Those were the days!
Race meetings were run from a Spectrum computer with 'home-grown' software - 8 cars in a heat and 12 heats maximum. Race classes were standard and modified - not 2wd and 4wd. Booking in was done on a grid which was broken down into 12 heats and 8 cars. As drivers booked in they were allocated a slot in one of the heats depending on their ability and available crystals.
Cars all had a coloured flag on the aerial to correspond with the colour of the frequency they were running.
This was the best bit - lap counting was done manually! Not an easy task when 3 or 4 cars were coming past race control together.
I also remember a time when we were racing at the outdoor track (back of the Hare and Hounds pub) and it was so muddy we could not see the numbers on the cars to be able to manually count them.
My son Mark started in January (aged 11) after getting a Terra Scorcher for Xmas and we had to wait until the following year to become a member as membership was full. This meant that we had to arrive early at each club meeting to queue as a non-member and we could only book in once all the members had been booked in. At many meetings drivers were turned away because they had a full entry of 96 drivers - at regular club meetings!
How times have changed!!
Dianne
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