rabie

that's why i said if a) you didn't want to travel hundreds of miles and wickham @ cowden presumably there are outcrops of rocks in amongst the mud of southern England ???

we as a sport are not united about one or the other (or a third way). thus we are going to have to accept that we all disagree, as long as each event says what it is going to run and runs it and enforces it properly then we can all cope.

see the sound page of your ACU handbook off the top of my head, the 85dBA count is at 2m (probably at 45 degrees from the exhaust pipe). trials and enduro uses the "bore and stroke" method (there is a table in your handbook). so depending upon your bore and stroke you then get the RPM for the sound test. mx uses a fixed RPM and more recently has moved to other methods - it used to be 50cm~ish away (98, then 96 then 94dBA), also driveby has been done and now the main test involves revving to the rev limiter and taking the sound (but the limit is obviously higher)

obviously there are a handful of non usual venue down souf that wouldn't require the travelling including (but not limited to); north berks mcc @ seymours area - Oxfordshire - lots of imported rocks and other man made sections various @ hook woods - Surrey - lots of imported rocks and other man made sections the trials park - lowerstoft - Suffolk - man made stuff wickham @ cowden - Kent - natural sandstone

for my 1999 techno i just brought one off a bike (early 2000's sherco) being broken for parts on ebay. it looked the same and had similar (same ???) writing. i guess they are all sourced from one common supplier?

almost all trials down here (say the broader south east) are almost exclusively mud, banks, cambers, roots, logs, etc. rocks are rare exotica! put the boot on the other foot - our guys come back from the north (or west country) and tell tales of trials exclusively on this strange stuff called rocks which they struggle with, yet find it baffling that the locals can't cope with a little wet stuff .....

with almost everyone other than MSM you have to take out the additional Locktons policy (one day RTA cover) via the organising club for £9 per event

i'm weird and i do this but everyone else doesn't (AFAIK), both my dad and my sister have their vars and leavers set up normally ...... but as i say i'm just weird

unless i misunderstand you, you want to know how to work out the results. most clubs use an excel spreadsheet and then use excel's sort functions. way back in the day (before win95) we had a guy write a programme in qbasic but with everyoen having excel it's much easier to sue and then manipulate the data. all you need do is write out each rider number, name and class (eg e for expert) and then their section scores alongside. using excel's "sum" function you can then add them all up. you can then use copy and paste and the sort function ("A:Z" button) to move every rider from numerical order (eg 1 to 50) to by class, and once you've done that use sort ("A:Z" button) to sort each class by marks lost. now you could then decide ties by reading through by hand the most cleans, ones, etc --> if your really clever you can write a rule/macro (?) in excel to do this. if you haven't got excel on your PC, there is a free programme called Open Office (i think it's still going) that does essentially the same job. example of "bare" results - here (pdf file) example of re-arranged results taken over to word to look nice here (pdf)

anything below £1000 to £800 might have lots of issues but as a bit of starting fun you might get a good one. a friend of mine did the same with a 1994 beta techno, sounded like a cement mixer but got them started and a bit better after some new bits.

at 14 in mx, you can ride any 125cc two stroke and 250cc four stroke. a vast array of bikes from many manufactures are available (Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki, Yamaha, KTM, Husqvarna, TM, Beta, Gas Gas, etc, etc). All bikes from the big 5 (the first 5 in that list) are known for their reliability, if you follow their maintenance schedules (eg oil changes, piston changes, etc)

the little coloured flags that most people use are from "york survey", they come in 5 or so colours. if you want day glo arrows to mark the route between sections then i think Vic Madeley of the MWTRA sells them

but when your in court you would be easily have found to have "coerced" the riders.. ???

finger in or palm of hand over the end cone ???

