Buell back as “Erik Buell Racing”, FZ8 to replace FZ6?

Not entirely a crashing surprise, but it seems Erik Buell will be back in the business of making and selling of Buell 1125R-based race bikes and supplying competition use parts and servicing for them, all of which will be under license from Harley-Davidson, as well as offering technical support.

“I’m looking forward to helping Buell racers keep their bikes flying,” said Erik Buell. “We’ve got some exciting race development projects in the works and it will mean a lot to me personally to see Buell racers competing for wins and championships in the 2010 season and beyond.”

Buell President and COO Jon Flickinger also commented, “I’m pleased that Harley-Davidson is assisting Erik in establishing this business to continue supporting the racing efforts he has had so much passion for over the years. Harley-Davidson and the Buell Motorcycle Company will always be proud of their affiliation with Erik, and we wish him well in this new endeavor to support Buell racers.”

Erik Buell Racing will be based in East Troy, Wisconsin and will reportedly be staffed by Erik Buell and a veteran team of personnel.

Meanwhile, news also from the States suggests us Europeans will be able to look forward to a new FZ8, replacing the existing FZ6. Given the recent release of the fully faired XJ6 Diversion alongside the half faired and naked versions that appeared at the beginning of 2009, this move would prevent Yamaha having no less that five 600s competing for more or less the same market, as well as being better placed to take on the BMW F800 range, the Aprilia Shiver and the Triumph 675 and Street Triple. Oh, and probably charging more money for it, too.

Whether riders actually need an all-purpose middleweight that’s now bigger than the 750 superbike of yesteryear is another matter altogether. I might have to make a decision on whether to replace the trusty Hornet with an FZ6 sooner rather than later.

Accident Sketch website

I’ve already ‘tweeted’ this but I thought I’d just go over it in a little more detail.

The accident sketch website is something I came across this week, and a site that would have been a deal of help after my partner was witness to an accident and ‘drive off’ involving a parked car.

It’s not that difficult to draw a sketch but the drag and drop format of this tool makes it much easier to accurately position vehicles in a wide variety of situations.

If you’re familiar with any drawing or sketching package, you should have no trouble finding your way around this tool.

Firstly, you just drag onto the central part of the screen the nearest fit to where the accident happened. There are a comprehensive selection of types of road including roundabouts, bends, cross roads, junctions on bends, pedestrian crossings, dual carriageways, slip roads, single track roads and even parking lots. Tip – first maximise your browser to get the best use of the screen.

You can then add your own vehicle (motorcycles are included – a CB500 by the look of it!) and the other party’s. You can change colours of the vehicles and add registration numbers at this stage. The tool is also drag and drop, and once placed, you can move them around and also change the angle of the vehicle with respect to the road.

It’s possible to add other vehicles and pedestrians, as well as a selection of road signs, although it’s worth pointing out that they’re not UK-specific; the one-way street sign is labelled in German. The final tab gives you some simple drawing tools, including skid marks, although for some reason there’s no curved line available, which is slightly odd. Here you could mark up buildings or where someone was headed towards. Anything misplaced can be dragged to the bin or adjusted as necessary.

When you’ve got the sketch laid out to your satisfaction, you can label it, to highlight the various features.

Finally, hitting the print option produces a PDF file, which has the sketch map appended to a page with details of the two vehicles involved, and space for a written description, which can be filled in directly via the keyboard, rather than handwritten. Further options embedded in the PDF allow for printing or emailing.

Elsewhere on the site, you can find downloadable European Accident Statements, which can be printed off in two languages; for instance in English (for us to fill in) and in Polish or Swedish, for the other driver. These would be very useful when planning a trip abroad.

The site is still in beta at the moment with several of the links “under construction”, but hopefully it’ll stay free to use. Even as it stands part finished, it’s still a very useful resource.

Survival Skills training – more course reviews

This time by ‘Suzuki Boy’ after a London Traffic course.

“Met Kevin on Saturday for my advanced riding course and what a thoroughly good egg he is.

“Apart from being knowledgable he has all the hallmarks of an excellent teacher, non-judgemental, patient and perceptive.

“The two day course ran for 10 hours over Saturday and Sunday. During that time we covered a fair bit of ground. For me it was a case of being made aware of bad habits picked up from years of riding in London and 17 years of riding in general. All the classics were there, particularly where London riding is concerned. Riding on the bumper of the car in front, not enough use of the mirror, although life-savers weren’t too bad, not enough indication, over confident filtering (especially on double white lines, oops), hugging the white line etc, etc.

“But after talking things through and practising how to avoid and remedy my bad habits things started to progress nicely. By the end of the second day I’d learnt how to counter-balance on slow speed corners, invaluable for riding in London on a lardy bike. I also really got into and enjoyed the ‘point and squirt’ cornering technique that Kevin showed me, very similar to the method used and developed by Keith Code. In fact by the end of the second day while leading, 9 times out of 10 I was picking the same lines as Kevin following. Which considering his experience can’t be a bad thing. Over taking still needed some practise though, which I enjoyed getting to grips with blatting up the M20 to make a quick trip home.

