Tinkicker

That's what my other one is for..

Its one of these, but one that will fit in the spare room. As for using the DT, cannot because its value will be slashed in half. Thankfully I have the 750 to ride.

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My Yam DT175mx. It is just sat there in the conservatory, I can't ride it much because I can't put miles on it and have mixed feelings about selling it. I have a full set of pics to set the ball rolling at Bonhams Auctioneers and have been sat on them since the new year. Just cannot make my mind up. I could use the money for a 6 degrees of freedom motion platform for DCS which would get a lot of use, but the DT is an icon of my youth and I put an awful lot of myself into fettling her. Decisions decisions.

My mate just escaped from a travelling troupe of mime artists who had kidnapped him. He said they had subjected him to unspeakable things.

If I may wade in..

Motor goes in for its first service next week. I spent the day valeting it inside and out, including making the engine bay gleam. It looks like it just left the showroom. Always do this on my motors first annual service. I have been offered some fantastic deals in the past by dealers looking to put them on their forecourt. This un especially. 12 months old and just 2750 miles on the clock. It helps having changed my job and the daily commute now being just four miles from drive to car park. I may be tempted to let them buy it back if they offered, and buy a cheap hack to get to work. A new car with new car monthly payments and doing just 2750 miles a year is very expensive per mile motoring. I would use my pushbike, but the rural main roads on the route have no street lamps, have steep grass verges and are 60mph limits. I am just not brave / stupid enough ( delete as applicable) to use my pushbike on them esp in winter. A lot of cyclists have been killed on them over the years.

Object the size of a small car and of unknown origin and purpose was downed 40,000ft over Alaska today. Not a weather balloon.

Another tale of derring do. Honda CBR1100xx Super Blackbird. Very tractable engine and always made sure I was in third before giving the berries. Usually short shifted in first and second. Very smooth engine, I called it my big pussycat. One of my mates was in front on another blackbird and we came to a set of red traffic lights. Green came and the cars in front set off, got to about forty mph and my mate looked as if he was going to overtake in a bad spot. I hung back and watched. He changed his mind and hung back a second or two. Then he looked like he was going for it, I eased on the throttle to follow and he tucked back in. I closed the throttle and braked. By this time we were around 60mph. He went for half a second later and I immediately followed, winding back the throttle... Bang. Something hit my visor with right old crack. What the hell? Turned out it was the screen and a second later my befuddled mind realised I was overtaking a car at speed, on the rear wheel. Watching my mates overtake antics and having to brake unexpectedly took my attention away from changing gear. He went for it, in a fit of pique, I gave mine a fistful. At 60 - 65mph in first, it would be just coming on cam at 6500rpm, yes, I neglected to shift up, and I unleashed all 165 bhp at once and on front forks still rising back up from dipping during my braking.... It came up so fast it did not really register until the screen hit my visor. I got the throttle shut but by then I was right on the balance point. Never in my life has a couple of seconds seemed so long. I seemed to be on the verge of going over backwards for a full minute or so before the front end crashed back down. Flipping it at 70mph is not recommended. I stopped calling it my big pussycat after that. It had teeth and claws and was just waiting to bite me.

DCS meets Apocalypse Now. Brand new and very clever cinematic with an epic soundtrack. Only thing letting the side down is the quality of the infantry models. They need bringing up to modern standards, although it might be said that what is the point if you are looking at them from an aircraft at a distance. Features one of my other loves, the huey. The white lever at the side of my seat in the pic of my rig above is the collective pitch lever for when I fly the huey.

1. More power equals more heat. Has your cooling system got sufficient overhead designed in to cope? 2. More capacity equals more gas flow. You say you changed the carb. Have you looked at the plug to see what colour it is. Lean running equals more heat. 3. If your carb is uprated and jetted correctly for your 70cc kit, your autolube pump is not and will be delivering an insufficient oil to fuel ratio. It is common for people with modded bikes to add a small splash of oil to the fuel everytime they fill up. Helps lubricate the carb and fuel system too. Not much lubricant on modern fuel. 4. You do not state what oil you are running. In any tweaked two stroke, I would only ever run fully synthetic oil in it. 5. A thermal ring seizure will cause the piston ring to be affected all the way around the piston. Next time check the ring gap for proper clearance to ensure insufficient gap is not behind it. Very suspicious it being the bottom ring.

