Watchfield 01.05.10

Watchfield In The Vale Flying Club with MB
*Remember there are No Secrets from a Bottle, just Hardwork, Dedication & Determination*


Well folks here we are again, this week (1st May) will see the Wiltshire federation at Exeter (105mile) and the BBO on the first cross channel event from Vire (183mile), after last weeks race which was certainly a strange race for us when everyone else in the club had a general good race and were ours really made a complete hash of it, i left the cocks & hens together until Sunday evening and broke them down, the birds are now commencing on their 3rd week of widowhood and it is now Sunday evening and i have just taken their hens off the cocks.

This weeks see me start a new contract and means me working near Bath/Bristol to the West, Cheltenham and the Cirencester areas to the North so i will have to change things with the loft routine with immediate effect, i will get them out for a fly early in the mornings with the cocks out first then hens later and Clare will get them back out again in the afternoons after school when she is at home and i will get the youngsters out upon my return.

We carried out the annual vaccination of all the youngsters after the race last week, as if you remember we had plenty of time on our hands whilst awaiting for our many late arrivals, they are a nice looking bunch with the older non-darkness team having matured really well, the later rounds which were put on the darkness the middle of last week are obviously babies yet and we will have to start to get them out later in the week, racing this week will see us probably keeping the yearlings on the land at Exeter and some of the older ones going to Vire, the yearlings will start their own channel racing careers when they go to Vire in a fortnight, this way it just gives them that little bit more time to settle into racing before having to cross the channel as the majority of these have only had 6 races now in their young lifes.

I still cant get into my head what went wrong last week and why we had so many late arrivals returning from the North hours and hours after the others when no-one else seemed to have this problem, i know that i am over 10 miles from the Swindon lads and 10 miles from the Wantage areas but surely you would have thought even if they went over by 10 miles or so and turned back they would have only been half an hour behind the first returnee’s, oh well no point dwelling on it. One thing is for sure we wont know if it is a serious problem until this weeks race, if they do the same thing i will consider re-pairing and stopping racing for a fortnight and get them back into the training baskets and start again, hopefully the hawks will leave them alone not like earlier in the season when i tried to train pre-season, as stated the long range forecast is stating North East, not ideal again but at least it is not South East, with racing on the dogleg to the West country as last week, it may just mean leaving them home when a South East is forecast from the likes of Seaton, Exeter, Yelverton as no point aggravating the issue IF that is what the problem was/is?

Monday morning now and both cocks and hens didn’t want to fly this morning, just wanting to get back into the loft with a similar session in the afternoon. When i got home from work had the non-dark youngsters out, it was a lovely sunny evening but they got scattered by the Sparrowhawk with one late returnee but at least no casualties. The long range “XC Weather” forecast was showing full cloud and a North East wind for the Exeter area, Rain on the Channel and Rain at home so not looking to good for this week, so may have to revise the plans a little later in the week.

Tuesday morning, the cocks were out, still fairly quiet but left out for 45 minutes and probably flew for 20 of this, hens were the same certainly not full of themselves, in the afternoon when Clare had them out they were pretty much the same. They are looking fantastic in themselves but just not doing what widowhood birds are supposed to, they should start to improve their exercise now as the build up kicks in.

Wednesday am, pm and Thursday morning the birds were improving as the week progressed, but no exercise on Thursday afternoon due to the heavy rain and we don’t let them out on a Friday. Things went well at the club basketing and everyone was in high spirits with many differing forecasts for the race day tomorrow.We decided against sending to the channel this week so we are only sending to the Wilshire fed race only as the forecast for the channel wasn’t to promising and i thing it a little early in the season to be giving them a tough channel race with possibilities of holdovers.

Race day and not the best start to the day around here, with full cloud and mist, so was somewhat surprised when we got the call to say they had been liberated at 0730hrs, as time went on it some turned into a beautiful morning clearing quickly and the sun burning through, the wind forecast has been all over the place this week and it turned out to be North West here, which to be honest if our birds are up for it, they break with the winners we should be up with the early ones, So i pencilled in an eta of 10.00 worst case.