IMHO (as a mx/enduro/trials guy) any vaguely modern bike that is in an OK condition is fine. like mx bikes, there is no real difference for average joe between them all. sure there a little things which some people prefer/niggle them. 250cc is good, anymore can be a real handful but not insurmountable, similary if your really light a 200 or 125 could be OK (they tend to be expensive because youth are capped to 125) you can find 2nd hands bike on the classified pages on here, tmx, etc

its conceivable they are kosher but with VAT, the margin would be infinitesimal you can't enforce RRPs anymore, so if someone wanted to they could my source in the tyre would does enquire, has anyone looked at the date codes on these tyres ??? all tyre come with a code on the sidewall which tells you year and week of production.

yes i think richmond (yorks) run one ??? there is a line the the handbook (TSRs) about running them. i think there are extra hoops to jump through but not insurmountable.

i personally think this is better than our current stance, where by we offer the rider the chance to take up extra RTA cover for a fee. some of my family are going to do an LDT this year, which we can't see the option to take up the RTA insurance (you can't buy it direct, it has to be via the club) so it make me think that 95%+ of the entry will be uninsured (because almost all - except MSM, etc - specifically exclude road trials)

re one day RTA, the locktons cover is easy to do but if you fall into one of the four exemptions you must apply in advance to locktons and you'll be charged a little more (if they will cover you!). off the top of my head i can't remember what these 4 are but i think they are; 1) under 21 2) had a licence for a very short period of time (6 months, a few years ???) 3) more than 6 points 4) had (1 or more ???) accident in a time frame

99 manual - here (9.27mb pdf) includes a wiring diagram

check out http://www.trialsport.com.au/beta/documents.htm for lots of rips of various beta documents i found a scanned in version of my 99 techno's manual on a link somewhere on this forum once, so keep looking

tubeless is better, but untill you stop the air leaks it's a pain in ..... anyway i can't talk as many moon ago we bodged my bike and put a tube in the rear anyway (drilled a hole for the rim lock) ....

re the ACU granting the permit without checking the club had received MSA authorisation, we must be very aware that we can't be "dictatorial" like days of old. there are an alphabet soup of other federations (sanctioning bodies) out there. for example - you could have been rejected by the ACU, set up an AMCA club and run the event anyway. it sounds outrageous but it's happened over much less down here (helmets, etc). it's only by being under one united umbrella that we can afford to get legal advice and start to explore how we resolve this issue.

hahaha good luck mate! it's different in every part of the country, with each area thinking it's idea is best (from my armchair i'ld go with the Scottish idea) the original, old fashioned, etc system is; pairs of card/arrow/plate/etc with red on the right and a blue one on the left. you have to go between these and there may be several of these pairs (aka "gates"). the section may also have bits of tape or logs, etc to mark the limits of the section. there will be a "section begins" and "section ends" cards telling you when your ordeal is over! this red/blue work well when there is one route, it get more complex when you try to add more. down here in the south east we do it diffrently and we follow pair of the same colour through the section. we now run up to 4 1/2 routes (yellow, red, blue, white, white with x)! some time you may follow one route and then go for easier or harder deviation, but only when there is a deviation pair. clear as mud ??? btw - between the sections some clubs use colour card to tell you blue for left, red for right and white for straight on (we cheat and used luminous orange enduro arrows)

like the police team at the SSDT, we have police officer riding as part of the event (although not on a police team as such) and on several occasions we have had kent police's "off road team" (6x WR450F in battenburg graphics) ride around. Now that because we have good relations with that part of the police, doesn't mean there still aren't problems that have to be surmounted. as above the onus at all events with road work is for the competitors to be road legal, so i pay to be pro active and weed out the obviously non compliant bikes, yes the wisdom of Solomon re number plates does apply. i personally believe that one should ensure that every rider take out the extra RTA insurance cover (unless that apply explicitly saying they have existing RTA cover like the MSM policy). as for political lobbying, i wish John luck, and hope some sensible deregulation takes place, however as above, this has been the law since the 1960's we should have been on the ball and either way we are meant to be complying until such time as changes take place.