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www.nurburgring.org.uk | Trip
reports | Trip 48: August 2006 |
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This was a 9-day trip: a full weekend, the 3-day BMW Club Fahrerlehrgang (driving training), two evening sessions and another full weekend. So out of nine days at the Ring, I'd get seven full days of driving plus two evenings. :-) The SLK is explained later ... |
If you are looking for photos of yourself on the Ring, try the following sites later in the week: |
| Index As this is a long report, and it was uploaded a day at a time, here's an index to enable you to jump to a specific day: Saturday, Sunday (Weekend one) Preparation This was a return to my former habit of having an August holiday at the Ring. Usually, that was two weekends of driving plus evening sessions, finding other things to do daytimes in the week. This time, however, I was booked on the BMW Club training, providing an almost entirely Ring-based trip. The thing that keeps so many of us coming back to the Ring time after time is it never gets boring. There is always more to learn. And my eight years of Ring experience pales alongside the 30 years held by some of the instructors. The course is based on section training, so it includes the opportunity to do a couple of things you can't do in TF sessions: trackwalks, and driving the wrong way back along the track as you repeat a section. :-) There are also skid training sessions held at the FZR centre opposite the Ring. I'd been told this uses water jets and moving metal plates to kick the tail of the car out, and that it could be 'quite challenging'. :-) Finally, the course used to include what must be a unique opportunity: someone actively encouraging you to crash their car! As a last-ditch emergency-stop method when the track is blocked and braking isn't going to stop you in time, you can 'lean' the car against the armco to bring it to a rapid halt. BMW kindly provided a car for course participants to scrape!
Unfortunately, this year's pack explained that modern car construction methods meant the car was designed to deform too much as a safety measure, so wouldn't survive multiple armco interfaces. I'd assumed the course was just for cars, but it's for bikes too, with bikes forming one-and-a-half groups. The plan for my two spare days was photography. I usually only take trip report snapshots with my Ixus, as I don't want to lug an SLR around with me, nor take too much time out from driving, so my trip report snaps are strictly point-and-shoot. But it's a little embarrassing being heavily into photography (you can find my photo site here) and only having snapshots of my favourite place in the world! I really needed to put that right. I thus decided to take my D200 and 10-20, 35-70 and 70-210 lenses. I'd managed to book the Forsthaus for the first weekend and the weekdays, but not for the final weekend. They kindly found a guesthouse for me for the second weekend. I'd also once again booked the Forsthaus Striker. Unfortunately fitting a Zetec engine proved to be non-trivial, so they couldn't have it done in time, and the old engine was unwell, so the CCar would be once again coming to the rescue. Ross was going over for the same period, so we arranged to catch the same flights and share a hire car for the trip. Wednesday I only ever travel with hand-baggage, and Ryanair had recently opened its online check-in facility, which allows you to check-in three days in advance. I duly checked-in and got boarding number 003. This ensured I'd board early, get a front-row seat and make a rapid escape on arrival, all without needing to go anywhere near the check-in desks at Stansted. Ross had done the same, getting boarding number 008.
In case of arguments about weight limits, I had my Scott eVest ready to go with me. If necessary, I can transfer most of my luggage into its capacious pockets, including - believe it or not - one pocket large enough to hold a 17" laptop.