Inspired by the how many crashes thread. What did you get wrong, what happened and how did you escape injury? Not counting collisions with other cars pulling out on you that could not be avoided. Two spring to mind immediately. First was around 1981 and bear in mind that at that time I practically lived on off road bikes , most summer evenings and weekends being found on something from my collection of trials and motocross bikes. Also had a Honda CX500 plastic maggot for going to work on and for going to bike rallies. CX500 being a most unfairly underated bike at the time. It was an excellent bike but erroniously marketed at the time by Honda as a sportsbike, which it clearly wasn't. Anyway, one summer evening I left the East Ardsley Motorcycle Club early for some reason and fancied a thrash down a challenging country lane I knew. If you live near Wakefield, it being the one from east ardsley to west ardsley, past all the rhubarb growing sheds. So hammering towards west ardsley, probably around 70mph, came to a right hand bend at the bottom of the hill and started tipping it over. There must have been a cloudburst sometime recently because I was confronted with half a cartload of gravel on the bend that had been washed across the road. Time slowed down, instinct kicked in and I hauled it back upright. Of course there was a big ditch on the outside of the bend, but also on the bend was a culverted entryway to a rhubarb shed crossing the ditch so I headed for that. No option, I could not brake or steer on the gravel. I did not manage it, it was obvious I was not going to make the turn completely and was headed for the ditch. Just as I ran out of road, I hoiked on the bars and jumped off the top of the culvert into the ditch. I landed on both wheels simultaneously and grimly hung on with torrents of muddy water flying in all directions. Bike stopped almost immediately but failed to throw me over the bars, a trembling hand groped for the ignition key and blissful silence ensued. A couple of minutes of pondering about the meaning of life and it was time to hatch a cunning plot to get the bike out of the ditch. About 20 or 30 yards further down was another entryway and a fairly gentle 4ft slope up to the top. So engine on, in gear and with much sweaty pushing, got to the bottom of the slope, but no way could I get enough traction to get it up the slope. Then fortune smiled. I heard a car approaching the bend and wondered if I could get a tow. Sound of skidding on gravel and I expected the imminent arrival of another ton or so of steel visiting the ditch, but no it made it. It appeared round the bend and it turned out that it was a bile green 13 amp plug, aka reliant robin and I knew it well. Out jumped four leather jacketed lads from the bike club and we hauled out the bike. After pulling off all the mud and clumps of grass, it turned out that the only damage was a bent up rear brake pedal and the right hand footrest and bracket were missing. I jumped on it and rode it home. I straightened the pedal at work and bought another footrest and bracket from a breakers, not even a scratch anywhere else, so total cost of a 70 mph plunge into a ditch was around a fiver. Fantastic bike, if it was marketed as a mini tourer, it would have gotten the respect it deserved.

I revisited this one after watching one of his other documentaries of a similar vein last night. The producer is a a very talented amateur (so far as I am aware) documentary maker and local historian. It is certainly a professional grade, beautifully made and photographed effort, and a very gripping unravelling of an event that happened far above his Kent village in 1940. Even the missus was enthralled by it because it focuses mainly on the human element, rather than solely on the equipment. If you are interested at all in military aviation, local or world war two history; do yourself a favour and save it for watching on your big telly over a beer tonight. Well worth it. Search term for your telly to easily find it on youtube is... The men who fell from the sky.

And a pleasing hog short movie with an epic soundtrack. Motley Crue at their best.

So if you ever wanted to know how to fire up a Hog? This is quite a fast startup with a lot of tests and steps missed out, so you dont get bored. A full start anc alignment takes far longer and is more involved. It took me 12 hours just to learn how to start it confidently. Pretty much all the control binds and keyboard combos he mentions, I do by flipping my real switches. Remember I mentioned the canopy switch? Easily the most identifiable one in the vid, take a look at my white box with the white switch on the front right of my pit. Electrical panel including battery switch and APU generator switch just below and to the rear of it as shown on the vid. Also, my throttle panel and stick are true replicas of the real thing.

Nothing wrong with crossing the white llines to get the view. On some left handers, I have been known to be almost at the other kerb and with a police class one motorcyclist behind me, egging me on. Treat white lines like kerbstones. If they are broken, you can cross with caution. If they are unbroken, stay away.

All changed now. VR actually puts you in the cockpit. Very hard to tell if it is real or not. You are so immersed in the mission your brain suspends its grip on reality. You are not sat in your mancave. You are actually over Northern France in a Spitfire, taking off from Akrotiri in Cyprus in an A10 warthog, or getting shot off the bow of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier in an F14 Tomcat/ F18 Hornet. F14, F18, Bell UH1H Huey chopper, and Spitfire are what I am current on. DH Mosquito, I can get by with. Totally forgotten how to fly the F5 and the F86 sabre. My home cockpit laid out for the A10 warthog. In VR you see the real cockpit around you, not the desk ect. All the switches operate the aircraft and are in exactly the same location as you see them in VR. Just reach out and flip them on and the aircraft systems come to life. Black box with single switch at left front actually raises and lowers the ejection seat in the sim aircraft! Its counterpart on the right in white box raises and lowers the cockpit canopy... Simming has come a long way from the Atari days.