“All in all a thoroughly informative and fun weekend, I learnt plenty of new stuff and broke a few bad habits from London riding, leaving the course feeling safer, smoother and quicker through corners. Although obviously it doesn’t end there as it’s all about practice.”

 

The second review followed a course for a couple up near Bury St Edmunds, not an area I’ve been to for a few years, so a bit of route planning with a map in advance was in order. Over to Paulybab:

“We both learned a huge amount over the 2 days Kevin spent with us.

“I won’t go into detail about everything we covered/learned but a couple of things stood out:

“First was; my partner has been having a problem with bends for the last few months. Technique and knowledge were ok but she had just lost confidence so was tensing up and rolling off the throttle when she should have been keeping it on ( very simplified version!!). We’d tried all sorts, including speaking to some really knowledgable long term bikers, but to little avail. Within a couple of hours Kevin had her confidence restored and leaning into bends like a good ‘un (in the wet too!). If we’d stopped right there it would have been worth the money

“The other thing was Point & Squirt, which I had thought I understood and was able to do, but turns out I didn’t really fully understand. Listening to Kevin’s explanation and then watching him demo it made me see very quickly what I wasn’t doing correctly. I still need to practice my newest skill but at least I’m practicing the right method now. The key learn for me here was that the biggest bar to learning something is to think you know it already.

“We really appreciated Kevin’s ability to flex his teaching styles as we both learn in quite different ways (I really like to understand something first before I try and do it). His building-block approach to skills and learning worked for us too, although you need a bit of faith for a few hours at first.

“We loved Kevin’s hi-tech etch-a-sketch which could do everything from showing us video clips to being used by Kevin for drawing cornering lines for us to understand.

“We also loved Kevin’s satnav system, which he seemed to be able to programme to take us down roads we didn’t even know existed even though they were relatively close to where we live (Particularly down that single lane cart track of a road with grass growing down the middle and a ford half way down it – never been across a ford on bikes before ).

“The weekend was full of things we learned (and to be honest I thought I knew a fair amount already), loads of stuff to think about and practice subsequently, and plenty to learn in the future.

“Thanks again Kevin for a great weekend. It wasn’t spoiled in any way by the rain spells – in fact we came away thinking that if we can do it all in poor weather we’ll be even better when it’s dry (sorry you got so wet on the way home though )

“The only training I’ve done before was the CBT/DAS last year, followed by the IAM stuff later in the year (passed test in November). Done a couple of slow control days with the local IAM group, and did Bikesafe recently.

“IAM & Bikesafe were a “civilianised” version of Roadcraft and as such were fairly inflexible in promoting the concepts therein, particularly positioning/cornering lines.

“Kevin’s approach was based around giving us more “tools in the toolbox” and getting us to understand the pro’s & con’s of any course of action.

“He was also more “real world”. An example of this was on a LH bend (country road) – I’m positioned just inside the white line a la Roadcraft. Kevin asks me later what do I actually lose if I sit a couple of feet inside the line – my answer; I lose very little in terms of view and gain in terms of safety margin re someone coming the other way on/over the white lines. I’ve been working out for myself for a little while that taking “extreme” positions doesn’t necessarily confer advantage, but it was really good to have someone with Kevins’ knowledge/experience to give me “permission” to do it.

“Conceptually, Kevin’s training seems to be based on the practical/what works best approach that not only allows for mistakes from yourself and others but shows you what to do to avoid them or cope with them if it happens. It also (very importantly!) looks at machine control skills which in Roadcraft, as far as I can see, are noticeable mainly by their absence.

“In terms of “usefulness” I have found all of the training I’ve done useful. I regard them as additive rather than one being better than the other. I’ve also learned a huge amount from reading about riding skills on this forum, Kevins’ website and several others (incl the MSF site recently after picking up the idea from an article in my local IAM magazine.”

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

It’s that time of the year again when the nights have drawn in and although the weather has been pretty mild down here in Kent, with just some wind and rain it can’t last before the cold weather arrives.

So a lot of folk will be looking for new riding kit in the next couple of weeks. Uncomfortable kit is often overlooked as a source of riding problems.

If there’s one thing that spending years teaching new riders has shown, it’s that most novices buy stuff on two criteria:

• looks
• price

It’s especially noticeable with helmets!

Occasionally on basic training courses, we take people into bike shops because they want to buy some riding gear. Despite all the fit/comfort advice, most of them will come out with something like “I want a Rossi replica” and buy one regardless, only to find that after 30 minutes it’s uncomfortable, after an hour it’s painful and after two hours riding, it feels like someone has driven a steel bar through your forehead!

Aside from fit and comfort, a decent locking mechanism on the visor to stop it fogging, and a quick release to clean or change it are probably most important on a winter helmet.

Other problem areas are gloves and boots.