Sorted. Thursday Those whom the gods wish to piss off, they first make smug. Thursday morning of course brought the news that all hand-baggage was banned from all flights originating in the UK. I didn't think my argument that my jacket was not baggage was going to cut much ice in the circumstances. Which left me with two problems. First, entrusting my laptop, Nikon D200 and several lenses to the tender ministrations of baggage-manglers- sorry, handlers. Second, dealing with the hell on Earth that was going to be represented by Stansted with 140 people per flight each checking in all their baggage and then having their shoes and belts inspected at security. Problem one was addressed as best I could by nipping out at lunchtime to buy four sheets of 4"-thick foam: large enough to completely wrap around my roller-bag and camera backpack. Tape on the foam, put them into tough polythene bags, tape that and I'd have something that ought to give my gadgets a fighting chance. Roller-bag protection in mid-construction:
Camera-bag protection minus the top and bottom pieces:
This left problem two. The chances of finding someone driving across the next day with two spare passenger seats seemed rather slim, but it was worth a shot. I put out an email on Ringers and had a reply within minutes: a first-time visitor called Tony Wardell was heading out from North London, and he'd be coming round the M25 to within a very short detour of my place. :-) The only drawback was he was leaving first-thing, and I had several hours work to do on Friday. But he was kind enough to switch ferries to accommodate picking me up at 11am. I'd need to start work at a rather frightening hour to get everything done by then, but TANSTAAFL, and it sure as hell beat battling with airport hell. Tony was also happy to have a navigator as he didn't have a GPS. Ross was able to get to my place by the same time, so Plan B was go. :-) My colleagues at work, unfamiliar with the concept of Ringers, were left utterly bemused: how on earth had I managed, at zero notice, to find someone who happened to be driving to Germany the following day? I was having dinner with friends that evening in a small village near Cambridge. I got home at 1am and, not being a noted morning person, had the bright idea of doing my work before going to bed. It was 4am by the time I was done, but then I didn't need to be up until time to pack at 10am. Friday At 09:07, my phone rang. Ross was supposed to be arriving around 10:45, but it seems he was at my local train station now. I told him to naff off and get some breakfast while I made my way into the land of the living. As it seemed likely the handbaggage ban would still be in place for my return, I put the anti-baggage-handler kit out in the hope we'd find room for it in Tony's BMW 330i. Foam being squashable stuff, we succeeded. We arrived in time to catch an earlier ferry and were on our way. I advised Tony and his car that they would of course be featuring as special guest-stars in my trip report.
For the Nurburgring 700 trip, we'd taken my old route, via Gent rather than Brussels, and it was in much better condition than in days of old, so I decided to revert to that route on the rare occasions I went by road. I took photos for a revised photo-directions page (coming soon to a website near you). While the E42 route was less bumpy than it used to be, especially in lane 2, I was less convinced by the Spa/Prum detour that Ross takes. While admittedly easier to drive while tired, and motorway most of the way there, it's such a long way round that I suspect it takes longer. Ross was receiving a lot of text messages. Always nice to be popular. Unfortunately, absolutely all of them were Vodafone welcoming him to France, Belgium or Germany. Especially Belgium, for some reason - he must have received about seven of the damn things.
A couple of years ago, for the famous bicycle lap, I'd brought over a bicycle lamp after being unable to see where I was going during a previous attempt. I forgot it, and Ross brought it back to the UK the following day. He's been failing to remember to give it back to me for two years. Finally, he is coming over to my place, and he actually remembers to bring it with him. So he handed it over to me: halfway across Belgium ...
We dropped Ross off at Bren's and then continued to the Forsthaus. Tony felt like a break by then, so I continued my tradition of paying for lifts in the form of dinner. Frank was understandably bemused by me arriving with unfeasibly large quantities of foam. I told him I needed a drink before I could explain. Dinner and bed. Marc had apparently not had time to check the CCar after the July weekend, and couldn't do it until 11am, which was a bit of a pain, but at least it gave an excuse for a lie-in. Especially as Mon-Wed was all going to be uncivilised starts. As the transponders don't have much range, and getting your wrist close enough can be a challenge when wearing a harness, I'd invested on a lanyard last time. This enables me to unclip the transponder, hold it against the contact and then clip it back in:
I wandered down to the car-park in search of someone to give me a lift to TTE to collect the CCar. I timed in perfectly, as the Ring had just that minute closed. Adam was there, in his less interesting car, and ran me down to Marc's place.
Marc checked fluids and brakes and declared it good to go, but getting quite low on pads. He recommended I come back tomorrow morning to get them changed.
