Why Why Why - Why these losses?

[Guest IB]

I have merged 2/3 pages from another thread to this thread. They are on the same general theme, and I have changed this thread's title to reflect that.

[adam owen]

ive got to be fair i fly with the welsh south road fed and we have had great racing we have had four races and four good races ive lost two birds racing and one training at the start its a credit to the fed and convoyers

[Guest lenwadebob]

I have a realistic attitude !!

The idea for organisations to communicate re - liberations is brilliant on paper......but in practise it won't get off the ground.....that's the reality !!!

 

 

The reality is that over a period of some 15 to 20 years the breakaways that have caused all these small liberations is a FACT. So as this has happened in the real world, and not on paper, there is no reason why it cannot be reversed. It is about time attitudes changed and common sense prevailed.

[Guest paulrstokes]

I think apart from the mobile every convoyer should have a wireless laptop or iphone.

 

not only can he check all the weather sites, but can glean information from sites such as this as to other liberations local to him.

 

If I was a convoyer I would not dream of going without taking a laptop.

 

For example look at the Thurso Lib on the 10th July, every person that visited a weather site knew that it was ok for 40 miles then a large band of rain covered Scotland, and when it was posted here that they were up there must have been 20 replies saying they must be mad, there are 20 people that could have helped the convoyer with his decision.

[JohnQuinn]

I understand the need to discuss everything put up on a thread, and that there will be a variety of opinions on each subject raised. What i don't get is people spouting off at the guys who are controlling or convoying the birds, these same men generally have their own birds in the race but are still accused of neglecting their duty of care to the birds.

The threads quickly descend into arguments and slagging off, instead of reaching a SENSIBLE conclusion or common agreement on things to try out that might rectify our problems but the FACT IS no one knows exactly WHY we get these difficult races with poor returns and until we do something about actually finding out these problems the threads will carry on like a never ending Abyss of bad mouthing and slanderous remarks about some of the finest fanciers in the country.

I posted recently that we should hire someone/something to track our birds from the moment they are liberated to monitor what exactly does affect them in such a drastic way on their journey home.

My challenge to everyone on here is to put up a suggestion that might give us some insight to the problem, and for EVERYONE to stop slagging of the race officials who are doing their absolute best to try and get good racing for the doos. SO COME ON WHAT POSITIVE MOVE DO YOU'S SUGGEST??????

[sammy]

if u want 2 come and see weve got 34 old birds and started wae 63 lost most of them wae national and still got 75 young birds so hows that out 34 old birds out 2 at least the coast

know a lot of guys in midland fed and they are wiped out off pigeons so how is it you seem to be getting away with when everyone else dont that dont add up for me so what am i missing please explain

[alex wight]

I have merged 2/3 pages from another thread to this thread. They are on the same general theme, and I have changed this thread's title to reflect that.

 

 

Ian i can see what you have done but the topic was more aimed at controllers communicating, not why we were suffering losses. That i feel, remains a separate issue

[Guest spin cycle]

looks like some clashing occured this weekend. i sent a dozen old hens as trainers and got them all (slowly)...clubmates who sent ybs were 40-50% down. ok that said why is yb racing any different from ob racing ? during the ob bird prog. there is the same /more potential for clashing.

[Mr Yorkie]

I spoke to our race controller at 630 yesterday morning and he was continually trying to ring the numbers published in the BHW for the scottish feds which would be enroute from our racepoint in Berwick. He succeeded in speaking to some but not all and those that he did speak to said they would wait to lib their scottish birds on board until our birds from berwick had cleared. It perhaps seems that they did not keep to their word. It is no good if feds give the BHW/RPRA contact numbers which are not in use or being answered as this makes the controllers job even harder. Its a thankless job as it is and while we are quick to critise there are never any hands raised at our AGM saying they will take on the job.