Too-tight gloves get very painful and cut off the circulation, but riders continually buy gloves that are snug in the shop, without thinking that they’ll have to spend their time wrapped around the bars. Hard armour across the knuckles can make these things unwearable.

At the other end of the spectrum, massive winter gloves with loads of padding in the fingers means you end up operating the dip switch, indicators and horn simultaneously – and all you were trying to do was use the clutch.

Likewise stiff armour can make boots uncomfortable and too-thick soles and toes make it difficult to feel the rear brake (rear wheel lock ups!) and gear shift (lots of missed gears).

With jackets and jeans, you MUST try them sitting down, and preferably on your bike, if you can persuade the shop to let you. If not, ask for a chair. Make sure things like armour in pockets doesn’t dig in and stays in the right place. Too skin tight and it won’t be comfortable when seated, and there won’t be room for more insulating layers beneath you. Make sure that cuffs can be done up tight, or are loose enough to go over gloves. Look for a double storm flap over a zip.

A good cut for the jacket is relatively short at the front (though it should cover the top of your trousers) so water doesn’t ‘puddle’ in it, and relatively long at the back so it doesn’t ride up when seated and leaning forward. Yet many jackets are still cut straight across the bottom.

Many jackets and jeans now come with zips to stop this but check the zips actually zip together if you are buying separates. They may look the same but the length might not be!

Once again, people assume with winter clothing that more must equal better and so buy massively chunky “Michelin Man” jackets and trousers that make movement clumsy. Watch out for thick collars that make turning the head difficult. The other thing it can do is press up on the rear of the helmet, particularly on a sports bike. Try jackets on with your helmet and in your riding position. Neck warmers like a Buff will keep you warm without the bulk.

Trousers can bunch behind the knees if they are too thick. Some kind of waistband adjustment will help too. Don’t forget the legs will ride up when seated – check they are long enough when sitting and not just when standing up.

If you’re going to be riding in leathers, then you will need waterproofs. One piece suits are warmer and generally a bit dryer, but are tough to put on – some of the better ones use zips that go the length of the legs to make it easier.

Several thin layers are better than one when it comes to insulation and recently “windstopper” shirts have begun to appear, finally recognising that the chest receives most of the cooling effect as you ride. A trip to the cycling shop will find you Lycra cycling shorts, long-johns, bib’n'brace as well as shirts that do a good job of trapping a layer of warm air against the skin for minimal weight and bulk and usually at a greatly reduced price from the much less sophisticated kit that has made it to the motorcycle market.

One advantage of cycling kit is that you can strip off your riding gear and though you may excite a few comments, at least you won’t look like you are wearing your underwear, a problem with most thermals!

But the best way of staying warm has to be heated clothing. There’s just nothing like sitting on the bike on a freezing wet day wearing your own personal heated blanket.

Caveat Emptor

I found this old article on the website archive.

From the letters page of a well-known monthly:

“I had only a couple of hunded quid to spend on some kit so I went for a two piece *** suit which seemed like a bit of a bargain.

“All was fine for a few weeks until I pulled out from a junction one wet day and crossed a slippery wet line. The back stepped out, sending the bike into a graceful pirouette. Feeling some pain in my right knee, I looked down only to find that two pieces of leather which were sewn together across the knee had come completely apart.

“I contacted *** and was given the following reply: “*** Clothing is not considered to be “Personal Protective Equipment as defined in or within the scope of the Personal Protective (CE directive) regulations 1992 and has therefore not been examined or tested.”

“I naively assumed that if the clothing was designed specifically for biking it would protect me better. The money spent was a complete waste.”

Unfortunately, if you check your leathers and fabric suits, the vast majority of you will find a little label sewn into the seam somewhere making that very statement.

As you can see, it’s a cop out clause – what it effectively allows the manufacturer to do is sell potentially sub-standard clothing legally. So long as they advertise the clothing with no reference to its potential use as motorcycle safety wear (take a look in the catalogues – lots of glossy models modelling the kit, but spot many pics of them riding the bikes whilst wearing it?), then if you fall off and the clothing fails, they can say you are putting it to a use it’s not designed for.

Personally, I think that the guy ought to get some legal advice, and sue the bike shop that sold it to him, as they are the first port of call under consumer legislation, NOT the manufacturer. If the shops came under enough pressure from disgruntled customers, they’d stop stocking crap clothing.

So take your time to choose the kit you buy. I’ve had to take several trainees off shopping again, because the kit they bought turns out to be so uncomfortable it’s unwearable. Don’t make the same mistake!

Winter Chain Preservation – one from the archives

Winter is a tough time on bikes. And one of the hardest hit bits of a machine is the drive chain.

Safety

People regularly cut fingers off in the drive chain. Don’t do anything to the chain with the motor running. Sticking a finger between chain and sprocket doesn’t make for a clean cut either.

 

Expected Life

Some poor unfortunate soul on Visordown was bemoaning the fact that a new chain and sprockets for his CB500 was costing him over £100. Well, that’s the price of an original equipment kit. The worrying thing is that he needed them after just 6000 miles of use on a brand new bike.

