so ive been running a small indoor league at a local warehouse for about 8 months now and we keep going back and forth on gate spacing. the space is roughly 40x60 meters which sounds decent but once you start adding gates and a rhythm section it gets cramped fast.

right now we're running gates about 8-9 meters apart on the straights and tighter on the technical sections, maybe 5-6. some of the faster guys are complaining it doesnt let them open up enough and some of the newer racers think its already too hectic. cant really win.

has anyone found a good formula for this kind of mixed skill level situation or do you just run two different track configs for different nights? also wondering if anyone has experimented with lower gates to force a more level flight path instead of spreading things out horizontally

yeah the mixed skill level thing is basically the eternal problem with indoor tracks. what we ended up doing is running a "novice" layout on tuesday nights which uses the same gates but we close off a couple of the tighter chicanes with tape and just let people fly the longer arcing version of the course. same physical gates, just different routing. saves a ton of setup time and the faster guys can still practice gates if they show up early.

on your spacing question ? 8 meters on a straight indoors is honestly not bad, some of the stuff ive seen is way more compressed than that. the real issue is usually the approach angle into the turns more than the straight spacing. if people are arriving at a 90 degree snap turn going full throttle then no amount of extra gate space is going to help. might be worth looking at your corner geometry first before spreading everything out

lower gates are interesting but they create a whole other problem with depth perception indoors, especially if your lighting isnt great. ive seen guys completely miss gates that were right in front of them just because the height reference was off from what they were used to. not saying dont try it just worth testing with a couple pilots before you commit to redoing the whole layout