Round Four - Claydon House 18th July 1998

Practise :- Claydon House is a new course set in the grounds of National Trust property pretty much in the middle of England. Our racing programme during the Saturday was modified to work around a concert being given in the Mansion (by American students visiting the UK). The course consisted of an inverted T with the water straight as the base. The drag up to the hairpin was shortened for the smaller engined craft as the grass length was very long and cut performance dramatically.

During practise I had the accelerator cable come loose, which caused a   power loss in mid corner - not good - I slid into Vicky Oakley's craft. I managed to get off the racing line by operating the accelerator cable with my teeth and then sort of tightened the clamp likewise. I have just come back from the dentist who has patched the chipped front tooth. ( I got done by both Race Director Barry Oakley and my Dad for that episode).

It seems that my craft was pretty well sorted for the World Championships last year. This year everything we have tried, to increase performance has had drawbacks. The new five bladed hub (replacing unevenly spaced 6 bladed hub) should have given more thrust and perhaps less lift. In thrust tests it showed a small gain. On the track in my craft it was awful. We tried various settings during the weekend but will go back two steps to the original Trueflow blades for the next meeting.

Race 1:- We went out relatively confident that we had sorted out the problems of previous meetings by fitting a new cylinder head. We did a few rev checks and everything seemed fine until the first race when it all went wrong, I was a little down on power on the land, enough to slow me back into third or fourth, but when I got onto water it got worse, the revs seemed to drop right off, I found out that the revs went from 10.5 thousand revs to 7 thousand straight away when I hit a head wind. So Luke and Mark Coles left me standing off the grid and left me to battle with Simon Kearle. My craft still had the edge on him on land so I had to work hard to make a big enough gap so that when I slowed on water he only just over took me so once I got out of the head wind I could re-over take him, this scenario dominated my races throughout the weekend.

Race 2 :- Luke left everybody standing still and Mark Coles was second throughout the meeting and didn't really have much competition. Then like race one it was Simon and I forever switching places. Further down the field there were a few battles going on. For example the two F25's. There were several new juniors at this race meeting, one is Vicky Oakley, she is the race directors daughter and joined the mid field runners. Vicky fell out of the craft as she hit the bank at the corner at the end of the water straight, but battled on. Also another new junior fell out, "Junior" is from Sir Harry Smiths Team and campaigns Purple Haze so called because of the snazzy paint job. So this race had a lot of action for the drivers and marshalls.

Race 3 :- I was still having problems but by now had worked out how to get the most speed out of the craft down the water when the revs dropped off. I drove down the water at part throttle and at an angle so I didn't have the wind going straight  through the fan increasing the revs to the point where problems were triggered. By this time the field had spread apart and there wasn't really much close quarter racing.

Race 4 :- By now I had enough of a lead over the weekend to stay third as long as I did quite well in this last race. So I went out at first with the attitude that I was going to finish about 4th. But ended battling with Mark for second as in the last race I got better at working out how to go faster with an off song engine/fan so I could keep up with him, but on the last lap my engine bogged down and he got away.   

Open Race:- To get a second opinion on the craft set up we entered J5 (re - numbered to 150) in the seniors open race driven by F2 driver Tim Shaw. The open was great fun as it entailed a Le Mans start and for the bigger F2 and F1 craft passengers! Unlike a normal grid the craft were lined up down one side of the course, side by side pointing to the other side of the course where the driver waited to run across the track with their lanyard to allow the passenger or mechanic to start the craft. To be on the grid as 30 craft of all types fired up was great fun.

This fan set up produced so much fan stall that after the weekend the dirt marks on the duct showed the air flowing forward in places!

Behind Luke the racing at times was close

The man standing in front of the safety fence is the race director.... checking out this point on the track which caused a number of traffic jams in the junior races.

One of the new teams is Rural Racers with a 20 hp F25 craft seen here pushing on into a strong headwind

Nice to see "Purple Haze" back in action with a new driver and  Team Slap supporting as seniors  (see previous years reports). rid

Luke was lucky not to have lost a first place in this tangle at the end of the water straight.

Results

1st Luke Sedzikowski    Python Kawasaki

2nd Mark Coles              Self Yamaha

3rd Me                            Eagle Yamaha

4th Simon Kearle            Eagle Yamaha