Now, given that I’ve got nearly 50k out of the OEM chain on a GS500 and upwards of 20k miles on a 750 fitted with a cheaper aftermarket chain, what went wrong?

Adjustment

My suspicions were roused when he said he was checking it and adjusting it weekly.

In 6k miles I doubt it had really needed adjusting more than a couple of times and my guess is that he was running it far too tight and causing the wear he was adjusting for.

He wasn’t alone in making this mistake. The senior instructor at the school I used to work was used to adjusting the chains on CG125s. When we got our six brand new GS500s for Direct Access, he adjusted them on the stands. But when riding them, you could hear the chain creaking and squeaking they were so tight – I had to go round and slacken them all off again.

Check the manual, but a chain on a road bike should usually have something like 1.5-2.5cm (3/4″ to 1″) play in the middle of the lower run WHILST THE RIDER IS SEATED ON THE BIKE.

If you do it with the bike on the centre stand and the rear suspension extended, it’s almost certainly too tight when you sit on it. Get someone to check it whilst you sit on it, set it accordingly then measure the slack on the stand – then you can use this NEW figure to set the chain on the stand! Easy peasy.

You’ll be quite surprised how much it can tighten.

Don’t forget to make allowances for any tight spots when you adjust it – set the chain with chain at its tightest spot.

I always adjust chains so they are just a little on the loose side, and usually keep an inch or so play at the tightest spot. It’s not going to jump off the sprockets with a just a little extra play, but it does take the stress of the bearings. Wheel bearings are relatively easy to change – the gearbox output shaft bearing is a complete engine strip to repair!

Lubrication

Our friend with the dented wallet also mentioned he cleaned it every two weeks with Pledge, followed by WD40. He then changed to paraffin, followed by WD. Pledge??? Where did he get that tip from?? (Actually he told me – a lady bikers’ site in the US!).

I have no idea what the solvent is in Pledge. As far as I know WD40 is paraffin based and O ring safe – a lot of Americans use in in the desert States because sand sticks to chain lube, but it is mostly propellant and solvents, doesn’t provide a lot of lubrication, and what little oil there is will certainly wash off very quickly in the rain.

So, what is the job that chain lube is supposed to do? Assuming an O ring or X ring chain, the idea is that the chain lube is only needed to stop the O rings wearing out. The grease needed to lubricate the internal bits of the chain is sealed behind the O/X rings.

So what should you lube the chain with? If you read the manufacturer’s handbook, they recommend that you clean O and X ring chains with paraffin before lubricating with hypoid (gear oil). Very few chain manufacturers recommend chain sprays.

If you do use chain sprays, then apply it to a clean chain – otherwise you are simply spraying the grease over a layer of grinding paste, which will do the sealing rings no good at all. Clean the chain with paraffin and try to avoid getting chemical degreasers on the chain – they rot the O/X rings.

To keep the chain in good nick, you don’t need to smother it in lube either – you don’t wash your bike every time you ride it and you shouldn’t need to lube the chain every time you ride either. As long as there is an oily film that’s all it needs.

If you have an older or low capacity machine with a conventional chain without O rings, then the best idea is to apply the lube to a warm chain – lube the chain after a ride, then as it cools, the lube will be drawn into the chain.

If you must use an aerosol spray, my vote goes for Castrol Chain Wax. It’s not a sticky, penetrating gloopy grease like many of the other sprays, but leaves a dry to the touch, waxy coat on the chain when it drys, which doesn’t attract grit. The downside is that it washes off quite fast.

Of the more conventional grease-type sprays, Motorex 622 seems OK but doesn’t stay on the chain that long in the wet. One reason for using Motrex is that they do a kit with a mini-spray can that’s refillable from the main can – which is why I have some. You can easily stick the mini-spray under the seat or even in a pocket.

So what’s the problem with gear oil? Well, there are two.

The first is that hypoid washes off in wet riding – so I tend to use hypoid as a rule for most riding and if I know I have a long wet ride coming up, put a thin coat of chain lube on the chain and take a small pocket sized spray with me.

The other is that it tends to fling over the bike and, if you overdo it, over the rear tyre. On the other hand, this ‘fling’ property tends to make the chain self-cleaning. I try to apply the oil when I park the bike, rather than 30 seconds before I ride away. I dribble hypoid over the chain, making sure that I get it between the side plates to lubricate the O rings.

As a result mileages are impressive. I usually get 20+k miles out of a chain. The Hornet has been used in all weathers and I’ve just fitted the third chain to it at something over 40k miles. The current O ring on the GS has done around 40k (original fitment), the FZ has a DID O ring and has done around 25k, and the GSXR has a DID X ring, is on around 15k, and has loads of adjustment left.

Chain oilers

The other option (which will pay for itself very quickly if you wear out chains in 6k miles) is a chain oiler. Although quality varies, a decent chain oiler keeps the chain clean, doesn’t coat the back of the bike with sticky grease if you get the flow right and is fit and forget, so long as you remember to top it up from time to time.

