rabie

a lot of rider did con their way into riding their bikes for the war effort but not all did my late grandfather (SEC sec - met police and Sidcup clubs) ended up on a frigate for most of war IIRC BTW I'm loving the logo Andy

anyone who got a licence after 1997 need a trailer licence to tow a large trailer (ie caravan) or a twin axle trailer ie average joe towing a small trailer is legal but you can't tow a caravan and you can't tow a car trailer (as they are almost all twin axle) its a complex area of law but getting a trailer licence is now on my too do list

with that in mind, and asuming you can ride trials then there should be to much of a problem with you riding an enduro type bike my cousin who rode a lot of youth trials back in the day has just won the centre LDT championship on a suzuki 2T enduro bike and a big 4T husky

no, watched the video - looks amazing, have google around

i've got a feeling that removable chin guards were being phased out, i've got one but you don't see any more coming out (and i've feeling mine was cheap because they're not mean to be selling them ???)

there are 3 in our centre (South east) there are a few British bikes but it tends to be a bit hard going in the main if you really really want to win ride a scorpa long ride the next set of serious people are the Beta alp, pampera, ttr's, etc brigade the majority of riders though are enduro lads on enduro bikes or green laners on stuff like DRZ's then again I've seen just about any road legal bike take part (had a KTM 660 rally bike once very dependant IMHO on the event - some are just fun with a few not to serious sections, other are more serious with some "proper" section

FIM congress was last month, so dates should be being forumalted now im sure tehre a provisional enduro one floating around late this summer, i know the MX one has yet be offcially released but i have an unoffcial copy

I'm not arguing that lads and lasses like Alexz Wigg et al aren't doing a good job at ridding or doing by default PR for the sport what i am contending is that there is a quantifiable, provable, financial link between en masse funding for youth or just "top level" and some kind kind of return for the ACU sure its great getting good PR for the sport but how does that actually help us to achieve our objectives ??? i wouldn't go so far as to say I'm "anti youth" :- a) i just don't advocate spending more of our scarce resources on this avenue, i identify another avenue as being more pertinent, relevant and "sell able" to the majority of our members i fail to make the financial link between money on youth training of once kind or the other and increased future revenues for the ACU we all hope ! - nice one everyone - sitaution (appears) resloved

hard to get hold of - almost rocking horse manure i think i saw one mx rider once with one (fourstroke or NGR rider out of the eastern centre IIRC), very hard to get and then hard to get googels to fit might find one if you ask around a twinshock mx froum, like the one at mxtrax.co.uk or the aussie magazine VMX (rumour has it a english one is coming out)

for a variety of reasons i don't conclude that there is any real link between having world champions, et al and getting riders into the sport and whether training of youth produces champions the problem is that money comes primairly from average joe clubman riding, not from world champions ridding (they probably cost us money) - thus i don't advocate chucking money down that avenue

i don't know one way or the other; it could be what you say, it could be that its been withdrawn from sale, it could be many things (im trying to be careful what i say here)

its the oldest and number 1 question on most mx forums - someone made that pic years ago and i've been using it ever since

what I'm getting at in subtle (or not) fashion is that the current funding structure of the sport means there is little or no incentive for the ACU to do something like that. you can not draw much / if any correlation / link between James Toseland doing well in road racing and a significant benefit - financially - to the ACU, that could outweigh the cost of training/licencing the trainers that do some of the tuition little lads and lasses on TY80s get..... ???

your right, but its great for capturing Motocross holeshots and crash sequences - there have been few of latter in various mx magazines this year and it works really well (double page A4 colour)

there is a fundamental difference between the bloke in a club helping out the newbies and the ex champion running a training school the latter is running a business and seek acknowledgement of his skills / professional accreditation / etc and because its a business ACU members money should not be subsiding it (especially in relation to later legal cases that might arise) on the other hand the former are what the ACU should be all about, however we need to construct a system whereby these people are properly certified in a cost effective manner but are still legally covered constructing this is an immense challenge BTW - how have the ACU benefited from James Toseland doing well ??? I didn't know the ACU got commission, how do they benefit ???

fundamentally IMHO this won't work - there you go thats a simple answer on a more complex level I'll highlight two flaws (in addition to the many valid ones pointed out above) 1) other than the various championships (eg classic and Sammy miller) the ACU TEC has little real control/power over the rest of the sport. the other events are run by clubs under permits from their centre/SACU - its fundamentally up to those clubs or centre (in the case of a centre championship) to set the entry requirements. then its up to them to enforce it. thus fundamentally it rests with each club/centre to decide this in relation to the majority of events. now you know there is a wide plethora of classes out there, varying within centres, and dramatically nationwide - in this case its very hard to establish a common criteria, even as a starting block. 2) the most obvious parallel example that i can think of is "classic" mx, which south of the border is mainly run by the AMCA. they have a "machine eligibility panel" which from the reports i hear of is the most unenviable job to do, they never appear to make anyone happy as everyone says they are either enforcing silly rules to overzealous, or they are not enforcing it enough as xyz example is getting away with abc

excuse this southern fairy from butting in but in our large (population) but small (geographically) centre we can't get riders from one end to ride at the other! so in a place as large a Scotland don't be surprised if someone doesn't want to travel to far.

it appears (as i understand it) that the land has been withdrawn for sale if it comes back on the market the centre will obviously look again very seriously at it

well go on and post a topic in that forum!

yup, by a long way - Salop are, Torridge are on the verge of it last i herd, and most of the road race clubs are we run about 25 events a year so ....... the average centre MX is now

my old (4 or so years) kodak digital had a "close up" mode.....

because our centre is so large and has so many trials clubs the centre is divided up, roughly geographically into 5 combines. on the 2nd Sunday of each month is "combine Sunday", and clubs in each combine take it in turn to run a trial. its pitched as being between centre and club trials. this way we can have more trials without getting people upset about clashing. only issue is number of clubs in combines, some only have a few (TVTC has only 4 or 5 IIRC) while others have many (eg NKTC have 8 - did have more). one combine got p****d off over helmets (and other things) and went AMCA. if i understand it correctly the Yorkshire centre and eastern centre have a similar idea but only 2 combines in each ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ from the other thread

Sidcup & DMCC - South Eastern Centre ACU club trial - nominal

"the greybeards" usually refers to the Sunbeam MCC trial run to IIRC the magic Ralph Venables scoring formula, which is run on the Sunday, with the bluebeards on the Saturday down here in the south east. IIRC it was the same weekend as the inter centre team trial. of course there may be other greybeard trials ......