2024 Rendezvous

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by GORDON STREETER

I went round to a mates place to fit a starter motor on his TD5 Land Rover, he showed me his tame Robin when we had a cuppa !
https://youtu.be/wdvrud4Xw7M
Also we have a family of woodpeckers in the garden and this is one of the young being fed.Attachment 80352

Ah that's fantastic!!

[midgetman]

Looking at the two thumbnail photos on Gordon's post. I have to say the first one is much more valuable.

I'll get me coat

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[delta]

Lovely photos guys.

[Lancsbreaker]

I've been battling a squirrel intent on getting into my bird seed feeder - having found it headfirst down inside it the other day, I've now resorted to fastening the lid down with a safety pin - it hasn't worked out how to undo it, yet.......


We do get a decent selection of smaller birds - sparrows/bluetits/great tits/ robins/ the odd goldfinch, then starlings/rooks/crows/magpies and of course pigeons and the odd dove.


Unfortunately recently we've started getting rats reappearing (we back on to farmland) so its going to be time to get the poison spread again.....

[bauble]

Originally Posted by chunterer

Ah that's fantastic!!

I don't think we need any more pictures of Gordon's pecker- thank you!!

[bauble]

I note that some are displaying their love of wildlife, showing a softer side to their character. It should be encouraged in these troubled times;

[bauble]

Ah!

[bauble]

Oops, not sure what went wrong there! Sorry, P.

[John Elwin]

Amongst all the usual country stuff I regularly get a large & rather beautiful pheasant.

I also have a pair of buzzards living closy by that often fly rather low.

[John Elwin]

Now back to Le Mans ....

[midgetman]

I give up Bauble, what's the racing car spelled out by the animals?



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[delta]

Talking of Le Mans here is a great photo of Howden Ganley getting a lift from Francois Cervert at Zandvoort. They were team mates in 1972 at Le Mans

[bauble]

Originally Posted by midgetman

I give up Bauble, what's the racing car spelled out by the animals?



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Well done for spotting it was a quiz, you beat everyone else. The car is, of course, a Focus (Ford for the less knowledgeable).

Fox, Official (Photographer) Cute (Squirrel) Undisturbed (Fox on Trampoline), Swimming (Duck on water.). The first picture is of Feathers to suggest Ford, to aid solving the puzzle.

Midge, you have excelled yourself. Yet again.

[midgetman]

Makes about as much sense to me as the answers to some of your quizzes....

Wow! What an LM24 we've just witnessed. Fantastic racing all through the field.

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[John Elwin]

Originally Posted by midgetman

Makes about as much sense to me as the answers to some of your quizzes....

Wow! What an LM24 we've just witnessed. Fantastic racing all through the field.

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Couldn't agree more re Le Mans.

I watched most of the race here on L'Equipe channel, who did an excellent job. It was gripping to the end & it really didn't matter who won - any of the first four cars deserved it. Amazing though that thesecond-place Toyota took 14 seconds off the winning Ferrari in the last 12 minutes, & that was in the wet.

Priceless moment we saw here; a DB7 dramatically rolled this morning & the TV switched to the team garage just in time to catch a female team member exclaiming "Oh f*ck!!" as she watched the TV. Priceless!

I'm quite impressed by the Hypercars; I want to see them live somewhere now.

[midgetman]

I woke up in the wee small hours and listened to RLM. After the safety cars went in, Hindy cut to de Vries just as he came in the pits saying "I can't see F*** all" Made my day.

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[Lancsbreaker]

Only discovered about 11.30 this morning that I had access to a eurosport channel that was showing Le Mans live - great last 3 hours or so, though!


Ferrari showed fantastic tactical judgement to end with so small an energy margin.....How did that happen?

[grantp]

Originally Posted by Lancsbreaker

Ferrari showed fantastic tactical judgement to end with so small an energy margin.....How did that happen?

I was following the live timing and the pit stop strategy in the last hour (plus a handful of very brief Yellow Flags) seemed to be the key to the entire event.

I heard at one point on Saturday a comment about "an hour behind the safety car" and again on Sunday "four hours behind the safety car".

Is that correct?

[grantp]

The wonders of nature.

[MGDavid]

Originally Posted by grantp

I was following the live timing and the pit stop strategy in the last hour (plus a handful of very brief Yellow Flags) seemed to be the key to the entire event.

I heard at one point on Saturday a comment about "an hour behind the safety car" and again on Sunday "four hours behind the safety car".

Is that correct?

about right; the first hour was to repair a big section of barrier (can't remember who caused it), and the 4 hours was during the night because the best pro drivers in the world can't hack racing in the rain and dark. Excuse my cynicism but I've BTDT admittedly at a quarter to half their speeds.