Identifying a worn chain

O ring chains seem to need no adjustment for some considerable time, then one day they are loose. From then on, they usually require regular adjustment for the rest of their life.

This generally coincides with the chain developing tight spots. You’ll spot this as the chain rises and falls as you spin the back wheel. Careful cleaning and lubrication may get the worst of the tight spots out, but usually the chain has had it at this point and you might as well bin it and fit another.

A sudden need for big adjustment suggests that one of t he bushes has failed internally to a link – I had a Reynolds chain on the GSXR that failed exactly that way soon after I bought it, despite being covered in chain lube by the previous owner – when I removed it, you could see that a couple of the links had pulled 3 or 4mm further apart than they should have done.

The give away was a horrid clanking from the back end of the bike that changed in time with road speed.

The way to check whether a chain is worn out is to try to lift a link off the rear sprocket – it should stay snug to the teeth – if it lifts off significantly then the chain is cream crackered. This test is a good one if you are buying a used bike – it isn’t unknown for the unscrupulous to spend a few minutes knocking a link out of a chain to make it look like new, and save themselves a few bob.

Keep an eye on the sprockets too. The teeth on the sprocket should be nice and symmetrical – if they look at all like a shark-fin, curled over to one side, they are “hooked” and worn out.

Popular wisdom is that you should change chain and sprockets as a set, but with the extended mileages you can get out of an X ring chain, its possible to wear the front sprocket out before the chain – when you think about the relative sizes, the front gets a lot more wear than the rear!

Front sprockets are generally cheap (£5-8) and it’s worth considering changing this on its own if the chain still has plenty of life.

The rear may well be perfectly OK when you change the chain, so if it’s not hooked, you can save quite a bit of cash by not changing it at the same time.

Some screenshots from the Garmin Oregon 200

The main menu screen, one of several sideways-scrollable screens;

Opensource mapping with large fonts (note the transparent buttons);

 

Turn-by-turn routing;

 

The “trip” screen with three large fields, and the latest firmware black on white display.

 

Compare the readability with one of the original backgrounds;

Garmin Oregon 200 – a waterproof, multipurpose GPS for the bike

It’s quite a few years since I joined the ranks of GPS-equipped riders.

My conversion from GPS sceptic to GPS user happened in the Alsace back in the early years of this decade. I was leading a group ride, and doing my usual thing, trying to navigate from a map on the tank. I’d preplanned the route and knew where I wanted to go but we’d barely got underway before I was confronted with a junction with two roads going in the direction I wanted and not a sign in view.

I made a snap decision and took the wider, better surfaced of the two roads. Within half a mile we were climbing away from the river we should have been following, and I knew I’d taken the wrong turn.

I carried on, hoping to improvise, looking for a road that would lead us back to our planned route, but the road came to a dead-end at a large car park outside the local football stadium, which had been built on the flat land on top of the hill out of the river valley.

We did a U turn, backtracked down to the town and took the cobbled narrow road that I’d ignored. Two minutes down the valley, we were out of the town and on the sweeping bends beside the river I’d chosen.

Over lunch, Steve wandered over to have a chuckle about the football stadium excursion, and told me he’d known instantly we were on the wrong route from the GPS. He demonstrated the black and white map, and the primitive routing function on his Garmin GPSIII plus that allowed him to have pre-set the waypoints for the trip.

Well, I was impressed enough that when he upgraded to the next generation, I bought his old GPSIII plus, wired it into the bike’s electrics, and there it’s sat on the handlebar ever since.

As the prices of GPS units fell, the maps got better, screens turned colour and routing improved, so my III+ was relegated to the role of digital speedo and clock, with a cheapie Garmin i3 designed for a car tucked up under the screen out of the rain doing the routing. That set up has served me well for the last four years or so.

But this summer, the III+ screen began failing, so I decided it was time to update it to something more modern.

I looked at the options and steered away from the motorcycle-specific Zumos towards the Oregon/Dakota range.

The closely related Oregon and Dakota series are both much more portable than the Zumos, which means they’re true multi-purpose GPS’s – important as I wanted to use the GPS on my MTB and when walking. The Zumos are too big to slip easily into a pocket and too heavy for an MTB.

Unlike the Zumos with their internal battery pack, the Oregon and Dakota are powered by AA batteries which means you’re not tied to a dedicated charger. Another consideration is that you’re not left with a doorstop when the battery fails, needing either expensive back-to-base repairs or risky home surgery. Let’s face it, this is likely to be long before the GPS packs up.

I also wanted something that would run my existing (and expensive!) Garmin Euro-maps I’d already bought on mSD for my i3, which ruled out the Tom-Tom and the new Data-Becker bike GPSs.

Finally the tall screen view is ideal for navigating. I’m amazed that no-one else seems to have commented on this but the wide screen view is totally wrong for following a route that’s AHEAD of you!

