BRCA AGM!

Well the AGM is here this month which I'll be attending, some really good proposals to fix TC for next year and get back the proper mod racing we used to have and love!

Personally id prefer everyone in an open class, as per offroad, where people run what they can handle and what is suitable.
But I understand not everyone thinks as I do, so I can see the call for a stock class at nationals, but maybe it doesn't deserve a "national champion" title...?

New stuff on the horizon!

Well it's been a whole since holiday, plenty of changes have happened.
I've moved in with Penny, and moved work down to Peterborough.

In toy car news, signed up with somebody new... And I WILL be at ETS rd1 in Germany.
New radio and charger thanks to MB Models, everyone should shop there, Bally is awesome!

Keep tuned over the next few days/ weeks for more updates!

Ciao

Reality.

Well, it's the end of holiday and time to come back to reality, we're (me and Penny) just waiting until time to check out of the hotel before heading home after what's turned out to be a lovely week here in Marmaris, Turkey.

No rest for the wicked though, as we have a 2.5 hour drive back to Penny's house from Gatwick airport, then and extra hour drive back to my house ready for work at 8am. I can tell you now that's going to suck. I can't wait until I get my transfer and can move down to Peterborough.

To sum it up it's been a great first holiday together.

In other news, it looks like I'm going to get started again with racing, at what level I'm unsure of yet, but I'll be back running my trusty TC6.1 that hasn't turned a wheel since the BRCA winter nats back in January, sure I'll be a little rusty but I think I'll cope well enough. I have definately missed racing but I think I'll only running indoors, and doing as many ETS races as possible, we'll see what happens I guess, it's going to be tricky to do aswell as moving house, and starting back in education in 3 weeks time so my time I can commit will be extremely limited so will have to do what I can fit in, and where.
I do have 2 weeks off in October that I originally booked off for Las Vegas, but we will see if budget allows for that lol

Till next time, ciao

Holiday part 2

So to follow on from the previous blog entry with a few updates from the week. It's now friday, 11pm as I write this, although it won't be posted until Saturday morning as no wifi in the room, only in reception...
My last update was tuesday night, after the lovely Turkish baths :)
Since then we really have been taking it easy, it's been 42 degrees Wednesday, 44 Thursday and today hit a whopping 47 degrees at 3pm.
We have mainly been either relaxing by the pool, trying to get some tannage (penny's is coming along nicely, I'm like Vanilla ice still lol) or been going on short trips around the town.
We hit the market yesterday where there's plenty of clothing for sale, no doubt it'll all be knock off's but it is Turkey after all....
I brought a couple of bits and bobs, mainly stocking up on underwear lol.
We also did some shopping in the normal clothes shops where I found some very nice shorts at 50% off.. Yes please!
We had the obligatory stop at McDonalds, originally just to get a drink as thirsty, but we found the did Kiwi milkshakes, which are awesome!!

This evening we ate out at a restaurant and I had the biggest T bone steak I've seen before, Penny had some chicken thingy.
We've got a boat trip planned for tomorrow which promises alot more laying around sunbathing :) before potentially another quiet day on Sunday depending on weather, and then finally home time on Monday, which with a 2.5 hour drive back to Penny's, and then an hour to mine with work at 8am I am NOT looking forward to, but hey ho, it's been lovely so far and I've enjoyed every moment of it... Apart from at that shite first hotel lol.

Ciao!

Holiday - Turkey 2012

So, it's that time of year that everyone looks forward to, no not Christmas, it's Holiday time!!
Me and Penny decided to go away for our 6 month anniversary and get a late deal for the week starting 6th of August. There wasn't a great deal about so we ended up paying around the £500 mark each for a week all inclusive (bags, transfers also)
I had already been to Turkey before but Penny had not, but had shown a strong interest in going so I had suggested we go to where I had already been before, Marmaris.
We were booked into a hotel called Lydia Park, not sure if that's the right spelling but hey ho.
All of this was booked through Icelolly.com and the separate travel agency was called Travelsoon.com.
We were to fly from Gatwick airport as it seemed the best balance between cheap-ness and location, the others being Stansted for alot more money, or Manchester for alot less money but much further, even then, Gatwick was still 2.5 hours drive away from Peterborough.
It was an evening flight set for 9pm
Typical journey down, car parked, and off to the gate we went, after stopping for some dinner in the airport that is.
During check in we were told we hadn't collected our tickets which we were supposed to do, even though no paperwork or messages sent from travel agent even hinted at this. Luckily the lady at the desk let us go fetch them without having to queue up again which would have been a nightmare.
I wouldn't be as bothered about the tickets if I hadn't phoned up Travelsoon.com to ask about tickets the day before, only to get told we didn't need any apart from the email docs we had received. Very bad Travelsoon.com!!