The Ring was just reopening as I arrived, so I headed straight out for a lap. The car was sliding a lot, so I pulled off at Breidscheid to check the pressures. They were around 2.1-bar, so I topped them up to 2.3-bar and set off again: much better. I went straight out again for a second lap.
Strangely, the on-track barrier wasn't there, which seemed odd for a weekend as busy as the Oldtimers. Back to the car-park and a wander round:
The Italian bikers were there again taking up a large slice of the car-park. Unfortunately we never spotted the gazebo empty as several of us had independently decided to park in it if we did.
Tony was meeting friends here, James and Katrina. They were doing a two-week European touring holiday, including two laps at the Ring. The good news was that they made their two laps; the bad news was only just: the fan-belt broke just as they exited after the second lap.
They were due in Prague the following day, so I asked the recovery truck driver to take them to Ring Racing in the hope that they'd be able to sort out a repair. The Oldtimer weekend may be busy, but it's worth it for the exotica. I'd never seen an Isdera Imperator 108i before (it has a Merc engine so is allowed to wear a Merc badge):
Time for another couple of laps, and Tony hopped in to passenger. The first lap was dry and good fun, but the rain started at T13 on the second lap. The track was still dry, as it turned out, but you never know what any given bend will be like on any given lap.
At Metzgesfeld 2, a white BMW 325 had apparently gone straight on, into the armco. The safety car was already there, so we didn't stop. I was to learn the story shorly afterwards. I was held up by a grey Gallardo all the way from Hohe Acht to the exit of Pflanzgarten 3. I indicated left. No reaction. Flashed my lights. No response. Tooted the horn. Nothing. He clearly knew we were there but wasn't going to let us past. So he suffered the embarrassment of going past all the spectators at Pflanzgarten 1 and Brunnchen with a 20-year-old Golf on his rear-bumper with its left indicator on. I hope he enjoys the photos he will find of himself on the web. I have to confess that by the time I finally got past (only because he had no clue where the track was going and almost drove off it), I gave a hand signal out of the sun-roof, and it wasn't a thank-you ... We went for a coffee before I passengered with Tony to give him some pace-notes. This seemed to be working ok until the Karussell, when he exited early and we had an exciting few moments. Fortunately he gathered it all back together without purchasing any armco.
It was raining on our return, so a bunch of us went for a coffee. I had been driven mad by my phone continually losing signal both this trip and last, and I finally figured out what was going on. As a 3G phone, it tries first to establish a WCDMA connection. If it fails to find one, it is supposed to seamlessly fall back to GSM. Except it doesn't - it just keeps trying to get a 3G connection. Once I went into the settings and forced it to select GSM, it started behaving itself. I headed out for a couple more laps, but with the wet and changeable conditions, it wasn't that much fun.
I invited myself for a paxlap in Bren's yellow thing (technically Suz's yellow thing, I think):
Two of Bren's guests climbed in the back, and the extra weight was Bren's excuse for having difficulty differentiating between tarmac (grey, hard) and grass (green, soft) at T13.
A rapid, squeally and fun lap. However, a bike crash at Mutkurve meant the Ring was closed when we returned. The ambulance was there, but the biker was conscious. It was like a Ringers reunion when we returned, with two faces I hadn't seen for a while: Joerg and Rene (shown here with Ross left and Max, another RX-7 owner, at the rear):
Joerg was also booked on the BMW Club course, claiming it was instead of a Jahreskarte this year. Rob Stanley came to say hello and to tell me he'd just texted me to ask if I was there. I got his text 10 mins later and replied to say yes. :-) Dave and Bob were also there, with Bren trying to sell his Westfield to Bob.
This was also when I learned the story of the Metzgesfeld BMW. A guy called Tom joined us, and it seemed it was his. Apparently the front suspension had just given way and they lost all steering. He showed me the photo he took on his phone:
He did have one car left, though: a very convincing Beetle-based 356 Speedster replica:
Bob invited me out for a couple of paxlaps in his Elise, and Dave followed us out with Bren in the passenger seat.
