Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Reading a nice long NSSN Nov 10th interview with Kyle Larson and family about his start in racing, from Outlaw Karts at age 7 to Chili Bowl runs starting at age 13. Sprint car star Tim Green was his parent's next door neighbor and was the reason Kyle's father went to the races and continued after Green retired, getting Kyle hooked on racing. Promoter John Padjen agreed to let him race at age 14 if he got emancipated, meaning I suppose that a court declared he could handle his personal and financial affairs without influence or help from parents or maybe it meant he moved into an apartment and lived on his own, not really sure and the article doesn't explain anymore than that--emancipated. However, at age 14 he finally raced in a 360 sprint car at Placerville Speedway in the Civil War Sprint Series. His maiden race was a humbling experience as he got airborne twice, tearing up his owner's car pretty bad. Best quote: "I was shocked by the acceleration the first time I hit the throttle".

18 year's old now and the Golden State Challenge Sprint Car Series champion. He finished 6th at this year's Gold Cup race at Silver Dollar Speedway when the WoO came to town bringing with them a very strong field of cars for the 40 lap feature race.

 Lawlessness and liberalism equals Hell.  NY City, 
Detroit, Seattle, Chicago, Minnepolis, etc. We saw it. 
Burning hundreds of buildings, a thousand assaults and 
dozens of murders. Getting worser and worser.

Any body know what Tim Greens doing these days, i used to really enjoy watching him race, talked to him a few times, nice guy, very personable...

Last I heard he was running All-Weld machine for Annie Owens....although he might have bought the business.....his boy, Nick was racing a few years ago...but I haven't seen his name in any rundowns this year.

Chuck.....

Saw him at Watsonville this year pushing his son's Spec Sprint through the pits on a quad. Didn't get a chance to talk to him, but he's still involved though obviously not as much.

Ron

Last I heard, his son is planning on running the full 2011 USAC Western Classic Racing Series which is supposed to be be 8 dirt and 8 asphalt races.

www.stevenblakesley.com

Kyle Larson at Oskaloosa USAC 410 "A" main event video:

Good Luck Kyle.

Sincerely,

Larry "O"

Tim still lives at home with his wife and 2 kids. He is doing well other then some good ole old man pain. His son still races in and around California.

So the youngster can git her done in a winged or non-wing car. Don't remember that part of the story other than midget racing. Also, can you do video work of that quality with these inexpensive $2 or $300 camcorders, or am I way off with that question?

 Lawlessness and liberalism equals Hell.  NY City, 
Detroit, Seattle, Chicago, Minnepolis, etc. We saw it. 
Burning hundreds of buildings, a thousand assaults and 
dozens of murders. Getting worser and worser.

To "madsen",

In general I can't answer that question. For years I have been using a older Minolta VHS-C camera. I bought my original one 20 years ago for 1,000 dollars. I have bought 2-3 newer versions for 1-2 hundred dollars because every body wants the new digital format. So everybody is getting rid of thier very High Quality VHS-C cameras, that cost about 1200 dollars, originally. You can pick them up very cheap, but they are getting harder to find.

They are very small cameras...ie.. palm recorders. So, although you can buy these cameras for 1-2 hundred dollars, that was not thier original price, let's say 6 years ago. So if you use a good quality older VHS-C camera/palm recorder you can get excellent results comparable to this video. I have done it for years.

The key to these older VHS-C cameras, were their optics and zoom. Most of them had about 12-1 zoom, which is quite acceptable and it will give you the results of this video. I know because I have filmed about 100 videos for our team. They were also, low light cameras. Some have Lux ratings of "0" lux. You need a low lux number to film in low light conditions. "0" and "1" lux are good low light ratings, in which you need to film in low light condtions.

Again I haven't tried any new digital cameras, and most people I know buy one in the 5-6 hundred dollar range. And I personally have not seen videos produced by these cameras. So that is not something I cannot comment on.

I recently purchased a new GL-2 camera, which again is a older camera but of digital format. But again, this digital camera uses a very small tape.

The tape is about 2.0 inches long X 1. 5 inches wide 0.5 inches thick. Although this is a digital camera it does not use a "chip" to record video.

It can use a chip, but I got a feeling the video length would be short. With the digital tape you can record up to 1 hour of high quality.

This camera is still old in design. Although they still make it, people want the "chip" cameras. New they can cost 2,000 dollars and they are a little bigger than a palm-corder but not as big as those huge professional jobs, which can cost 15,000 dollars. I bought mine used for 1200 dollars. I have not tried it on racing cars yet, but I got a feeling it will produce excellent results. I have only used it indoors and the video is excellent and way better than my VHS-C camera.

Sincerely,

Larry Otani

P.S. the lux rating of my new GL2 (older design) is 5 lux, but I got a feeling because the diameter of the lens is 3-4 time larger than my older palm-corder it will produce excellent results in low light conditions, such as filming race cars at night. That is because the lens is so large that it lets enough light in comparable to my smaller lens VHS-C camera, which has a very small lens, but a lower lux rating. Bigger lens mean you can have a higher "lux" rating.