We arrived at Dalaman airport at about 2am, went through the std stuff, visa, passport control, lovely 30deg temps at gone midnight!
We got to transfer bus and headed off to the hotel, quick hour and a half ride while half asleep and we were there.
OMG, is my first thoughts, but not in the good way, from the outside it didn't really look anything like the pictures. Bit dank and dingy to be honest. The room was quite horrific, beds were old and looked like they had seen alot of action (more on this in a moment!) aswell as not being what we had asked for (a double, and ended up with 2 singles and a baby cot.... No, just no....) to add to the manky beds, the sheets on one of the beds looked to have a fairly fresh man juice patch on them, it was definitely this, and no chance of being anything else, the A/C didn't work at all, no fan or anything so the room was a toasty 34 degrees.... :-/ no TV and the bathroom had grimey bits all over too. (see pictures attatched)
As we arrived so late (6am) we were too tired to complain at that moment, but we're going to raise all these issues once we were up at a more sensible time. In the end we didn't sleep at all as it was so horrible, we went to the desk to ask for a new room at 8am, admittedly this was dealt with quickly and the guy on the desk seemed to know that the room we had before was well out of order... Smirking when I said the number :-/
The new room was an improvement but still a bit shit. Again the beds looked a bit well used and cleaning wise was better, but still some random stain patches on the sheets.
At breakfast, we got speaking to other guests, and found they had as horrible rooms as we did, and during a meeting we had booked with a rep (Oz from MTS) he said he may be able to sort out another hotel if any guests weren't happy. In total there was 9 of us wanting a change who had arrived the night before. Myself, penny, a couple of guys, and a family of 5.
We were all offered a place at the Seray Hotel. Again another "3*" place but we were promised it would be better than what we currently had. The extra cost of this was £70 for the week, which only worked out £5 extra per night each. Which I would have happily paid just to get away from the Lydia park.
The new place is so much nicer, more selection of food, nicer pool (at Lydia, you couldn't even see the bottom of it!!) and just generally a much nicer place to be, aswell as being 2 mins from the beach :)

At the time of writing this it's only the 2nd night we are here for (wednesday night) and already I'm happy to say how much better the place is, we went on an excursion to the Turkish baths yesterday and that was fab, sauna, baths, jacuzzi, massage, very nice indeed :)

I'll be writing on trip advisor about the First hotel just as a warning to others. It just had that ominous feeling like during the inbetweeners film :-|

Time for a think

Right, so after a couple of bad weekends, (Italy and winter nats) I've got a descision to make, either I take my "summer break" from racing early, or do I get stuff ready and prep for ETS Poland in April??

I had a sit down and think about all the international races I've done over the past 5 or so years and come to the conclusion that there was only 2 races where I was happy with how I did, or, where nothing went wrong and wrecked either prep or the race... Let's face it, that's a pretty crap record when you consider the amount I've done. :-/

At the moment im leaning more towards just stopping for the time being and not worrying about it, I know it'd be less of a hassle not to go, but to carry on means sourcing a new radio power supp and charger (all of which broke in Italy)

Either way I'll keep everyone informed with what happens.

Ciao

Disaster aka Winter national

Hmm sounds familiar...

Well this was my first time running on Sorex kicks since I came back racing. And honestly, after running on Ride/Moorespeeds, I hate them. They just feel so plasticky and hard, the wheels are far from round and I general always used to make my car feel like I was driving on ice. This weekend was no exception!

With only 1 round of practise on a green track the traction would never be as high as usual for Ardent.

For the first time since running the AE car I had to differ from my usual set up to find any sort of traction.
Main changes were AE springs and very laid down dampers.

After practise it still wasn't great, but had to go into Q anyway. The only task during the runs we're to make the top 32, to get into the Reedy Style format races. (8 rounds of heads up racing, random grid order, 8 cars each race)

So after an uncomfortable Q I ended up 22nd... Which was a little rubbish as its 11 places lower than where I was this time last year.
There's a few reasons for this I think. Not only with not being used to the tires, but for a reason still unknown exactly, I struggled alot with brakes. I used 2 different ESC's and 2 different motors, but still nothing, which I found strange. There was just no brakes, and with the track having a hairpin at the end of the straight was not ideal.

So as for the Reedy races, the less said the better. Plenty of 3rd's n 5ths it's pure pot luck if u survive the first corner or not.
There were 2 races where I had comfortable leads and promptly three it away, both my fault.

Ended up like 20th overal, really unsatisfied with the whole weekend..

I'm going to take a little time off away from it all now before deciding if I'll go to Poland for ETS rd4...

Ciao