I also wanted to keep the price down and the Oregon 200 seemed to offer the best blend of screen size, features and price. Cheap the Zumo’s aren’t.

Missing features over the Zumo were:

- lack of built in UK routable map, which was easily remedied as an excellent open source one is available via Talkytoaster, more on which on another review
- lack of internal speaker and no MP3 player, which isn’t that important on the bike in my opinion
- lack of bluetooth, which again isn’t an important feature to me

Probably the biggest question marks were firstly the fact that the car kit is an additional extra and not cheap at over £40, and secondly the lack of spoken turn-by-turn instructions which would have been useful in the car. But given its main use was to be on-bike or hand-held where I wouldn’t use the spoken instructions in any case, this wasn’t a deal killer. I simply ordered a bicycle mount to fit the Hornet’s bars.

Out of the box and fired up, it took a few minutes to lock onto satellites as expected, but was soon ready for action.

Mounting it on the bike and going for a ride showed the immediate concerns were two-fold.

Firstly the dullness of the touch-sensitive screen made reading the map page difficult with no backlight. Worse, the trip page wasn’t any better, with the white on black numbers being almost invisible in daylight. Turning the backlight full up and permanently on helped marginally but impacted battery life, bring it down around 3-4 hours with a set of nearly new 2700mAh NiMH batteries, a long way short of the claimed 20 hours.

As a comparison, my i3 is clearly visible in bright sun with the screen brightness permanenty set on 2 of 5, and battery life is 6-7 hours at this setting. The Oregon trip page was difficult to read because the numbers were far too small and with poor contrast. Whoever chose to make the display white on black over a coloured and patterned background clearly never used it outdoors!

Secondly, there was very limited customisation of the fields on the trip meter with only small-sized fields displayed. The old III+ gave you an option to expland two of the fields to use most of the display. As the trip display was one of the main reasons for purchasing the device – I still wanted a digital clock and speedo on view most of the time, this poor display was a second major disappointment.

This was not an encouraging start. At this point, I was definitely thinking of sending it back, notwithstanding the unit’s excellent performance in the hand-held mode. With a suitable map installed, it was able to route me round footpaths in woodland in a hilly area where I often get disoriented and lost with just an ordinary paper map.

Reading around on the internet found an excellent forum and reading the posts there, it turned out the screen brightness and readability was a well-known problem.

I came up with two solutions others had discovered.

The first option was a series of white backgrounds to replace the patterned backgrounds that the device ships with. Installing these via USB immediately seemed to improve the map readability (I suspect the background is still behind the map), and it certainly helped the clarity of the white numbers on the trip meter – they were being dimmed and ‘fuzzed’ by the coloured background half-hidden behind – but they were still difficult to read.

The second suggestion was a firmware upgrade. Now I’m always a bit dubious about doing things like this. The internet is littered with stories of firmware upgrades that have gone wrong, but the unit I had bought from Amazon had a fairly early firmware version. So I took a chance and ran the upgrade software from Garmin.

A few thankfully hitch-free minutes later, I had the latest stable release on the Oregon, and was able to start playing with the new functions.

The most important change from my point of view was that the trip meter display could now be made black numerals on plain white background. Instantly I had good readability in sunlight with the backlight off.

I could also choose how to display trip info – a large number of small fields or three large fields. Joy! I could have my large digital clock and speedo back! It’s not quite as clear as the old III+ but it’s perfectly usable even with the backlight off.

The backlight itself can be set to come on at junctions to aid readability whilst preserving battery life, and with intermittent backlight use, battery life has been extended to seven or eight hours, which should be more than enough for most riding days, though I’ve not yet tried it at night for any length of time. It also comes on when you touch the screen if you need it for any reason.

Routing works fine on the opensource UK map, routes can be uploaded and tracks can be downloaded by USB and displayed in Garmin’s Mapsource PC application.

The unit also supports Points of Interest (POIs) which means a speed camera database can also be uploaded, as well as custom POIs. The proximity alert switches to a new warning screen, but remember there’s no alert tone because there’s no speaker, so it’s not as good as a car or bike specific GPS for this function.

Finding locations is achieved via the usual series of menus that allows searching through built in and custom POI’s, waypoints, recent finds and cities. The on-screen keyboard is alphabetic rather than QWERTY which takes a little getting used to, but it works. It’s quick and simple to find a destination and route to it.

The touch-screen is fairly good. It does tend to think that a ‘drag’ is actually a ‘tap’ at times, which is a pain as you have to cancel the pushpin the tap made, but cancelling takes the screen display back to your original location, so you have to start panning again. You can’t use it with a gloved finger, but quite frankly with the risk of scratching the screen, would you want to?

Route planning is fortunately much easier on the PC. Connecting the device to the PC took a moment to set up – there was an initial “device not recognised” problem, but finding the right sequence of connecting cables and pushing power buttons eventually got it installed. The unit and the microSD card then show up as seperate drives on the PC, making it easy to move the POIs and routes back and forth.

