SACC 2/11/2010

I'm just in from the Scottish Association of Car Clubs meeting.

Not a lot to report, really.... however the Scottish GoMotorsport man came along, so we can hope things improve there.

I'm going to try to get the AutoTest co-ordinator to pop along the the SLROC Boxing Day Bash, and we can see if there's a way to get Cross Country involved in AutoTests (we'd not be interested in the tarmac stuff, but the grass-stuff could be interesting...)

Perthshire 2011

I've been musing plans for the Perthshire for a while now - working out what to do in 2011.

There are a number of alternatives, each with Pros & Cons, and each deserving serious consideration.

1. Run a standard Perthshire: 100 competitive miles over two days - basically re-impliment what we had planned for 2010.
2. Go for broke: Go larger - try to find enough land to run 150 miles, over three days, under a National A Permit.
   
3. Try to emulate the Borders: find the space to run 100 competitive miles in a single venue (or possibly spread over two venues.... but with no road-miles between the sites
4. Do something completely different..... like an AutoCross or an AutoTest
5. Do nothing.... just let the whole thing rest for a year (or two)

Even after three months, I really don't know which way to jump.

Number (1) is dead easy, but lets be honest - are there really enough cars out there? (and the Hill Rally club cannot afford another expense like we took in July 2010)

Number (2) is the preferred option for a couple of people I know.... but this does require us finding new land.... something we struggle with even for the standard Perthshire

Number (3) has the merit that it avoids the whole "road-legal" issue, but (to me) it avoids one of the major tests a Hill Rally throws at you: the Navigators role in keeping Time and Distance under control.

Number (4) is interesting, and something I've already put out some feelers for.... but is it right for us?

Number (5) worries me most: will we be able to come back? Will the land be there? Will the competitors want to come back? Will Cross Country move into a whole new area?

What's needed in the next wee while

Looks like there's a fair amount to do in the next few weeks (apart from the usual fettling of cars & sorting out the shed):

• I need to head down to Forrest Estate to do the road-book, and confirm the stages with Kilty... and talk to the estate about where I would like to do a couple of bits of work
• I need to then go back down again, with my digger-man, to do the work (there's a paper-work trail like you wouldn't believe)
• I need to go into Fanny Hill to do some work I agreed to do post Perthshire, except I need to have copies of tickets (recognised certificates of competence) for anyone who's going to use any form of machine on Forestry Commission ground - and finding someone with a Dumper Truck ticket was really hard...
• I need to go and do a recce for the Comp Safari down at Galashiels, and probably go back to clear some broom/gorse bushes out the way.

No rest for the wicked, eh? :chuckle:

Bathgate

The Barttech Engineering Trophy

Well, the night comp has been.... and what a good event it was too!

With a course mostly designed by Mark Caisley (with Alan Agnew, Davie Stewart & Davie Bartlett throwing in their ideas, and me just ensuring that we kept to the rules), we had five miles of interesting (and different) fun.

In practice, the course laid out was 4.85 miles (as driven once the pegs were in the ground) - giving a 30mph average time of 9 minutes & 36 seconds, and a target time of 30 minutes. Given I had a Doctor, Rescue Unit & Recovery Unit on site, I was able to not panic if people put in times down to 5 minutes 49 seconds.... which is always good to know, and a bogie time nobody was going to break :)

The format for the day was different to our normal schedule: this time we had three sessions, with the competitors putting in five laps in the afternoon, five laps at night, and five laps again on Sunday.... for a total of almost 70 miles!

From the outset, Davie Bartlett showed why he's last years SCCC champion, putting in five consistent lap times, from 9:54 on his first lap to his fastest of 9:21 (basically, an average speed of 32mph)
Hot on his heels, and looking to recover the trophy he won in 2008, Mark Caisley was less than a minute behind him after the afternoon session.

The following pack, all sitting in the 11-minute-lap area, were all the V8's, with the diesels of Ross & Abe Hamilton and newcomer Robert Scott coming in around the 12-minute lap times.

One issue that a significant number of competitors suffered from was overheating... Higel Hails, Mark Caisley, Stu Howe, Ben Gill, Jonathan Barker, Billy Philips, and all three from team Bartlette having big problems.

