pete_scorpa3

62:1 that's 80mls to 5 litres. Too much oil perhaps?

There's probably a lot of people on her that have made that mistake. I certainly have, but I only did it the once! A lesson learnt.

The day I'm forced to stop the youngsters from having a ride around after a trial, is the day I stop running trials.

Our club has recently been given permission to use a brand new venue to stage a trial. New venue, new sections. That doesn't happen very oftenthese days. What's more, it has a club house and a large carpark and the course can be a mile or more round each lap. We needed to impress the owner. We would like to go there again. With this in mind, I held a briefing in the club house prior to any bikes being ridden. I explained that we needed to be on our best behaviour etc. It poured down. Three of the sections deteriorated a little and became very muddy, but overall things went very well. Until, that is I returned to the carpark to find a rider pressure washing his bike. This rider is a nice fella, he's ridden with us for years, I didn't want to have confrontation (I do that for a job, weekends are for relaxing not working) but I felt forced to deal with the problem. I approached the chap, (he may be reading this I don't know) and expalained that he shouldn't be doing this and that it would look bad to the land owner. Job done. A few minutes later I looked over and he'd started again. Perhaps he hadn't understood my conversation. So I went back and spoke again. Making sure I was very clear. Remember, this is not in a feild, it's a permanent working tarmac car park. He did stop and to his credit then made a good job of cleaning up the mud and grass. The ACU Environmental code page 104 para 7 is clear on pressure washing. I'm just struggling to get my head around the idea that a rider was prepared to jeapodise the whole future of the venue for the sake of taking his bike home clean. No harm done, but thinking back I do wonder if I should have been harder on him? Pete

"Still think one for a stop is the best way forward then that eliminates a judgement call on the stop and 1 versus 5 doesnt have the force in an argument." The 'One for a stop' rule would have been brilliant if we had been able to use it properly. The problem was that almost no one ever did. Those rules were, by necessity, impossibly complicated to use. One for a stop.... no problem. But so was one for a dab. So a stop with a dab was two. To prevent riders from stopping to adjust their bike, it was a five if you took your hand off the bars whilst stopped.... the different combinations of ways to loose a mark made it extreemely difficult to remember and more importantly to expalin to a new observer. I know I was never marked two for one stationary dab. So what happened? Most but not all Observers just marked the number of times a rider put their feet down. Hence Stop allowed crept back in by default. If we could design a mechanical observer that could be programed and always gave the correct mark, then Stop for a One would probably be the best system. In reality, we have to have a system that is easy to understand as well as popular with riders. This is where we're stuck for now.

The answer to that question is the 'Holy Grail' of Stop/non stop observing.

Welcome back, I've never tried it, but what does three days without a fix of TC feel like?

Can you give us the 'gist' of the comments?

Easily the cheapest, a mate of mine did remote controlled car racing a few years back, it almost broke the bank! We get off very lightly indeed. How long does a

I guess there will always be people who complain, even if they are getting value for money, £10 a year for trials registration and events that normally cost less than £15 to enter is not expensive. There are many sports that cost far more than that before you even turn a wheel or kick a ball or what ever. The ACU might well be worth millions, but that was not my question. I asked John if the £10 covers the cost of the handbook and the registration card. I will stop now, as AtomAnt's original post was not about having a go at the ACU, it was about the number of trials riders. And people seem determined to ambush the thread to do some ACU bashing.

Thanks for the reply John, just out of interest, would you say that the £10 fee actually covers the full cost of producing and delivering the handbook/CD and the Trials Registration Card itself? Or are we (as trials riders) getting off lightly?

The more I think about it, the more I think it's impossible to get a figure. The ACU know how many Trials registrations there are but would have no idea how many road racers also ride trials. I'd hazard a guess that the AMCA would not know how many trials riders they have plus many of those would also have ACU licences. Using club membership figures wouldn't help either, the Stratford club has 88 members on the books as of today, but some are also be members of other clubs in other centres, I certainly am. Number of riders in events on any day doesn't help, some riders ride 40 trials a year, others do one or two. I can't think of any other way of collecting this information, any ideas?

AtomAnt was talking, in the opening thread, about building a picture of the UK trials market. Knowing that there are 2000 trials registrations but not knowing how many riders ride trials makes, in that context, the number of Trials Registrations meaningless. If you read my post, I was not suggesting that the money generated was not of interest ,it clearly is. But that was not the point of the thread. However, in an attempt to answer your 'next' question, I suspect that the £10 the ACU charges riders for their Trials Registration doesn't even cover the cost of producing the Handbook and the 'licence' itself.

The number of riders with trials registrations would only show income from one source, it certainly wouldn't give you the ACU's balance sheet. Only money generated from one specific income path. But as I mentioned above, it the number of trials registrations would be an almost meaningless figure.

I suspect that it's not an easy figure to work out. The ACU can tell you exactly how many trials registrations are issued each year, but an unknown percentage of riders will have road racing, enduro and other licences which allow them to also ride trials. Add that to the number of AMCA licences and day licences that are issued and the figure becomes rather vague.

Although you could have padded that out a bit......... A stop incurs a five mark penalty.

Yep, make superb field bike or cheap trials bike for a begginer or someone who can't afford a real bike. Nothing wrong with it....... for a couple of hundred quid! Anyone turning up on one of these at our club trials would be most welcome, I'd love to have a go on it but they couldn't enter it as a twinshock! We'd accept it in our Miller round, they could ride around with a gang of us on trail bikes who also ride just for fun. No problem. The owner would get their money's worth.... a few hundred quid that is. But it is NOT a twinshock class machine and never will be.

This could be one of the best suggestions so far? Two sets of rules, indoor/arena stop allowed and outdoor non stop for all other trials. The select few indoor/arena events staged for anyone wishing to compete in FIM series abroad.

Every rider will recieve a Trials Registration renewal form at the end of the season. If the ACU need everyriders view on any particular subject, it would be fairly straight forward to send out a questionaire with the renewal, providing the subject in question can be decided so late in the season. The ACU also has a large (but not comprehensive) list of email addressess for riders, this could be another way of canvassing opinions. The drawback of these ideas is that it takes time to compile such questionaires and even more time to sort out the results. And you will still get people who say theu haven't had their say for some reason. Pete

I'm not saying I don't agree, but it's not always an easy call to make. Being able to watch a slow motiion replay of this section, from the same place as the camera, the observer may (or may not) have given a different score.

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Agreed. There will always be different interpretations of the action. 'Did the ball cross the line or not?' However, it is wrong to apply the rules incorrectly on purpose. Letting riders get away with a stop because the section is hard, is no different to a Ref giving a goal when he knew the ball hadn't crossed the line, just because it was a damned good shot and it deserved to be a goal!

Well said!!!!

Not sure what you mean?