Pompey Mick

Roland, What on earth did you moan about before ETS. How come ETS is suddenly the death of the sport, I thought Widowhood was going to do that when it became popular many years ago. How many 'natural only' clubs are still in existance. Have you just bought a T3?, because I think one of the biggest gripes about ETS is that fanciers are seeing the value of their T3's plummet, knowing how long it took for the Toulets to fade into oblivion I can quite believe this as most fanciers feel that their clock, once purchased ,will last for life. There's a new kid on the block now, and whether you like it all not there will be a lot more 'haves' about, and a lot will be 'grass roots' fanciers who are not afraid of progress. As for time penalties, I have never seen any time allowance offered to the less mobile in our ranks or fanciers who, due to work committments, entrust the timing of their birds in less experienced hands so why start now, we didn't worry about fairness before ETS so why is it all important now?

I am a Club Secretary and my Club will be using the ETS next season courtesy of a grant which I applied for. What I will say, from the fanciers point of view ETS is wonderfully simple, in fact marking and checking from their point of view is completely automatic. The work lies in the hands of the officials whose job it will be to do the preliminary groundwork to allow the marking and checking to take place. Every pigeon has to be linked to its ETS ring, which involves the typing of every ring no, sex & colour into the system and syncronising with the members clocks and then with the pigeon. Also the software has to have the races entered into it, and then if you are manually importing the data into a race results program then all the master timer setting and checking times are unique to each member, resulting in more work. I can quite understand Secretaries baulking at this extra work load, especially if they are not computer literate, it can be quite daunting especially if things go wrong. I am not especially computer literate and I am at this moment feeling my way into the system which I have on trial. With 25 members and an average of 40 birds per loft I am looking at having to register close on a 1000 Old Birds, Young Birds will be a bit easier as you can enter a sequence of rings, i.e. GB 07N31611-31640. To my mind it would be wrong to try and force ETS on to any Secretaries who do not feel comfortable with this sort of work, if you want ETS in your Club you will need competent members to stand up and volunteer to do the administration, or stick with manual clocking. The more members who get involved with the administrative side of this system the easier it will be, in fact it is imperative that at least two members are competent with all aspects of ETS, after all we have Clock Committees in Clubs for manual clocks and there is a need for similar committees for ETS use, more so on the administrative side.

Any photos Stuart? I've got a club meeting tomorrow when there will be a Unikon demo and the members would appreciate an insight on what they have to do. Thanks to everyone for their replies.

My Club will be buying ETS for the members and they will be receiving their systems shortly. As we are all ETS novices can any members post photos of their ETS trapping set-ups, or give me information of the availability of ready-made traps, so I can distribute examples to my members so they can prepare for next year's racing.

I know the initial printout is to be done through a printer only but I was thinking of inputting the data into the PC after the initial RPRA printout, if possible.

Has any Club used the East Coast Software race program with the Unikon interface data transferring function ?

I'm in the same position as superleeds working a 12 hr day and twice recently I have had fanciers receive my pigeon from a non-fancier and happily look after it until I could collect at the weekend, both at the 60ml drive mark. When a non-fancier has a pigeon it is usually imperative that the sooner it is in the hands of a fancier the better it is for the bird The RPRA will give you local fanciers names in this instance.

These any good Ted? They belong to a pair of (Roland) Janssen-Segers I purchased in 2001 before Massarella got them.

Anyone got a copy of the ''YB Light System'' by R.P.C. System Videos or similar they are willing to sell.

A fellow Club member, Mick Boam races his birds to a shared garden shed in his daughters house, no more than 6ft wide for old & young. He raced up to 7 birds per race for the OB and sent up to 9 YB (once). He missed 4 races due to heart surgery but still won 3 races in a competitive club of 23 members. Definately a case of quality over quantity.

Solent Fed's last race this weekend from Truro

In James Dolier's book 'The Thief Pouter' he talks of 'The Spanish Thief Pouter' and it would seem that the breed could have originated from Spain.

British Barcelona Club lib 9.15 Lt NE wind at Lamballe, Will be a testing race, good luck to everyone.

Portsmouth 09.00, Early sun has gone, 90% high cloud, no warmth, damp air. Vis still good.

Portsmouth 07.30, bright sunny start here in Pompey, but clouid to the North. Wind very light NNE,lot of dew. http://www.harboureye.co.uk/

Just taken this from Pigeonchat: STEVE HOLE SILVER MEDAL Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 353 Location: SHIFNAL SHROPSHIRE SO FOR THE BENIFIT TO PIGEON FANCIERS UP AND DOWN THE COUNTRY, ME AND KAREN WERE TALKING TO A FANCIER THAT HAS JUST DISCOVERED THAT THE YELLOW FLASHERS FROM THE ROADWORKS KEEP THE HAWKES AWAY, HE TOLD US THAT HE USED TO GET REGULAR HAWK STRIKES IN THE GARDEN AND SINCE HE STARTED USEING THE FLASHER HE HAS NOT SEEN THE HAWK, SOUNDS FEESABLE SO MAYBE SOME OF YOU WHO SUFFER WITH HAWKES COULD TRY IT. YOU NEVER KNOW ?

Very good site, Tony. All you could ask for on one site weatherwise.

Really enjoyable articles,not all about pigeons, quite a lot about his sheepdog trilals. Sincere condolences to all his family.

I lost a grizzle hen two weeks ago and my wife received a phone call that it was resident in a Mr Bailey's garden in Eastbourne. As I was at work my wife phoned the RPRA for any local fanciers. They told her that the nearest fancier was Barry Carrol, luckily he was only two roads from Mr Bailey and so he kindly took the bird round to him. On contacting Barry I arranged to collect the bird on Saturday (a 150 ml round trip), while we were chatting I said I was working at Horsham but was unable to drive from there as I was in a works van. on Tuesday Barry phoned me and told me that he could arrange for a friend of his to take it to Horsham where he worked and I could collect it from there on Wednesday I readily agreed and found out that his office was less than 10 mins walk from my site. The upshot is that my errant grizzle hen is now back in her loft thanks to the kindness & help of three complete strangers (two non-fanciers)who all played a part in getting her home quickly.

I've had a couple of pair of blackbirds feeding during their breeding season, they love sultanas, they can pick up a nice beakful. Also the sparrows after the feathers, but now it's just starlings.

I,ve just got this from Pigeonchat about racing hens on darkness, could be just what you're looking for. http://www.racingpigeons-toye.com/yearstory.htm

There's a couple of good books on Ebay which have been discussed in the past, The Four Seasons 110165119462 Dave Allen Widowhood Year 280149173218 Both are excellent books

I had similar problems, put my application back several weeks.

I've just been reading the Bricon Speedy User Guide and it has a section on multiple timings on one pad. It actually recommends controlling the number of pigeons crossing the pad. I quote '' On the landing board you build an area which is lower, under which the antenna is installed. The pigeons enter onto the landing board one by one, and not all at the same time, and as a result the registration of the birds is optimised.'' (They also draw attention to the fact that you install the antenna as per your organisation's stipulations.)

If you check any one-race result they do the times in 100th Sec and the reason why Club ETS systems print to the nearest second is because the software has been programmed to do this because RPRA rulings mean you have to manually input the times, and current Race programs will not take decimal seconds. The timing of two pigeons on one second requires a bit of prelim work, you need to have one thimble in the drum and the other in position above ready to drop in and have to catch the seconds right, (not to be recommended with your first pigeon)