During the early evening, the heavens opened, and a good inch or two of rain descended upon us. The night stages saw a reduced field
Andi Harrison retreated to replace a diff; Brian Hilditch & Chris Cruikshanks decided discretion was the better part of valour, and racing in those conditions was too risky for them; and Mark Caisley retired, concerned about his engine blowing steam.
Davie Bartlett's charge came to an abrupt end on lap 9, when he broke a rocker-shaft.

When we reconvened for the sunday runs, we were back to an almost full field: only Davie Bartlett & Mark Caisley were not back with us.

Robert Scott ran into problems, with three blown dampers from lap 9, he needed to work fast to get to the start-line in time.

Sunday saw two other retireals: Ross & Abe Hamilton broke their fuel pump and Chris Cruikshanks blew his drive-train.
Billy Phillips managed to finish, however the final lap tore his rear axle from its mounts, and the car came in with a definite sag.... and a spring dangling in mid air!

The man, however, with the worst luck was Chris Sainter: he knocked the end off his oil-filter on lap one (and couldn't get parts until supper-time); knocked his timing out; and then lost his lights. In all, he only managed four laps.... but had an absolute ball!

Congratulations go to Ben Gill, who managed to beat Stu Howe to the win by less that 10 minutes. Full results are on the scottishcompsafari web site.

it's been a busy wee while....

It's been busy, certainly it doesn't feel like two weeks since I put finger to keyboard in this Blog...

Borders Hill Rally
I've been down to Forrest Lodge, to review the stages that Campbell and I planned out on the paper maps. Every road & off-road section has now been driven by me, in the Disco, on road tyres... slicks, as near as dammit.
Every stage is different to last year, and even though the BCCC & SCCC have been there this year, none of the stages match those routes either!
There was one off-road section I didn't drive: it looked blocked from the end, and the possible blockage was just after a soft bit..... so I bypassed it!
I've found a couple of new potential off-road sections, so I need to run them past the estate manager, see what we can do.
The Service Yard is also going to be a challenge: 50 competitors into a 5,000m² yard is not going to be easy - it ain't 100m² each! There's service in, service out & through-service traffic to route... two-way traffic at that!... and each area needs access, so that complicates things too!

Scottish Comp at Bathgate
This is all planned, however there's a crossing I need to put in - so we can link the top & bottom tracks without going round the (badly damaged) duck-pond.
I was out today, speaking to the farmer, about where to cross - and we have identified the place to put the crossing in: close enough to my original plan that the map will suffice, and also good for him when he needs to chase the cattle :grin:
So, I'm booking a minidigger & dumper to do the work next weekend...... except it turns out I've managed to get hold of TWO minidiggers! excellent!
I can now do the crossing (which will need a pipe & several tonnes of hard-core); the buggered track beside the duck pond; and repair the track in the wood!
This is all good, and keeps us in favour with the land-owner!

From the MSA Cross Country meeting

The meeting was good, very enjoyable.

An interesting mix of people, with a range of passions & personalities, so should make for an interesting series of meetings.

We had brief reports from Ian Davis (MSA) and Chris Tomley (chair) regarding general MSA matters:

• There is a review on Stewarding, primarily focused on Karting, but will extend across the board in time
• Cross Country permits are down about 1%, and competitor numbers are down about 8%
• Road Closures are getting a lot of attention, and there is pressure to produce something, but there are no outputs from that group as yet.

The consultation process is being changed
The current process is that:

1. The sub-committee meets & comes up with some ideas.
2. These go to the general council who like it or kick it back.
3. If they like it, it gets published in Motorsport Now & we all get to see it, review it, and write to the MSA to tell them how daft they're being... if not, it goes back to the sub-committee for re-work
4. The consultation report then goes back to Council, who review it, and then....
5. It either goes live, or goes back to the sub-committee to start again.

The new system is both more streamlined, and keeps the focus for rule changes at the sub-committee level:

1. The sub-committee meets & comes up with some ideas.
2. These are then posted to the MSA web site for consultation (http://msauk.org/site/cms/newslist.asp?chapter=276&cat=10).
3. The second sub-committee meeting then reviews the responses from the consultation process. There are either major changes requiring another round of consultation or minor changes & the new rules are passed to Council for ratification.
4. Council meet & then either pass the rules or kick them back as being daft.

Given the time-frame mentioned above, the deadline for Cross Country to get new rules to Council will be June/July, so we are going to move our meetings to Early December & Spring-time.