An impressionist shot of Bob at work:
Setting off with Dave behind:
Coming into a very wet Bergwerk, we spotted one remaining spectator: Jochen. He looked very soggy. I caught up with him in the car-park later, where he showed me his replacement Alfa. Apparently I'd overtaken him earlier, but of course hadn't known the car.
The rain continued:
Thorlief wasn't going out in the rain - it seemed he hadn't yet changed his tyres since the last trip ...
Rene had been promising himself an RX-7 as a replacement for his MX-6 for some time, and here at last it was:
I hopped in the passenger seat for a couple of laps. Max followed us for the sighting lap (with the changeable weather, these needed to be quite frequent), but decided not to join us for the second, faster, lap.
The Ring was closing early at 6.30pm to permit more Oldtimer parade laps. I spotted a roofed version of my 911SC:
And a red one (the original colour of mine) back at the guesthouse:
And a rather earlier incarnation :
As the Pistenklause was likely to be full, we'd arranged dinner at the Italian in Mullenbach. As I felt I deserved wine after the week I'd had, I grabbed a lift from Dave. The Italian turned out to be full, so we went back into Adenau. We could only get two separate tables there. I asked a neighbouring diner to take a group photo, but he managed to chop Rene off the left, so this is Rene's hand, Max, Bob, Dave and me:
My dinner and wine was kindly sponsored by Helge Mortensen:
There was some talk of wine being spilled over a Pocket PC, but I don't recall the details ...
Similarly, I forget who it was who tried to use his German debit card with his UK PIN. Jochen joined us from the other table for a slide-show:
Dave dropped me back to the Forsthaus, where I updated the trip report (near-realtime trip reporting for the list) and then to bed. I'd arranged with Marc to have the brake-pads changed at 11am. As it was wet first thing anyway, I wasn't missing much.
Hmmm. That all looks very closed, and on phoning Marc he was delayed by an hour. Ok, back to the track, the brakes will be fine for a couple of laps. Straight out to the barrier, just in time for a closure. :-( This turned out to be for a bike crash at Breidscheid.
Oh well, time for brunch and a chat with Max, Bren and Alex. Bren was instructing with the Alfa 75 Experience.
As the track was closed, the Alfas were lined-up along the bottom of the larger car-park. Someone in a BMW decided he would like to leave - the car in question is behind Alex:
This seemed a trifle optimistic, but cars were duly shuffled and he eventually made good his escape. Trying to take a second version of this photo, my camera died. I had to revert to my cameraphone for the rest of the day, so you'll have to excuse the extremely crappy quality. It started to rain, and I went for a coffee with Max. Marc phoned to say he was there, so I drove back to TTE. En-route, I started hearing a clunking noise that sounded like it might be a CV joint on the way out. I decided I'd better ask Marc to check it out. Arriving at Marc's, I asked him to hop in so he could hear the noise. He said it was the exhaust banging, so I assumed one of the rubber hangers had gone (they need replacing pretty regularly).
With the car on the ramp, the hangers were found to be fine. I told Marc it was no big deal now I knew it was just the exhaust, so Marc started on the pads.
So that I wasn't hanging around, he offered me a replacement car. That sounded good to me - do a couple of laps in that then return to collect the CCar. Ah. The replacement car was an Astra 1.6 Estate. Ok, paxlaps it is, then ...
Bob emailed me the photo the same evening, along with this one of the Performance Cars Rolls-Royce leaking brake-fluid - it was of course retired from its Ring duties.
Max offered me a paxlap in his RX-7.
Having enjoyed Rene's yesterday, I thought a more powerful modified one should be fun. Unfortunately, most of the lap was very wet.
Trying to take these photos with a cameraphone is tricky!
Oh well, hopefully I'll get a dry lap another time - the few places where Max could put his foot down suggested it would be rather fun. Time for a car-park wander.
