Batley Buggy Club- New Era

[Oscar]

Many people will remember the large number of great indoor meetings held over the years at the Batley Sports & Tennis centre. Anyone with a long running RC history may remember, the TMS challenge's, the Supercup's and various regional events held at the venue.

The old Venue

Sadly due to resurfacing of the hall, the clubs 20+ year association with the venue came to an end in 2009. The club managed to secure the use of the fantastic Chadderton venue for its hugely successful 2010/11 indoor series. The Chadderton venue lends itself very well to large meetings, with ample capacity for a large driver field.

The club however still felt that it was missing a local venue to cater for slightly smaller scale club meetings. After much hard work behind the scenes, a suitable new venue has been secured, located just a few minutes away from the outdoor track. The new venue will host its first meeting on Sunday 20th February, with all drivers welcome.

Comprehensive details can be found in this thread http://www.oople.com/forums/showthread.php?t=63411

[AndyF]

I remember a time before the hall pictured, when we were up stairs with two adjoining small halls. One for the pits and one for the track. The rostrum was just a couple of gym benches.

We had std class and modified class instead of 2 and 4 wheel drive. NICADs were the battery of choice with 1200mah and optima, hot shots and cats (the first one) were doing battle.

I was also only a young lad but the anticipation for those Sunday afternoon was great. I won my first ever race i attended (ok it was the I final) with my hornet.

Ok. Back to been a 36 year old father of two!


Good luck with the new venture.

[AndyG]

Damn - those WERE the days.

I raced in those two halls for years .... I remember the massive queues outside the sports centre and people being turned away.

*sigh*

[DianneH]

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

[chalky]

didn`t think you were that old dianne

the good old days when a bolink digger was the car to have (or maybe not)

does anyone remember racing at the back of the smithy pub in west ardsley that was before the hare and hounds

[Jabber]

Now who`s showing there age Chalky?