Just spent an enjoyable hour or so this afternoon, piloting a Spitfire mk9 on patrol over Northern France in 1944. It did not go well. I lost sight of my flight lead, ended up chasing a Focke Wulf 190 down to the deck and started knocking chunks off him. I failed to spot his wingman get into position behind me and procede to dismantle my aircraft with extreme prejudice. Glycol spewing from my radiator, had no choice but to point the nose into the sky and bail out. No way of making it back over the Channel before it started overheating and staying with a sick aircraft was suicide with the wingman around. It was nice floating down under the chute though, lovely sunny summer day, wind in the trees and birds singing in the hedgerows.... Outskirts of Amiens a mile or so away. Some new things for 2023. Multithreading and DLSS will help hugely with framerates in VR.

Holy thread resurrection Batman! Just seen this thread. That there ole engine in the raggity plane is a Davis Charlton (DC Quickstart) Sabre Diesel of 1.5cc. I believe. Had one when I was about 10. Hard to find with the spring and starting cam intact. The other may be a DC spitfire of 1cc of the same era (early 70s).

Got the DT175 out into the back yard and started it up. Got it warm, looked around at the grey, dismal, damp surroundings, switched off the fuel and ran it till the carb ran dry. Put it away again. That is quite enough winter biking for me ta very much.

Yes you got in just before i finished editing my post. I hate doing full lock u turns. As an ex trials rider and instructor, I only feel comfortable when stood on the pegs.

Sorry, but what the hell are they teaching you? Are they actually grabbing you? All it takes is to visualise a series of points on the ground, approach one and just before you get there, switch your attention to the next. Edit. Re reading all the posts, I see you completed your cbt in the end. However an instructor should never manhandle a student. You guide, you encourage, you try different ways to complete the task. You give the student as much time as they need and if they are getting jaded, you move onto something else or revisit a previous task and modify it to help their sticking point and confidence. It is never a case of "do it my way, or nothing". You let them do it how they feel is best for them. Personally, I always hated the whole use the engine crankshaft as a gyroscope offical line on u turns. It was a tool in my box of tricks among many others. I preferred to give the student time to develop muscle memory, not rely on mechanical means. Of course, it is over 15 years since I handed in my instructor ticket, so things may have changed and the dvsa may well now place more emphasis on the technique, rather than just completing the task safely in whatever manner you chose.

Hell no. I would rather have my nose broken. Winter in the UK, I need all the escapism I can get. When it gets really bad, I have even been known to watch mama mia just for the sun and blue skies.

Tigs. You found out that all you needed was to change your school or instructor. In a previous life, I was senior technician/ workshop manager and operations manager for a very large motorcycle activity and training center. In fact, at the time the largest in europe. One of the many hats I wore was that of "standby instructor" on call for unforseen crises. One of our more senior instructors seemed to have a bit of a problem with females riding bikes and had problems in progressing them through the CBT. As a result, I would often be called to the training square at very short notice to take over on a one to one basis and I probably progressed more females through their CBTs than most of the other instructors. They were all pretty much the same. In the main, the vast majority at that time were taking the CBT to please boyfriends or husbands, very nervous and unsure of themselves, frightened at the prospect of getting hurt and looked like frightened rabbits caught in car headlights. Eyes like saucers. If this was not enough, they encountered an instructor who was not the most patient with ladies and the results were predictable. The state I found them in, I doubt they could have made a cup of coffee without scalding themselves. All it took was some empathy, some encouraging words and to start back at the beginning. Once they relaxed, they were fine. In the end it was suggested that we downtrain a female staff member to conduct CBTs with all female groups and female enquiries were given this option, along with one to one. Of course, one to one was more expensive. An instructor/ student relationship is a two way street. If it is not a good fit, it needs to end. The impatient with the ladies instructor was a very good instructor and knew his limitations. Sometimes he could gel with a female student, and sometimes not. If not, he was introspective enough to saunter down to the workshop and ask my help. Cannot knock him for that.

Gave up my instructors badge probably in excess of 15 years ago, so not much help to you. Everything is probably different now. I was also a yellow badge downtrained one, not a Cardington candidate. However, some advice. Everyone learns best in different ways. If you are not getting through to a student, it is not them that are failing to understand you, it is you that are failing to instruct in a way they can understand. Be flexible in the ways you impart your knowledge. If something is not working, change tack. Explain this to your student. It WILL put them at ease. Also, do not be afraid to tear up the progress you have made and go back to basics. If your student has reached a plateau point, it can break him out of it. It is far better than to continue pushing down a blind alley. As an instance. If the student is not doing well on the u turn, take him back to the figure 8 and gradually make it tighter and tighter, slower and slower and introduce lifesaver checks. Never, ever show exasperation in your demeanor or comments. It will only make things worse. If you have a mixed group, experience wise as you will find out in the clothing talk, make it clear to them that the least experienced one wil not be expected to progress as fast as the others and it is ok. All this is designed to take the pressure off the student. It is a very nerve wracking experience for them. Finally. There is no time limit...