Damn that crappy cameraphone. 1.3MP should be ok for web use, but the lens is a piece of ... I bumped into Fabian. I hardly recognised him without a flag in his hand ... While were were standing chatting, a Dutch car decided he would like to park where we were standing (which wasn't in a parking spot). So promptly drove into the place we were occupying and assumed we would jump out of the way. Fabian muttered something about Dutchies, and I remarked that he seemed to have lost his caravan. At which point Fabian confessed to a crime so henious I scarcely dare write it. He has bought a- No, I can't bring myself to say it. He has become a- No, it's just too awful. Well, let's just say that his towbar now has something to tow. He did have the courtesy to look suitably ashamed:
Seems the cameraphone can't even manage to expose properly. I rang Marc to see if the car was ready and he said he was just heading out for a test-drive, but I could come now. I passed him turning round in the car-park of the restaurant at the end of the village. Unfortunately, the news wasn't good. The clunking noise was mirrored in the front, so Marc put the car back on the ramp for a closer look.
The diagnosis was a loose front axle-mount. As the nut securing it was seized, fixing it was a non-trivial exercise, so that was the end of the CCar for at least a week. Which meant I'd run out of cars. Marc didn't have anything to rent yet, and the Forsthaus TDi was in the middle of a respray:
That's clearly going to look great when it's finished. I wonder how fast I can run round the track? I decided to look further afield, and see whether I could obtain a Z4. I couldn't, and the best they could offer me was an SLK. This wasn't the ideal Ring car, but it was better than nothing, so I made arrangements to collect it that evening. I'd spend the rest of the day passengering. Marc lent me the Astra to get back to the track, and I stopped off at the Dorint to pick up my course pack.
The Dorint on an Oldtimer weekend of course had some eye-candy, which my phone entirely failed to do justice to.
The car-park was sunny, and checking my watch I saw that it was ten past ice-cream time. Bob met me and decided that was a good idea. He rewarded me for thinking of it with a couple of paxlaps in his Elise. That cameraphone really is crap ...
An American called Endre introduced himself. He was also on the BMW Club course, and had rented a 911. Well, if you're coming all that way, you might as well do it properly. He was doing the course for the fourth time, so I decided he was probably a sensible chap and hopped in for a fun paxlap.
I noted with approval that Bob was de-roofing his car:
This was sufficient excuse for another paxlap, with Dave following. Dave's Elise was inexplicably still wearing its roof. There was a rather expensive-looking crash at Ex-Muhle, where a white 911 had reversed into the armco. It was all under control. Dave also had a passenger, and we did one excellent convoy lap with Dave following, then they swapped passengers and I hopped in with Dave.
The 911 at Ex-Muhle was still there. The driver's girlfriend was standing beside the car looking rather pissed-off while the driver was busy being shown the armco damage by the marshalls. I later learned that the driver had crashed trying to follow Thorlief, and he apparently wasn't the only one to do so ... Returning, I had a coffee with Dave, Tony and Max. Tony was staying in Koln, so once again helped me out with a lift, this time to collect the SLK. Collecting it unfortunately meant I missed the BMW Club dinner at the Dorint. So, not such a good day from a driving perspective, but some excellent paxlaps at least. I had a fiddle with my Ixus, to see if I could persuade it to work again, and seemed to succeed, so hopefully better pics tomorrow. How come normal people lay on a beach for their holidays, getting up at whatever time they like, and I pick holidays where I have to get up at 6.45am on a Monday morning??? I was rather bleary-eyed as I made my way to the Ring for a 7.30am start. I don't usually see the morning mist:
All the cars lined up in their groups on Dottinger-Hohe:
I was in a group of experienced Ringers, and our instructor was Peter Hahn, who has 40 years' Ring experience:
He announced that he was a Prussian officer, and would therefore expect 'fun with security and discipline'. I learned that he is 73 years old. I certainly hope I'm still driving the Ring with as much enthusiasm when I'm that age! There were also coaches in each group, the idea being that there is one coach per four participants. The course is based on section-training, so each group spends about 40 minutes on a 2km-ish section. In each section, four of you follow an instructor or coach, driving the section slowly. This is done several times, so you can rotate order so that, in theory, each person is directly behind a coach or instructor once. Peter also stops at one or two bends in each section, we get out and he talks through that bend. Then each person takes it in turn to drive the section, with Peter observing from a couple of locations. All together, you drive each section about half a dozen times, stopping next to Peter for feedback. All the section descriptions that follow include both bends: that is, they start before the first bend and end after the last. Our first section was Steilstrecke to Hohe-Acht. We went first to the Karussell for the talk-through followed by a demo drive by Peter while we stood on the track and watched, first from the entry and then from the exit.
