Andy

Thanks Andy and also to Ian and Julie for their hospitality, to Carlton for the several complimentary face-washes and to Breidden Hills for a great day out - even if I was gritting sections at 8am this morning! Photos later. Got a backlog of World Indoor stuff to do

HONDA RACING INFORMATION World Supersport and Superbike Championships 2006 Round 2 Phillip Island

HONDA RACING INFORMATION MotoGP test Catalunya. Day two of three-day test, March 4, 2006. Nicky Hayden again fastest RCV rider at IRTA Catalunya test. Repsol Honda rider was again the fastest Honda RC211V rider of the day at the IRTA test at Catalunya. Hayden shaved two-tenths of a second off his best time of yesterday despite struggling to find rear wheel grip in the cold and blustery conditions at the 4.727 km Spanish GP circuit, close to Barcelona. American Hayden is putting in a mammoth stint each day of testing as he runs through a heavy HRC test programme with the 2006 RCV. Despite the low temperatures and high winds Hayden managed to get in a staggering 107 las today. Dani Pedrosa, on the second Repsol Honda, improved his time by over half a second but crashed just after lunch. The youngster lost the front end of his RCV entering turn four but escaped injury and was quickly back on track and up to pre-crash speed. The Fortuna Honda riders experienced mixed fortunes with their efforts to improve performance. Italian Marco Melandri was faster than yesterday but he struggled to come to grips with the new Michelin rear tyre. Melandri had been the Honda man to catch during the winter test series but the ideal RCV set up on the previous best Michelin rear proved to be way off the mark for the latest upgraded product from the French tyre supplier. Melandri

Are these reports useful? I get them anyway so it's no hassle to copy and paste.

Whatever. I don't drink the crap! I'll have Miller in the Limo instead!

And you know the fridge in the limo should be at it's coldest setting and contain only Kristal Champagne.

Me apparently. If I can drag myself out of bed in the morning. What moron booked that early flight?

MotoGP test Catalunya. Day one March 3, 2006. The MotoGP teams returned to Europe this week for the closing stages of winter testing. The teams began a three-day test at the Catalunya circuit, close to Barcelona today with final testing taking place at the Jerez circuit in, Andalusia scene of the opening race of the 17-round world championship series. Cold weather and strong wind made for a difficult early morning but as soon as the track surface warmed the teams set about finding machine base settings the riders will need to get the best out of the three-day test. Fastest Honda rider on the opening day of test was American Nicky Hayden (Repsol Honda). The former AMA Superbike Champion ran the whole day with the latest version of the all-new 2006 Honda RC211V five-cylinder 990cc GP machine he will campaign in the championship. Hayden spent his day finding a good base setting and machine balance for the RCV before working on a range of tyres for Michelin in a bid to find the optimum package before moving on to fine tuning and chasing fast lap times tomorrow. Hayden

I've got lots and lots of lovely :wall: Now to stuff envelopes PS. The Red is a lot more vivid on the real thing and the background is white. They didn't photo very well due to flash reflection and compression to publish the pic. Thanks again to VinnieD and AtomAnt for their help on this and my neighbour for taking delivery today!

"Hi Andy, Just to confirm your stickers have been printed and despatched to you today. You should receive them tomorrow (Friday before 4pm). Thank you for your custom, and apologies we couldn't speed up getting these to you any sooner. Kind regards,"

Irrelevant post deleted!

I have two lenses I use - a Canon 24-85mm (bought from IanJ!) and a Sigma 15-30mm. My preference is to use the Sigma whenever possible aspherical lens and nice wide angle shots. Great for close-up work. As Trialsrfun said - anything less than 1/250 and you'll get motion blur which is a pig for me when using Flash as the 10D only syncs with flash up to 1/200. Methinks a 20D will be purchased very soon I was talking to Eric Kitchen about flash at the Colonial and he reckons we use it too much. I'd agree it does look kinda artificial and stark in dull conditions, but then he was shooting at ISO 800. I can't do that for print quality (ISO 400 is max for me). It's fine for printed publication like TMX, but nobody is going to buy a "photo quality" print from Trialsphotos if it's grainy - not that I'd sell a grainy print anyway!

Whilst you might take the advice of people on these forums with a pinch of salt, if overthehill posts advice on the SSDT then, trust me, heed his words and heed them well. Few know the event better than him.

You can probably blame me. I gave him the link for Firefox.

Click Me (PDF) Click Me (Excel Spreadsheet)

Ahh - If it's for the forums then you can do them yourself. Sundays/Mondays tend to be busy with stuff coming in after the weekend, but give me till laterin the week and I'll write up a tutorial on how to post your own images. Probably something I should have done by now anyway.

Are these from events? Photos should be no bigger than 100k per pic. Ideally zip them up into one ZIP (or RAR) archive and send to website AT trialscentral.com - Easy!

Looks like it will be the morning before you see anything on Trials Central. I'm pooped and flagging fast. Given it's almost 1am in Portugal, I'd have expected to see something by now.

Nothing through yet. I'm sat here waiting, but it was a late start - 9pm local which (I think) is 8pm here.

Why do you think I'd doubt you?! You got further than me. I got to MCP and thought "Sod this for a game of soldiers!"

I didn't recall I had until I saw it then I remembered it was bloody cold, p****** down with rain and a Nimrod gave us a low flypast! First time I'd been at those sections and damned good they were too.

I did indeed. Very impressive and great to send out to potential sponsors. I won't ask for royalties for the photo on the back though

I used to like Colin - until the bugger put me in the SSDT DVD

Anoter IT bod who'd jack it in tomorrow if I could make a living from doing this!

Cut the guy some slack. He drives a Scooby. Proof he has taste