[GREENGRASS]

personally i think our race program this year has not helped our controller one bit, what we have asked Willie to do is the equivelent of walking across the M8 blindfolded. Racing from east to west every week in small jumps with Scottish doos below us going North and now English doos going South. Trying to pick a clear run through that must have been a nightmare. He has a big team of his own away every week and i know he works hard at his birds and like the rest of us he has suffered losses and is probably scratching his head also, so for next year lets try a give him some help by picking a race program that helps. 6 races amd we were only at the 90-100 mile stage and what did our doos learn.....nothing. time we let or controller and convoyer have a greater input into racepoints. jmo

[Guest stb-]

personally i think our race program this year has not helped our controller one bit, what we have asked Willie to do is the equivelent of walking across the M8 blindfolded. Racing from east to west every week in small jumps with Scottish doos below us going North and now English doos going South. Trying to pick a clear run through that must have been a nightmare. He has a big team of his own away every week and i know he works hard at his birds and like the rest of us he has suffered losses and is probably scratching his head also, so for next year lets try a give him some help by picking a race program that helps. 6 races amd we were only at the 90-100 mile stage and what did our doos learn.....nothing. time we let or controller and convoyer have a greater input into racepoints. jmo

Karl i cant understand where your comming from here . the races from the east side that you are talking about have been exstremly succes full i would say with feds above and below us ,

 

its when we go to our traditional east side race point that the problems are comming

 

b aukland consett wetherby etc , thats where all the looses are occurring which goin back 5 or 6 years ago did not happens as much from the same areas , the first few year we went east it was like a breath of fresh air birds tumbling in form kelso otterburn towlaw etc , had never seen yb come in big batches the way they did then ,

it gradually got worse and now there are very few batches come from these racepoints and a lot are turning out bad , what has caused this change , i think once your bye 60 70 miles you get pumped dont matter where you go to be honest

[bullcock]

Back to the problem of clashing and todays technology, I can time a bird from the National and post it on PB and the whole contry knows about it in minutes, this should be they way forward for race controlling either a dedicated web site or even on the PB foram, if all the race controllers were to update on a web site a picture would build up of the current real time situation reguarding all the feds without all the phone calls and cost, a controller would see that a fed was not liberating before 09:00 and another has went at 08:30 and so on.

This should be the way Forward the SHU & RPRA and all the other unions should get toghether and create a dedicated web site for this purpose.

[Mr Yorkie]

But what about the race controllers who don't use the internet?

[dal2]

But what about the race controllers who don't use the internet?

 

I hope that they all do. At least for the weather!

[tom corrie]

I do not think East to West was the tradional route when the old timers set up pigeon racing they in their wisdom flew South to North they believed in keeping things simple

[JADE]

dont matter whether they use the internet or not. even when they know feds are going up in opposite direction they still liberate at the same time 30 miles away

[Mr Yorkie]

Out of the racing fraternity there will only be a very small percentage with internet access and I know for a fact of 3 Fed's locally of which none of the race controllers have the internet. And I have to say rightly so. I am sat here at the moment and the 'current observation' on the met office is sunshine but in reality it's weather fit only for ducks. I would prefer that the person incharge of my pigeons picked up the telephone and spoke to people along the line of flight to get ACCURATE UP TO DATE current weather conditions. Our controller has a book full of names of people he's got to know over the years many of whom are fellow controllers so one simple phone call is a benefit to both people. The internet, especially on a weekend isn't constantly updated and can't always be taken as gospel. Perhaps that's why some clubs do have losses as people haven't picked up the phone?

[bullcock]

If it's to the benifit of the birds and the fed members then I'm sure members would demand the internet be used and get "up to speed" with other feds who would be getting the benifit from a dedicated liberation web site.

 

We have to start somewhere and after a couple of seasons most if not all feds would log onto it as the information would be so important it would be criminal not to use it.