Demo of the exit, with the centre of the car over the dot:
The dot:
Then it was our turn. First we had to drive backwards down the track to Klostertal, and turn around to line up awaiting our turn:
I was first, and my feedback from Peter was brief: "Very good." I had expected the backward-driving bit to be slow and in convoy, but each person did the section the right way round first, parking at the end of it, then when everyone had arrived, each person set off in turn to drive it in reverse. By leaving a decent gap after the person ahead of you, you could drive at any pace you wanted. I absolutely loved driving the Ring backwards - it's a whole new track to explore. :-) The safety system was simple but effective. Cones mark the end of each section, and the instructor puts a red flag in it when they begin. When they have finished, and moved on to the next section, they take the red flag with them. Within each section, one of the coaches is the last car to drive the section both forwards and backwards, so knows that the section is clear. My temporarily-acquired SLK lined up at the flag:
It has to be said that the SLK is not the ideal Ring car. It is very heavy, softly-sprung and an automatic, and quickly earned itself the nickname of 'the barge'. However, it was a beautiful day, the roof was down, we had a the Ring to ourselves, good company, driving the Ring backwards ... I couldn't really complain. Well, ok, I could, and did: to the gearbox. It's an auto with supposed tiptronic override. You push the selector left or right to change down or up. But the car's electronics treat that not so much as a command, more as a request. When you tried to change down for a bend, the car would email Mercedes HQ for permission, wait for a committee to convene to discuss it, arrange the necessary paperwork and then let you know that, unfortunately, on this occasion, your request has been denied. I also couldn't find any way at all to prevent it changing up mid-bend, which could be a little 'interesting' in the wet. The next section we did was Eschbach to Eiskurve. We started in Wippermann, with the convoy of cars stopped to provide a visual guide to the line:
The official line here is to use the right-hand flat-topped kerb. There are mixed opinions about whether to use the left-hand flat-topped kerb. What Peter did (consistently) was to use about half the red/white banked kerbing but not the top.
I was looking forward to this section, as Eschbach has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I used to hate the bend, finally found a line that seemed to work ok, but noticed that pretty much every experienced Ringer takes a different line. The line Peter taught was to treat it as a single-radius double-apex bend, but only to come out to midtrack in between the two due to the better grip there than at the outside. This seemed to work well enough. After my first run, I was told "Very good, but don't use the rumble-strip - the judges give minus points for that." We then moved on to Pflanzgarten I to III.
While there is a mix of experience, the club understandably errs on the side of advice suitable for those new to the Ring, so that advice for Pflanzgarten I was to brake before the crest, but there was no objection to braking afterwards (which, I can report, is harder in an SLK than a Golf ...).
The cars were lined up during Peter's talk, the car on the right being John Safe's gorgeous old Alpina:
The course provides some interesting photo-opps:
Jochen was photographing, and texted me to ask where I was. I told him, and about 20 minutes later he texted to ask why he couldn't see me, and I told him were were now doing Schwalbenschwanz to Galgenkopf. Peter's feedback on this section was succinct: "Alles klar". Running this section backwards, the slow line-up run was done around the outside. For the faster individual return runs, I used the Kleiner Karussell backwards. This proved interesting, as the banking runs out in mid-turn! No armco was harmed in the conducting of this experiment ...
Galgenkopf was also interesting backwards, as the second part is of course tighter than the first. On my penultimate run on this section, it started to rain.
