Pompey Mick

Here at Portsmouth at 7.15am I am afraid the early sun has gone and it is now 100% cloud cover with no warmth. Hope your birds went early Slatey.

Put your message on the 'Fancy Pigeons' page and head it 'Tipplers & Tumblers' you should get a better response.

Only you will know if you are breeding too close but I have known in my own small club at least two cases of serious inbreeding causing defective youngsters with physical and mental deficiences so if you are confident of the health of your pigeons then inbreeding is a possibility for this problem.

Frank's back online if you wanty to drop him a line, I'm sure he'd like to hear from you all.

There used to be a 'News of the World' race, to be able to enter ,your pigeon had to win a race with specified minimum number of entries. I think the News of the World race was normally a South Road race and 'The People' race was North Road

When I started racing in 1963 if a NFC rung youngster entered your loft it was looked upon as something special, a youngster that had been selected by it's owner to represent him in the Young Bird National. At that time my Federation left the National dates free so that all the members who raced National could concentrate on the NATIONAL. The local Clock Station was a hive of activity with all the National flyers congregating together and the races themselves were meticulously prepared for. Today, sadly , that is not the case with so called 'Nationals' and Specialist Clubs racing on a near weekly basis, with an awful lot of fanciers racing this type of racing only I would suggest that in a lot of cases 99% of the birds entered are 'fodder' especially the shorter races. In the early sixties you would never see fanciers entering 30's and 40's they would enter a hand picked team of birds prepared for the job. There are still fanciers of that calibre about today but I feel they are a dying breed, when the NFC and the MidlandsNFC start picking race programmes on economic grounds then it is obvious that they are after quantity rather than quality.

10 out of 11 from Stratford, been raining since 10.00am apart from a short break mid-afternoon. Very miserable weather at the moment 16.00hrs.

Solent Fed let go at Stratford 8.00 no wind. Weather still good in Portsmouth, high cloud, very bright, sun burning through.

Thanks a lot Tony, I spoke to Keith this morning. Just shows how useful the Forum is. Mick.

Portsmouth 6.00am blue skies, calm

Can any members help me to contact 'Keith of Dagenham' He had one of my pigeons go to his loft last Sunday and upon contacting me he said he would keep it to the end of the week and get it down to Portsmouth on a local lorry. I have tried contacting him on the number he gave me, but I must have copied it wrong. The number I wrote down was 07930 865395. The bird was in a poor state and he was going to give it chance to recuperate before returning it. I wouldn't like him to think I don't care about the bird, because I will send for it if necessary. Can anyone help?

Thanks Pigeonpete,I've put that one on my favourites list.

I think it must be a different formula now because the Aviform I used years ago was like treacle, very dark on a molassess base. I have only gone back to using it in the last couple of years.

The trouble with pigeon fanciers is that this sport is a time consuming occupation and many fanciers either just haven't got the time or can't be bothered to spend the time on the administration side of the sport. We get the leadership we deserve by our apathy. I am just as bad, with a full time job where I am away from home for 12 hrs a day I find I am loathe to spend a large part of my valuable weekend leisure time in attending Federation meetings. I do my bit by being Secretary of my Club but there are things happening at Federation level which I have to accept because other people are putting theirselves out and attending Committee meetings and obviously running the Sport in a way that they feel is right for whatever reason and until I show the same committment to the Sport I have to go along with their decisions.

Hi Ted, I used it regularly last year and had one of my best OB seasons for consistency, winning the Solent Fed OB averages.

Sorry Mike, but its down the Baggies and WE ARE STAYING UP !

Solent Fed up at 10.00 at Stratford NNE light

Every fanciers dream I would have thought. Looks so calm & peaceful.

Portsmouth 06.45, grey start, clouds high, looking to brighten.

Welcome Bren23 nice to have another Hampshire fancier onboard, do you race with the Solent Fed?

I've got my flag out, pity the weather's poor, still raining here in Portsmouth.

The rubbers in question were NOT used last season, only purchased in a batch of 5,000 and were not unpacked until Friday night. We are talking about a 100ml Club race here and none of the affected birds were even pooled, so any talk of a 'fix' is way off the mark. There is definately a manufacturing problem here which makes it altogether more worrying for everybody, most race rubbers come from similar sources. Our Chief clocksetter has volunteered for the dubious honour of checking the remaining rubbers in the batch and I will keep you posted on the extent of the problem. We had already used three packets of 1000 race rubbers from this order last season with no problems.

During the race checking last night my Club encountered a problem that I personally in 40 yrs of racing not encountered before. On checking the race rubbers it was discovered that three race rubbers had inside numbers that didn't correspond with the counterfoil, in fact they were completely different, luckily in all cases they were subsequent timings. It is purely a manufacturing fault as we obvisually checked every counterfoil for duplications This was a new batch of a 1000 rubbers out of last years purchases and we have had no problems like this before. To say this is worrying is an understatement as it is bad enough to cope with markers errors let alone manufacturing mistakes. We are talking of three rubbers out or 35 pigeons checked, a very high proportion. Our chief clocksetter has volunteered to check the remaining 800 rubbers to check how many more there are so that we can pass on our complaint to the retailer. WE are desperately hoping that this is a rogue batch or I can see the rest of the season being blighted. Has any forum members encounterd this problem on this scale? How will fanciers fare if it happens to an important timing?

Thanks speckled , My Club winner is doing 1311, John Good who had an excellent race timing three birds in just over a minute to take 1st,2nd & 4th with Barry Robertson splitting him in 3rd I had an excellent race myself having 100% returns 12 sent all home in 40mins taking 5th Club and £50 pools

Pretty good guess Donal, I was in at 2hr 17 for 100ml (5th club) the club winner was in at 2hr 12 for 98ml