When using routing, it’s possible to switch off the map view and onto a turn-by-turn screen, where each new junction is fixed on screen. As you approach a time and distance countdown shows far far off you are, then when you’re nearly there, your little travelling ‘dart’ appears at the bottom and works its way up to the junction. As soon as you’ve negotiated it, the screen jumps to the next junction and resets the countdown. It’s surprisingly practical.

One other thing I do like is the way that profiles are supported. This allows to you do things like reorder the main menu, change backlight settings and reset the trip page display to suit specific uses.

It’s got geo-caching, man overboard and hunting/fishing functions I’ll never use, but the (ir)relevant buttons can be re-ordered and even deleted from the menus so they don’t clog the interface up in my profiles.

I’ve set up a “trip n map” profile where I mostly use the trip page so the backlight is on low and intermittent, a “routing” page where the routing functions are on the first menu page and the backlight is on high and intermittent, a “walking” profile where the on-board compass is easy to show. The settings are ’sticky’ so there’s no need to reorder everything when you next use the GPS for a different purpose. There’s also a ’screen lock’ option for use in a pocket.

Functionally, it’s vastly improved by the firmware update, but there are still a few tricks missing. The ability to switch directly from map view to trip view and back via an onscreen button would be useful, as would the ability to remove the transparent buttons from the map altogether, perhaps only appearing when you touch the screen.

The data screens that can be displayed on the map are transparent so they overlay the map, which is the worst of both worlds. It would be better if that part of the map was just cut off and the digits displayed plain black on white.

There are signs of penny-pinching. It would be nice if batteries were included, and though the PC cable is in the box, there’s no 12v cable to connect to a cigarette lighter or auto mount.

The bicycle mount is also a bit primitive compared with the one that held the III+ on, just a bit of plastic with a half-moon cut out and four cable ties, which isn’t much for £13! The old mount was a hinged design that clamped around the bars and locked with a nut. It’s also a bit fiddly to lock onto and unlock from the mount.

Verdict? Overall, the Oregon 200 is good but it isn’t perfect, and the screen visibility will be a big factor for some people. For my uses, 4/5 and recommended. But do try to check the screen before you buy, and bear in mind that firmware update.

Some more comments on recent courses…

Here’s a few recent comments on courses up in the Peaks and here in Kent:

Bonners: ” Very knackering day, but very useful and informative….”

DDB: “Good course though – I feel vastly more confident about choosing the right line through bends and not getting caught out half-way round…”

Daesimps: “The course was very good and has improved my confidence no end. I’m also far more aware of road positioning when taking junctions/bends.”

BigJim: ” For anyone thinking of taking one of Kevin’s courses “Just do it” What Kevin showed us and went through really was what I needed after a year of riding after doing DAS. I’m a lot more confident and im now looking at my lines and planning my corners rather than going in quick, hard on the brakes, fling it round the corner then back on it.”

King756: “Another thumbs up from me, thanks Kevin. Really enjoyed it. I now know where I should be when on the road in town / corners. Just need it little more time practicing making sure my lines are right and being a bit more positive on the throttle/brakes.”

Melons: “Was also intending to bore you with multiple paragraghs giving a blow by blow account of my five & a half hours riding the twisties of Kent, but quite frankly what’s the point?

“Instead, I’ll just comment on how impressed I was with ‘Kevin’, he’s a very likeable bloke, very calm/measured, patient and really puts you at ease, so at ease that I can’t really remember riding any corners that afternoon – after an initial chat, coupled with ‘in ear’ commentary the Country twisties that normally make me feel so ill at ease seemed to straighten out, loose their menace and become extremelly comfortable, natural to navigate.

“Whilst the cost is higher than the initial ticket to an IAM ‘tour’ (yet cheaper than a plumber) the advantages of an intense & immediate riding fix imo far outweigh any argument for ‘drip drip’ training formulae, and I’m still rather surprised at just how enjoyable & confidence inspiring the day was.

“A thoroughly recommended, educational & enjoyable day out”.

So there you are.

There might still be a few days left in November when the weather looks reasonable, and I’m open for training again in March, so you’ve no excuse not to save up for next year!

Staying connected on the move – Palm Centro smartphone

With all the hype over the new Palm Pre and the release of the iPhone on Orange, it’s easy to overlook the Palm Centro smartphone.

It’s not exactly new, having been originally put on the market in the US nearly two years ago, but if you want a phone with a keyboard that does basic email tasks, can browse the web and runs the odd application too, then the Centro is still worth a look.

First up, it runs the Palm operating system. People either seem to love it or hate it. Personally, having experienced a couple of versions of mobile Windows, I’m happy enough with the Palm.

As an operating system, it’s old and rather unsophisicated. But if unsophisticated means “not particularly pretty but functional and relatively bullet-proof” then I’ve no complaints.