This led to a rather unusual sight! Even the car was surprised, adding an exclamation-mark:
The course was divided in half for lunch, and while one half was eating the other could do full laps. Each person followed the instructor for one lap, then dropped to the back of the group to give the next person their turn. Being at the back was excellent, and I kept that position as it meant I could dawdle along the straight (stopping at one point to return the roof to its rightful position in the boot once the rain stopped) and then have space ahead of me to play.
I had the traction-control off most of the time, but did switch it on for the first wet lap. The car virtually brought itself to a halt in the Karussell! I could just imagine its little electronic brain thinking I don't know what the hell is going on here, but it can't be good! I switched it off again. Doing flying laps was a nice change. The bend under the bridge is definitely non-trivial when reached at full-tilt, even in a relatively modestly-powered car. Jochen had reached Hohenrain and T13 in time to take some pics:
He was also waiting at the Dorint to ensure that no SLK photo-opp went unmet:
You can visit Jochen's site at www.frozenspeed.com. I did five flying laps before the tyres had definitely had enough. The tyres and traction-control system weren't the only things that didn't like what I was doing to the car, as the SRS light came on and the dash informed me that it was taking its bat, ball and airbags home and I should ask Mr Mercedes to sort it out. I paused in the car-park long enough to cadge a tyre pressure gauge, reduce the tyre pressures to a more sensible level, have a chat and take a few pics. One of the groups was a bike one:
I don't know my BMWs, but most of the course participants do. This was apparently not yet released - a 335 Coupe. Judging by the mount of drool people were leaving on it, I think BMW fans like it.
Why do manufacturers bother covering up the manufacturer badge?? Could that grill possibly be anything else?
With one group coming off the track for lunch, and the other joining, the car-park made a public weekend look quiet:
Lunch was at the Dorint. It was very German. Jochen joined me and showed me some of the pics - looking forward to receiving those. :-) After lunch, I refuelled. This tank of petrol was very kindly sponsored by Daniel Robinet.
You can't do much to make Dottinger-Hohe interesting as a section, so this was used for fun with cones. Exercise one was a slalom gate course with a box at the end. The task was to drive through the gates, into the box, turn around, do the gates the other way and then stop with your right wheel on a green patch. The run was timed, with a points penalty for hitting a cone.
Then followed two exercises ostensibly designed to demonstrate the perils of drink-driving. Which was really just a convenient excuse for a couple of bits of silliness. :-) Both exercises involved wearing goggles designed to simulate various stages of drunkeness.
We started with the 'drunker' goggles, and had to complete an obstacle course on foot. You had to step over a pair of cones, do a slalom, lift up a cone, then repeat it the other way.
Then we donned the less-drunk goggles and had to drive a slalom course.
This is the view through the less-drunk goggles - a combination of tunnel vision and double-vision:
It started to rain again, this time heavily, but our group didn't care: our next two sessions were a couple of theory classes followed by skid-training at the FZR Centre. The rain is the explanation for this:
The first theory class wasn't that theoretical: it was emergency aid, run by paramedic Uli. This gave hands-on practice at CPR ...
Removing a helmet safely ...
Lifting an injured driver from a car when they are in danger ...
And putting someone into the recovery position ...
Every time I do a refresher, the rules seem to have changed. This time, the recommended CPR rate has changed to 100 beats per minute, which is hard work! The second theory class was on car physics, run by Werner Briel. This covered such things as the circle of force (basically saying you only have so much grip available, and if you ask the car to brake and turn simultaneously, it can only do so up to that limit):
Why turning in early isn't recommended:
And how lines need to be modified for sequences of bends:
Catch-phrases included 'Late is great' and 'You can't beat physics', both good advice for the Ring. When we emerged from the Dorint, it was still raining ...
But that's the perfect weather for skid-training. We were using the kick-plate system at the driver training centre. As the instructor is explaining, you drive down the ramp behind him. As your rear wheels cross a metal plate, the plate will move rapidly left or right (at random), throwing the rear of your car out in that direction, creating (a lot of!) oversteer. Your mission is to recover from the skid.
