Archive for the 'Trackdays' Category

Rockingham Trackday

Published on 27 July 2010 in Diary, Motorcycle Folly, photos, Rockingham, Syndicated, trackday and Trackdays. Closed

Well it was time for me and the Blade to play properly on track and break in my new leathers and n00bish virgin kneesliders.

So off we went to the Motorcycle Folly‘s Rockingham trackday on 19 July 2010. The weather was just right despite the Sunday before and the Tuesday after being wet and miserable; indeed I even got a bit sunburnt.

First session out there having led the Novice group round for the first session and I started pushing it a little faster each time until I was getting my knee down on both left and right handers. Indeed in most of the photos of the day of me – taken by the ever-fabulous EDP Photo News – I seem to have my knee down lap after lap.

Anyway, here are some photos:

Ready to head out

Look at these 'sliders!

Portly Blue with Virgin Kneesliders

Kneedown

Onboard Footage Fail

Published on 3 September 2009 in Accessories and Trackdays. 0 Comments

Damn!

I took a Sony DCRSR57E Handycam Camcorder With Built-in 80GB Hard Disc Drive (61hrs) – Silverwith me to a recent trackday at Rockingham last month, through the Motorcycle Folly as usual, and set out to record a session following two mates on ZRXes. I came in after the session eager to see the footage as I’d followed them for a few laps before buggering off to chase down some sport bikes.

Sadly there was no footage and the camcorder was reporting a hard disk drive error. The vibrations had been too much for it and although it did sort itself out, it seems like I need to go to flash memory on the bike.

Video Camera Mount

Published on 24 July 2009 in Accessories, Syndicated and Trackdays. Closed

I’ve successfully used a Sportbikecam camera mount for my Kawasaki ZRX1200R for some years now, using a large Sony DV camcorder. I’d recently bought a much smaller Sony DCRSR57E Handycam Camcorder With Built-in 80GB Hard Disc Drive (61hrs) – Silver from Amazon – it was far cheaper from there than from anywhere else, online or on the high street.

So with another trackday looming at Rockingham next month, through the Motorcycle Folly as usual, and a three day special at Jerez in September with Tracksense (not sure whether to use Wilf or the ZRX for this one), I thought I’d better get myself sorted with another mount.

I’ve therefore ordered an SBC24 through Camera-Mount.com who are the UK distributors. I’ll post how it goes in terms of fitting, etc. when it arrives.

Introductions

Published on 27 April 2009 in Accessories, buying, Ramblings, satnav, Syndicated, tomtom and Trackdays. Closed

Welcome to my shiny new blog set up especially for my fun and games with a 2004 Suzuki GSX-R750 K4.

I’ve bought it mainly for trackdays, both in the UK and abroad, but also for the occasional hoon.

The deal has been done and I am collecting it on Bank Holiday Monday, May 4th from the Midlands and then riding it the long way home to London via Grimsby and Lincolnshire Wolds for a quick hoon with my mate Wazza and his Rizla Replica GSX-R750 K2.

The bike’s present owner is an Instructor for the Motorcycle Folly and I made the mistake of saying that I really liked the 750 Gixxers as an all round package, especially for the track. Roger said it was for sale and suggested I take it out for a session on the recent Folly trackday at Castle Combe. It was sooooooo easy to ride fast and was so controllable, that it practically sold itself to me.

I’m intending to use my new TomTom Rider v2 satnav to guide me home, so that should be fun setting it to work. If not, I’ll have to rely on a small map book, Google Maps on my Nokia and signposts!

visordown.com – Alternatives?

Published on 11 January 2008 in Bikes, Internet and Trackdays. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

So then, given it is abundantly clear that the new Visordown is how it’s going to stay, I decided to do something about it. The alternatives were to put up and shut up, start a new message board or join another one and effectively leave Visordown behind.

Now, what makes a decent message board are first and foremost the people who post on it and secondly the software that runs it.

So I posted this suggestion on visordown.com:

“The old visordown.com was running vBulletin software which is just about to have a major upgrade released: see this thread over on vBulletin.

Now, although I can see why this change has taken place from the owners’ perspective, from the users’ perspective it’s not been a complete success, shall we say, with lots of folk asking for the old visordown.com back.

So what if something the same only new, starting from scratch was to be offered?

I have a spare licence for vBulletin that I am happy to pay to upgrade and install on a server somewhere. I have a couple of domain names regsitered that might be suitable:

TrackDayHero.com (currently pointing at my blog); or

BikeChatBoard.com (ditto).

I’d start by running Google Ads and a supporter scheme with benefits for supporters, so just like the old VD really. No publishing house looking over our shoulders, so perhaps more relaxed?

So, would anyone be interested?”

There was a lot of interest, but I was also reminded about the Revcounter which is shortly to be ported over to vBulletin and already has some of the old Visordown members on there. So to avoid duplication, my suggestion is on the back-burner and can be set up if needs be. In the meantime, I’ve changed the redirect for www.bikechatboard.com to the Revcounter.

Are Friends Electric?

Published on 6 August 2007 in EDF and Trackdays. 0 Comments

Not a good start to my day.

I’m heading off to Mallory Park this afternoon – well, the Royal Arms for a few drinks, dinner and an overnight stay – for a trackday with the Motorcycle Folly tomorrow. The car’s already packed; I just have to load the ZRX1200R onto the trailer and head off.

Knowing it’ll be a late night tonight, it was important I got a good night’s sleep last night, so staying up until 1.30am wasn’t a good idea especially as I knew I would be taking my daughter to the station this morning at 8.45am.

So imagine my joy at being woken at 6.30am by the phone beeping to say it couldn’t communicate with the base station and the UPS in the office beeping to say that the power was off. Yes, with a busy morning in prospect, the power was off which meant no PC, no Internet and no work. Oh and the possibility that all the food in the three freezers would go off…

Good old EDF Energy letting the side down yet again.

Now I well remember the “winter of discontent” and before that the strikes of the early 70s when we would see the occasional power cut. Fast forward to the noughties and here we are with power cuts every so often regardless of the time of year or weather conditions, and far more than I recall from my youth.

How pants is that?

overtone