We were at the loft in plenty of time and Clare spotted our first arrival spinning from the North East corner (not good), after a couple of laps he was down and in at 09.22.30, we had a bit of a wait then until our next arrival another cock came from the North East corner again at 09.27.02, it was at this point i said to Clare that these were no doubt with the winning group but had broke late somewere between here and Swindon were the majority of our members reside and just hoped that it wasn’t a disaster return wise like last week. Well just as i said that we had a group come spinning over the tree’s from the South, right on line were i hoped the first ones would come from, HAHA it was obvious now that the problem i was having relates to the poor pre-season training, this group was 8 x hens and 1 x cock and were all recording between 09.29.26 and 09.29.37 demonstrating that the first bunch had obviously cleared lib site and ours had hung around for 5 minutes or so before racing off, and once they had their bearings had obviously raced hard for home and returned well, but due to lack off training early on it was taking them longer than the first groups to get their bearings and clear site. I was more than happy now that i could put a reason to it. The rest of the team retuned very well with them comings back in twos and threes for the next twenty or so minutes just leaving a couple adrift.

Yet again tho, although the first two birds home were cocks, the next 8 were hens so again our hens out performed our cocks dramatically. My prediction for the club that night was that we would probably be a little of the pace, beaten by obviously more well tuned birds than ours but at least we now have an option to think over, we could address the training & breaking for home issues by getting the training baskets back out, but more importantly we had good returns to which i was very relieved, as with last week i wasn’t sure if it was an underlying health issue.

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At the club that night, everyone seemed to have a couple of birds missing and struggled with their yearlings some lofts still had 5 to return, and arrivals spread over many hours luckily we had all our home in good time sounds a bit like déjàvu with the Westerly wind this week taking its toll on the Swindon side lofts as the East wind did with me last week, we actually had the first 3 yearlings on the result so happy with that, onto the club result with our Wiltshire Fed race from Exeter it was a great result for Ken Thorpe, the result was 1st Ken Thorpe timing a Dk Cheq 5yr old Staf van Reet cock on widowhood, bloodlines originating from Bert Hession stock a previous top performer and winner of 8 x 1st prizes for Ken with a velocity of 1655.5, 2nd was ourselves (a very nice surprise, he obviously never went that far through), M/M M&C Brown with a yearling Blue Gaby Vandenabeele cock on widowhood, a winner of minor prizes last year with a velocity of 1654.1, taking 3rd & 4th is our good mate Clive Elliott who saw home two Smit van Winkle x Bartoli Janssen widowhood cocks, first one a Dark 2yr old and the other a Dark 3yr old, with velocities of 1649.3 & 1648.4 its good to see Clive enjoying his racing again has he has had a few years with very little racing due to works commitments but is back with a bang this season, in 5th was Roy & Shiela Titcombe who saw home a very good Blue 4yr old widowhood cock on 1646.9, in 6th was J & V Draper, John seeing home his very good Blue 6yr old Staf Van Reet cock still on the natural.

Wiltshire & District SR Federation - 17.04.10 from Seaton, the result was, 1st & 2nd P Waters, Salisbury with a 2yr old hen & a 2yr old cock velocities of 1472.1 & 1471.0 with two fantastic birds on the day when you consider were the majority of the other birds were, well done sir, taking 3rd, 4th & 9th was Smith & Baker, Gorse Hill timing three yearling hens with velocities of 1463.1, 1461.4 & 1443.0, taking 5th, 6th & 7th was George Seagroatt, Watchfield with a yearling hen, 2yr old cock and a yearling hen velocities of 1449.7, 1446.5 & 1446.0, taking 8th, 10th, 11th, 15th & 17th was M/M C Aldridge & Son, Watchfield with velocities of 1443.5, 1441.4, 1439.9, 1416.9 & 1409.1, taking 12th, 13th & 14th was M/M R Ward, Oxford & D with velocities of 1439.9, 1436.4 & 1423.7, taking 16th was M/M M&C Brown with velocity of 1416.6, in 18th was Ray Page, Watchfield on 1408.2, taking 19th was C Croucher, Gorse Hill on 1406.3 and 20th was Clive Elliott, Watchfield on 1404.7. Other club winners who were obviously disadvantaged by the wind on this day were Ferndale, R & P Habgood 1403, Oxford Central, M/M Ward 1386, Test Valley, A Jones 1371, Ram Alley, R Beaconsfield 1367, Carterton, J Kelly 1344, Holbury, D Staddon 1336, Grateley DC Day 1325, and Warminster A Churchill 1204. This is the thing i have yet to get used to with the racing down here, with the massive location differences between clubs in the fed some clubs recording excellent birds on certain racing days can be as much as 300ypm behind the fed winners yet on different race days they will get their revenge and win the fed.

Well that’s it for this week, try hard, work harder, be happy and good returns.

Any news/views to Mark Brown
Email - mb1973@hotmail.co.uk
Tel - 07593 279 375

good read Mark ... Well Done ...

ma & pa (assassin & vader)

thanks mark, enjoyable reading once again.............

great read mark mate,had a look through your others too and look forward to future posts

pete.