[grantp]

Originally Posted by MGDavid

about right; the first hour was to repair a big section of barrier (can't remember who caused it), and the 4 hours was during the night because the best pro drivers in the world can't hack racing in the rain and dark. Excuse my cynicism but I've BTDT admittedly at a quarter to half their speeds.

I can sort of see the point of keeping things circulating for an hour for a barrier repair - I vaguely recall some other very long barrier repair times at LM during past races. After all, there are 24 hours and it can be argued that keeping the cars moving, even at reduced speed, is a better option than stopping and restarting the race.

That said I got the compression that it was a full-course safety car rather than the part-course restrictions I've seen in previous years.

Is that a fairer way to do it or just something that has come about as part of modern day changes to the way things are done?

Four hours of safety car because of rain may also appear logical in some ways but, really, 4 hours is just odd.

If that is the way the races are to be run one wonders whether it might be better to start earlier, plan for a possible 24hours of race running during a 30 hour window (to give some flexibility to race control to stop and start things) and just stop the action if the situation is so bad that a reasonable period of safety car running - say about 4 laps or around half an hour at LM - is not going to achieve a reasonably predictable opportunity to go racing again.

Still, I suppose, at least for this year, it was a better outcome than the recent 7.5 hours of the Nurburgring - a race that seems very prone, year on year, to overnight fog among other impossible-to-manage issues.

Basically it seems to me that if safety or other issues make the likelihood of being able to complete the event in the planned time at the chosen time of year rather unlikely then change the format of the event in such a way that the original intent - 24hours of racing in this case - is retained but the alloted period of time becomes more flexible if conditions or circumstances make the expectation impossible to deliver.

Then see what people think of the revised concept.

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by grantp

I was following the live timing and the pit stop strategy in the last hour (plus a handful of very brief Yellow Flags) seemed to be the key to the entire event.

I heard at one point on Saturday a comment about "an hour behind the safety car" and again on Sunday "four hours behind the safety car".

Is that correct?

Pretty close. I decided to retire at midnight, when I woke up they were still running under the SC and my tent had taken on the persona of a child's paddling pool! I now need a new laptop.

The beginning was pretty good and the last four hours were better because the lead was swapping between the top 6. I'm happy to see Ferrari win again and on merit. I had hoped Jota would do well, but I felt Cadillac had some good peddlers (Will Stevens and Jack Aitkin) but it was not to be.

I'm sitting in the Chunnel passenger terminal waiting for my crossing and my feet are still bloody freezing!

[John Elwin]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Pretty close. I decided to retire at midnight, when I woke up they were still running under the SC and my tent had taken on the persona of a child's paddling pool! I now need a new laptop.

The beginning was pretty good and the last four hours were better because the lead was swapping between the top 6. I'm happy to see Ferrari win again and on merit. I had hoped Jota would do well, but I felt Cadillac had some good peddlers (Will Stevens and Jack Aitkin) but it was not to be.

I'm sitting in the Chunnel passenger terminal waiting for my crossing and my feet are still bloody freezing!

Go outside - it's very warm in Pas de Calais this morning!

I didn't really mind who won - they all deserved it - but I was kind of hoping for the #7 Toyota because I like Kobayashi & he's almost certainly the fastest of them all. Nice guy too.

[Tel 911S]

All of the talk of Le Mans , [ and the 80 th D day ] bought back a few memories of a regular run to Normandy I did about 30 or more times in the 90s .

It was down the road towards Le Mans , and turn off to the right sometime after Rouen ,[ Sp ].
Before a new Autoroute opened , I used to go through several villages .
One of them had a village square and church just like in the film " The Longest Day", where a paratrooper got stuck on the church roof .

So I have just had to watch the film again .
The Paratrooper stuck on the church roof was true , and in the film the church shown does look right for Sainte Mere Eglise .
So perhaps there is another place with a church built the same way , and that is what I had been seeing on the road because I did not get as far as the original village , S M Eglise .

But the film was over 60 years ago , and my runs into Normandy were about 30 years ago , so over time memory does fade .

[Tel 911S]

Originally Posted by Tel 911S

All of the talk of Le Mans , [ and the 80 th D day ] bought back a few memories of a regular run to Normandy I did about 30 or more times in the 90s .

It was down the road towards Le Mans , and turn off to the right sometime after Rouen ,[ Sp ].
Before a new Autoroute opened , I used to go through several villages .
One of them had a village square and church just like in the film " The Longest Day", where a paratrooper got stuck on the church roof .

So I have just had to watch the film again .
The Paratrooper stuck on the church roof was true , and in the film the church shown does look right for Sainte Mere Eglise .
So perhaps there is another place with a church built the same way , and that is what I had been seeing on the road because I did not get as far as the original village , S M Eglise .

But the film was over 60 years ago , and my runs into Normandy were about 30 years ago , so over time memory does fade .

As an add-on , here is the church .https://en.normandie-tourisme.fr/hid...e-mere-eglise/