Calling members within 2 hours of Albany!

Hello fellow Legacy enthusiasts,

I'm on my schools Formula SAE team at RPI in Troy, NY. We're reaching the point in the year where we need to begin actual testing of our car.

For the last few years, we were able to test at a facility that included a portion of land purchased from an airport, perfect for our autocross style track layouts (the local SCCA held autocross events there in fact).

The company that owned the land we tested at was bought out at the beginning of this school year, and we are no longer allowed to test on their property due to their new insurance.

We are in search of an area as close to the Albany region as possible, up at 2 or so hours away (at most, preferably closer), where we might be able to test. We mostly need a paved parking lot/area large enough to drive our FSAE racecar on an autocross type track.

If you know of an area that could meet these needs, I'd greatly appreciate if you could pass the info along. We do all of our testing on weekends, so if it's a business or such that is not open on weekends that's a plus. We try to go out as soon as there's enough light and stay until it's too dark to keep testing.

Thanks in advance!

Jonathan

Doesn't RPI have a parking lot you could use? Just saying.

-mike

In theory yes. Past incidents have pretty much ruined that as an option though. Crashes on campus and such.

Ah ha. That's a bummer. Only problem with that is the same reason that the campus doesn't allow you to do it may prevent a company from allowing you to do it as well.

-mike

Ah ha. That's a bummer. Only problem with that is the same reason that the campus doesn't allow you to do it may prevent a company from allowing you to do it as well.

 

-mike

What they don't know won't hurt them

I've also been told we have to get 8 different people to approve driving on campus as well, some of which are nearly impossible to get a hold of.

We actually will get to drive on campus again, but it won't be pushing the limits the way we do at testing. We're going to be allowed to drive on campus at reunion and homecoming next year thanks to the fact that the Alumni Relations department puts it on so they are the only ones that have to approve it for the event.

What they don't know won't hurt them

 

I've also been told we have to get 8 different people to approve driving on campus as well, some of which are nearly impossible to get a hold of.

 

We actually will get to drive on campus again, but it won't be pushing the limits the way we do at testing. We're going to be allowed to drive on campus at reunion and homecoming next year thanks to the fact that the Alumni Relations department puts it on so they are the only ones that have to approve it for the event.

And you pay how many $100,000s per student over 4 years to attend the school? That's sad.

-Mike Paisan

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And you pay how many $100,000s per student over 4 years to attend the school? That's sad.

 

-Mike Paisan

Given that cost of attendance has gone up about 4% per year for the last few years, my overall cost of attendance for 4 years would be about $253,000. Although my actual cost is less. I'll only be here for one more year for a total of 3 years, making it more like $181,000. I have $27,000/year in need and merit based aid not including federal loans, so that puts it down at about $100,000. After this year and last, I'm up to $18,000 in federal loans, and anticipate at most $10,500 more next year. My parents AGI went up a bit for last year, so it might actually go down instead of up (i.e. it was $8500 of loans my first year, $9500 this year, although it might be more like 7-8k next year). I wont have a meal plan next year, taking off about $4500 or so. If I get about 7k or 8k more in federal loans next year, my final actual cost paid to RPI to attend the school by my family (grandfather pays for it) will be right around $70,000.

But yes, even though the school somehow gets upwards of a quarter of a million dollars from various sources over the course of a student being here for 4 years, we can't drive on our campus.

So far, I haven't gotten anywhere with my reddit request either. I've contacted Lime Rock with no response yet (we actually tested there in the past). I tried contacting the people listed on the MoHud SCCA website that I could find contact information for about how they get permission to use a parking lot at a government building on weekends for autocrosses, but one of the two people had a full inbox, and the other hasn't responded yet. So as of now, I haven't gotten anywhere in terms of finding a location. And I dont think anyone else on the team has yet either.

It's just sad that the school has the facilities to help promote the educational aspects of your program, yet you are forced to go out and beg for testing space. It seems to make almost no sense whatsoever. If you extrapolate out the $250k across say 4-6 team members (maybe more?) you are looking at well over 1.5M and they can't give you adequet testing facilities that would cost them nothing since they already own them!

/Rant

-mike

It's just sad that the school has the facilities to help promote the educational aspects of your program, yet you are forced to go out and beg for testing space. It seems to make almost no sense whatsoever. If you extrapolate out the $250k across say 4-6 team members (maybe more?) you are looking at well over 1.5M and they can't give you adequet testing facilities that would cost them nothing since they already own them!

 

/Rant

 

-mike

Probably 20-25 full members and another 20-30 more "volunteer" members. So upwards of $12.5 million or so.