Challenge Events
We spent a long time (over an hour) discussing Challenge Events. We'd had a long email from someone about the proposed Challenge rules, many of which were centered around the principle that the proposed rules tried to cover both the extreme, frequently-submerged, winching, full-on Challenge events with highly specialised vehicles with 97" tyres, 43 winches, and fiddle/lockable everything; to the gentler events, where winches are not wanted & the challenge is in the navigation, not the terrain.

We have re-purposed (well, just slightly re-worded) the rules for Cross Country Orienteering & they will then cover the gentler challenge events, leaving the new rules less encumbered by the need to support both styles of events.

It will be interesting to see what comes back from that....

Speeds at Comps
We then moved onto comps, and the thought that average speeds had gone up.
Karl Reilly borrowed a speed gun and tested speeds at the BCCC event at Sweet Lamb. He found that speeds were generally about 20% lower than the drivers thought they were, and were about 15% up on 2003. The biggest difference was not the top-end speed, but the handling into & out of corners, and the improvements in suspension that allowed cars to cross rougher ground at higher speeds.
This single report implies that top-end speed is not as big an issue as was first believed, however one report is inconclusive, so the committee wishes more tests to be done, across the range. (Roger Reed will take some readings at some Scottish Comps, and the Borders Hill Rally.)
The results will be fed back to the committee, so we can get a feel for what's happening out "in the field" (if you forgive the pun.)

Tyres
Malatesta Kobra NT (http://www.tyresdirectuk.co.uk/xcart/home.php?cat=271) are to be included, and two Colways re-moulds are to be added.

Generally speaking, however, unless its obvious that the tyre is a pattern-copy of a tyre on the list, the committee needs to see an actual tyre to accept them (photo's are all very well, but you don't get a feeling for the size & aggression of lugs & lumps from a photo... and it allows an independent verification of the tyre rating ... 'cos its written on the carcass :) )

[As an aside, I was having a chat with a Competitor last night, and he swears by UK-made tyres... reckons the side-walls are way stronger that European imports!]

An Inter-Association Cross Country event
This is Roger Reeds baby, born back at the turn of the century with the help of Dave Barker.
The original concept was to be for an RTV, however the world has moved on since then, and times have changed.
After some discussion, the idea is now to have a Tyro event.
Each Association can put forward as many teams as they like, and the teams can be of any age, however the Inter-Associational Trophy itself is only open to teams where the drivers are under 17 (note to self: question if that is that up-to-and-including 17, or up-to-and-including 16.) Teams are three drivers (vehicles can have multiple drivers, etc...)
The event should cater for any number of teams, and should consider allowing non-associational entries to take part.
The plan is to have an event in early August, somewhere in the Midlands (Andrew Flanders will investigate).... in 2011
(Oh, and note that SACC has a history of paying for teams entering inter-associational events!)

BCCC
There was discussion about the BCCC, and it would be nice for the Cross Country Committee to see the results of the MSA Cross Country Championship.
There was some rumination on the current style of championship and if that was what was wanted, or whether it should be broadened to include the Baja & Hill Rallies as well as Comp Safaris.
I expressed my somewhat biased position (as the chairman of the only club running Hill rallies!), but would be delighted to have Hill Rallies as part of a larger championship.
This lead on to a rambling discussion about road legal & traveling to France & closed roads & event entries covering you on the public highway & ....

One question I did ask was "If there was a championship that had rounds run by different clubs, how many cars are you looking at for a comp?" - we reckoned it would be between 50 & 80 cars, and you would need to do a 15-lap, two day, comp safari.

And personally: I'm wondering if Scotland should host a Comp Safari round? Could we find a piece of land that could sustain 70 cars doing 15 laps over two days? -- that's over 1,000 vehicle-laps.... that's a lot of wear on the ground! Given we're already running the only available Hill Rallies, do we want to try and do a Comp too?

MSA Cross Country meeting

Getting ready to catch a 9am flight down to London for a Cross Country group meeting.

This will be my first, given that I never made the proper first meeting due to Eyjafjallajökull cancelling my flights, and a car crash stopping me getting my train.

The major contentious issue this time appears to be revolving around Challenge vehicles - not something I have a lot of knowledge about.... we'll see what the arguments are, and stick my oar in occasionally :)