[Mr Yorkie]

I'm sorry I have to disagree. Pigeon racing is an old time sport and whilst yes we have to enocurage the youngsters to get involved I think you'd be very lucky to get everyone using a dedicated liberation website. The UNC website is a prime example of this - whilst a couple of years ago it had a good following it's now seeing only a few posts a week and its hit and miss as to if lib times get posted.

In our Fed I could count on my hands the number of fanciers who use the internet and the likelihood of one of these people taking on the controllers job is slim - no-one ever wants to do it as it is. The guy doing it has been doing it for years and as I said has literally hundreds of contacts up and down the country who he speaks to when the pigeons will be passing over. It's allowed some great friendships to be developed as well. It would be ridiculous to say he couldn't do the job as he doesn't own never mind know how to use a computer. My Dad's had pigeons since the 60's and again couldn't switch a PC on but that doesn't mean he'd give clubs bad racing if he was controller.

Perhaps in 20 years time if there's still a sport more could be done online - I often try search for live webcams of places onroute to see what the weathers like but costs mean these are few and far between.

I have nothing against setting up a website in principal but think it wouldn't get the usage you would expect - how many people actually post lib times on here each week? There's certainly not every club in the country nor does every member log on to report their own local conditions. I hate seeing animals suffer including lost racing pigeons but I think some fanciers need to look closer to home as to why their birds aren't homing instead of looking to blame others.

[duncandoo]

the reason for the losses are all of the above, but the reason the birds are not coming back or getting reported. is that the are all getting drowned in the sea, we are too far to the east when the prevaling wind is west,birds that get blown out to sea get too exausted to get back in, some get hit by waves that they cannot avoid,so my opinion is get in off the east coast

[Guest pigeonguy147]

the reason for the losses are all of the above, but the reason the birds are not coming back or getting reported. is that the are all getting drowned in the sea, we are too far to the east when the prevaling wind is west,birds that get blown out to sea get too exausted to get back in, some get hit by waves that they cannot avoid,so my opinion is get in off the east coast

hey robin at last somebody is thinking outside the box makes good sense to me

[Guest stb-]

the reason for the losses are all of the above, but the reason the birds are not coming back or getting reported. is that the are all getting drowned in the sea, we are too far to the east when the prevaling wind is west,birds that get blown out to sea get too exausted to get back in, some get hit by waves that they cannot avoid,so my opinion is get in off the east coast

does the guys who all stay on the east coast and race up it in west winds get all there birds drowned every week , i wouldnt think so , what race points are you at thats right on the coast

[Guest spin cycle]

i don't know how we can blame race controllers....do they set the programme or tell us how many to rear or how to train?? a significant amount of fanciers want to 'test' their ybs and if this leads to destruction then so be it....the old addage 'whats left will be good'uns' rubbish.....the rest just follow rearing larger lower quality/undertrained teams every year. some years are worse than others...and this is just a little worse thats all

[alex wight]

i don't know how we can blame race controllers....do they set the programme or tell us how many to rear or how to train?? a significant amount of fanciers want to 'test' their ybs and if this leads to destruction then so be it....the old addage 'whats left will be good'uns' rubbish.....the rest just follow rearing larger lower quality/undertrained teams every year. some years are worse than others...and this is just a little worse thats all

 

 

This topic was put up by myself.... NOT to blame race controllers, but to ask the question why do they not communicate, and even suggested setting up a system that would indeed help them. My thread was merged with another one, which i dont like as it tars the controllers as the ones to blame, and that was definitely not the case. Sorry for any confusion, not caused by myself.

 

regards alex.

[Guest spin cycle]

This topic was put up by myself.... NOT to blame race controllers, but to ask the question why do they not communicate, and even suggested setting up a system that would indeed help them. My thread was merged with another one, which i dont like as it tars the controllers as the ones to blame, and that was definitely not the case. Sorry for any confusion, not caused by myself.

 

regards alex.

 

 

no my fault...sorry alex. what i should have said is not to blame 'clashing'....during ob races clashing is not blamed for losses...yet it must occur. all the best jim