what I have seen Twitter is a little too invasive into a person's private life for my taste.
Well, I'm looking forward to racing, how about you? Keep an eye on MWRT because I think we're going to get busy with a video interview pretty soon here. More on that later.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Internet radio, blogging and other random topics...
One misconception that a lot of people have about podcasting is that an MP3 player or iPod is required in order to listen to them. That is not the case, a podcast is simply another form of MP3 audio file, the same format used for music downloads. You can listen to on demand internet broadcasts like the ones on midwestracingtalk.com directly on the player incorporated in the site or download to listen at a more convenient time or location if you own on a personal listening device. Sites such as podcastalley.com offer a large selection of categorized podcasts complete with RSS and iTunes feeds that allow you to subscribe to each new episode without having to check the sites for updates. This feature is incorporated into the midwestracingtalk.com website for your convenience.
Podcasts are a relatively new thing on the internet and have become very popular during the past five years. Today podcasters as they are called can create audio broadcasts about their favorite subject with nothing more than a personal computer and microphone and broadcast their creation across the globe with a standard internet connection. I am a self professed MP3 junkie as anyone in my office will tell you. We're allowed to listen to headphones or play our radios at a low volume so I listen to podcasts instead of radio or CD's like most of my co-workers. I enjoy podcasts because they allow me to listen to a variety of subjects that cannot be found on the radio talk shows.
As part of my weekly routine I load up my MP3 player with a couple dozen of my favorite internet radio shows ranging in subject from photography techniques to discussions about the unexplained to dirt track racing and much more. Trust me, if you enjoy learning about a wide variety of topics, listening to interviews of your favorite authors or are in the mood for a comedy show you should consider listening to podcasts. They're especially handy when you're on the go. I love to listen to them by plugging the MP3 player into my radio while driving, especially when I make those racing road trips.
One thing that I find about podcasting as compared to radio broadcast over the air waves is that there can often be a wide rang of quality. Some podcasts sound very professional like something you'd hear on FM radio but others are so poorly mixed that they're a distraction to listen to. The sound quality might be excellent but the content is a complete waste of bandwidth. On the other hand, some podcasts I are plagued by loud crackling in the background or the interviewer is uncomfortably loud and the subject is so soft they cannot be heard. In some cases the sound quality might be poor but the content is interesting which can be annoying when trying to listen through a headset while constantly having to adjust the volume. What I find the most annoying is podcasts where I can turn the volume up to almost 100% on my MP3 player but it's still not loud enough to hear over normal office background noise. There's nothing wrong with my MP3 player, FM radio, the majority of podcasts and my music MP3's come in loud and clear so I know it's not the player. Another annoying thing I've heard, especially on one particular network I listen to, is poor editing. There is no excuse for things such as several minutes of empty air space or the host talking to someone thinking they're not on the air. All those things are simple to resolve with the right tools and a little bit of audio editing to cut out dead space and bloopers. Some of the hosts apparently have never belonged to Toastmasters because they can be a bit overbearing at times, especially when they won't let their guest get a word in edgewise. Nevertheless, as amateur as some of the podcasts are great content can overcome a multitude of flaws. .
With those things in mind I put a lot of time into editing the midwestracingtalk.com podcasts and trying to get all the details right. I'm not striving to post multiple episodes each week which I feel would overwhelm people with content but to keep it at no more than two per week during the season. I make it a point to listen to each and every one of my productions on an MP3 player to monitor the quality of the sound and content.
That's it for now, I'm ready for the recliner.
Podcasts are a relatively new thing on the internet and have become very popular during the past five years. Today podcasters as they are called can create audio broadcasts about their favorite subject with nothing more than a personal computer and microphone and broadcast their creation across the globe with a standard internet connection. I am a self professed MP3 junkie as anyone in my office will tell you. We're allowed to listen to headphones or play our radios at a low volume so I listen to podcasts instead of radio or CD's like most of my co-workers. I enjoy podcasts because they allow me to listen to a variety of subjects that cannot be found on the radio talk shows.
As part of my weekly routine I load up my MP3 player with a couple dozen of my favorite internet radio shows ranging in subject from photography techniques to discussions about the unexplained to dirt track racing and much more. Trust me, if you enjoy learning about a wide variety of topics, listening to interviews of your favorite authors or are in the mood for a comedy show you should consider listening to podcasts. They're especially handy when you're on the go. I love to listen to them by plugging the MP3 player into my radio while driving, especially when I make those racing road trips.
One thing that I find about podcasting as compared to radio broadcast over the air waves is that there can often be a wide rang of quality. Some podcasts sound very professional like something you'd hear on FM radio but others are so poorly mixed that they're a distraction to listen to. The sound quality might be excellent but the content is a complete waste of bandwidth. On the other hand, some podcasts I are plagued by loud crackling in the background or the interviewer is uncomfortably loud and the subject is so soft they cannot be heard. In some cases the sound quality might be poor but the content is interesting which can be annoying when trying to listen through a headset while constantly having to adjust the volume. What I find the most annoying is podcasts where I can turn the volume up to almost 100% on my MP3 player but it's still not loud enough to hear over normal office background noise. There's nothing wrong with my MP3 player, FM radio, the majority of podcasts and my music MP3's come in loud and clear so I know it's not the player. Another annoying thing I've heard, especially on one particular network I listen to, is poor editing. There is no excuse for things such as several minutes of empty air space or the host talking to someone thinking they're not on the air. All those things are simple to resolve with the right tools and a little bit of audio editing to cut out dead space and bloopers. Some of the hosts apparently have never belonged to Toastmasters because they can be a bit overbearing at times, especially when they won't let their guest get a word in edgewise. Nevertheless, as amateur as some of the podcasts are great content can overcome a multitude of flaws. .
With those things in mind I put a lot of time into editing the midwestracingtalk.com podcasts and trying to get all the details right. I'm not striving to post multiple episodes each week which I feel would overwhelm people with content but to keep it at no more than two per week during the season. I make it a point to listen to each and every one of my productions on an MP3 player to monitor the quality of the sound and content.
That's it for now, I'm ready for the recliner.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)