The current fuss about the iPhone ‘apps store’ amuses me, as the Palms has allowed add-ons for years, many of which are freeware and of surprisingly good quality too. Be warned that some older applications can break this latest version, which is v5, so you have to be a bit careful when testing what works, but a reset always brings the phone back to life if you do get a lock up.

If you don’t fancy add-ons, then built-in you get a decent range of functionality.

The phone and text functions work as you would expect. The contact manager is part of a PIM suite. The PIM functions synchronise with a desktop client which runs well under XP. Palm Desktop is a bit old fashioned looking and feeling, but it does work, and the hotsynch function works well.

The media synch function also works but is slow. When you do get media uploaded to the phone, there’s a Palm JPG and video player, though it’s a bit limited, and a more functional version of the Kinoma the movie player is also installed, along with PTunes music player.

I’m not someone who gets on with ear-bud style earphones, so the ability to play music via the rear speaker was an unexpected bonus, and I was suprised quite how good the rear speaker is when playing music. Compared with a decent set of speakers or headphones, it’s tinny of course but it is usable. One downside is the 2.5mm jack, which means you’ll need an adapter for most headphones.

Email is quick and easy to set up, and worked perfectly with my POP3 account, allowing me to send and receive anywhere the phone could pick up a signal. Blazer, the web-browser, is hardly blazingly fast, but the “turbo” setting that turns off graphics speeds things up significantly. It’s not particularly good at rendering pages, but it’s usable.

You also get Googlemaps, which when updated to the latest version allows for a “where am I” function which triangulates between mobile phone masts and traffic updates, which could come in handy.

It’s easy to switch between the various built-in applications using the touch screen, or four pre-programmed buttons.

In the hand, it’s a fairly small piece of kit and light, not much bigger or heavier than my old Nokia. It’s distinctly smaller than some of the Blackberries.

The downside of that is a relatively small screen, though it’s very bright and crisp. I run it on the lowest setting for backlight which aids battery life and it’s quite big enough to use to show trainees video clips under indoor lighting. I also read ebooks on mine and text is quite clear enough for reading to be a perfectly acceptable experience, but fuzzy PDFs are a struggle.

The 320×320 touch screen is just big enough to use with a finger, though I generally prefer to avoid prints by using the stylus, which neatly locks into the side of the phone. Many reviewers have commentated on the bendy stylus. It’s not broken in a year’s use and after a bit you get used to it – but it would have been better had it been more robust.

Oddly enough for a Palm, there’s no ‘graffiti’ character recognition application though the rubbery keys provide enough tactile feedback so that although keyboard is on the small side, it’s perfectly functional for short emails and memo-writing, and far better than predictive text. If you feel the need, bundled with the phone is a version of “Documents to Go” from Dataviz, which allows reading and editing of Word and Excel documents, though to be honest, why anyone would want to escapes me!

The 1.3Mp camera captures images at either at 1X or 2X digital zoom, and can record VGA video but don’t expect masterpieces. The colour is washed out in daylight though it functions OK under lights.

There’s also a microSD slot on the side of the phone but be careful not to put the card in upside down. It’s difficult to shift once it’s wedged in place. Even the right way round a long fingernail helps get the card out again.

Usually I have the Bluetooth function switched off to save battery life, but when I’ve used it, it’s synched with a couple of devices easily enough though I couldn’t get it to work with my Bluetooth bike headset. No big deal as I don’t particularly want to answer the phone whilst riding, and I only spent a couple of minutes trying to get them set up, so I dare say it’s fixable.

A year into ownership, and battery life is holding up well. It generally need charging once a week, either rapidly via the mains adaptor or a USB connection, which takes a little longer via the hotsynch cable.

One word of warning – if the battery goes completely flat, it won’t charge on USB, something that stuffed me on holiday last year. I thought the phone was broken! I actually took it into PC World and asked if I could plug it into the power cable to their display model. It immediately came alive, and I was able to continue to charge it later via USB.

People have also complained about the flimsy battery cover. Again, a year on I’ve had no problems.

Downsides? You don’t get wifi or GPS, and data connection is via the relatively slow GSM/EDGE, but the pros are that it’ll work where you have a mobile phone signal. Oh, and you only get black in the UK.

Data download costs, of course, but my Orange plan offers a day’s browsing for £1 or 7 days for £5 which is reasonable for occasional use.

However, you should be aware the Orange plan runs midnight to midnight, whatever time of the day you sign up, and the “your data plan has expired” mail isn’t sent till mid-morning, some nine hours after your plan has actually expired! The first couple of times I used it, I assumed that you got 24 hours access, and wondered why I ran out of credit!

There are probably better smartphones out there and there are simpler, cheaper ‘just’ phones. But the Palm Centro is around £160 SIM-free and unlocked, which to my mind is a reasonable price for a reasonably functional smartphone.

Nice video, smart bike, shame about the cornering line!

Ducati have produced a video teaser for the up-coming 796 Hypermotard.

Beautifully filmed and a nice looking bike but not so sure about the cornering line demonstated!

Hats off to Ducati, but head off for their test rider.

Eeek!