To assist you, every driver has a radio through which the instructor can tell you what to do, which is done in quite simple terms: "Right! Right! Right! Left! Left! Left! Straight!".
And so the fun- Er, I mean, driver training, began ...
Traction-control was of course off:
I meant to switch it on for one run, just to see how it would cope, but I forgot. I didn't think it would stand a chance with such a violent kick, but others who'd tried it said it could. I recovered from five of the six skids - the one I missed was by failing to apply sufficient lock to match the severity of the oversteer. I think the instructor controls the force of the kick, and increases it for smart-arses ... I don't believe six runs is enough to make recovery instinctive, but I have a theory that a few dozen would be. I'm going to find out how much it costs to hire the facility with a view to getting a small group of us together to use it for an hour or two. Then it was back to the track for the final section of the day: Tiergarten to T13.
This was slippery but fun - I certainly felt more confident in the wet following the skidpan session. I tried to book a table at the Piskenklause for our whole group, but couldn't, so settled for dinner with John Safe and a 911 driver called Jim.
Checking email back at the guesthouse, Darren from www.ringweekends.co.uk had very kindly offered to either give me a lift home on Monday, or deliver my luggage to me. I said I'd definitely take him up on one or the other. And that was the end of a most excellent day! I was looking forward to everything about the following day except the 7.30am start ... Bleargh. I hate mornings. But if you need something to wake you up in the morning, push-starting someone's car from the guesthouse works quite well. I'm not overly impressed by Mercedes' cabriolet designs. First, there is horrendous buffeting when you put the windows down. So much so that the car automatically puts them up when you open the roof. Personally, I think the whole point of an open-topped car is that you feel there is nothing between you and the scenery, so that's a definite minus point. Second, when it's been raining and you open the roof, the water on the roof gets dumped onto you and the interior of the car:
As before, we started by assembling on DH, then each group set off in section sequence.
Another physics lesson:
That looks rather familiar ...
We started on T13 to Quiddlebacher-Hohe, and the talk-through was of course done in Hatzenbach. The track was very wet, and Peter pointed out that the entry to Hatzenbach 2 has the poorest grip in the wet, while it improves after that until, of course, you reach Hocheichen.
One excellent idea was to create human dots. :-) One of the coaches was despatched to stand on the turn-in dot for the final right-hander:
You do get a much better sense of the distances involved that way. We didn't stop in Hatzenbach for our feedback; instead this was delivered later - more on that shortly. Hatzenbach backwards was really tricky, and we didn't do it enough times for me to figure out a decent line. I'd love to do that some more. Next was Flugplatz to Fuchsrohre. The bend we stopped in was naturally Schwedenkreuz and Aremberg. Again, the human dot system was deployed, this time to mark the apex of Aremberg, looking from the turn-in:
It's amazing how far round it looks from here! The other thing of note in Aremberg is the degree of positive camber. There are some bends you stand in and feel rather worried - the section from Eiskurve to Pflanzgarten 1 (which I walked years ago) being a good example, having unbelievable negative camber. Then there are places like Aremberg and Wehrseifen where you feel much better for having stood there. There was a drying line emerging, and the runs here were very enjoyable. My feedback was "A little more exact, please", which I think must refer to my turn-in. Peter liked the dot, which is almost alongside the distance sign, but I prefer midway between that and the number sign as it avoids the bump and thus gives better grip. The backwards runs were interesting, and the thing that seemed to work best round Aremberg was to go all the way round the outside for a long time, then a really late turn-in. Almost like AF forwards, in fact. Schwedenkreuz backwards was easy in a 163bhp car. Flugplatz backwards was pretty much identical to forwards.
We stopped in Fuchsrohre, and it was then that Peter gave feedback for Hatzenbach - in front of the whole group. (Usually it is private, as you stop alongside him on the way back.) This was rather unfair on one guy who, on R-tyres in the wet, was told his line was "Ok but a bit slow" ... I'd have been slow too on R-tyres in those conditions! When I'd done my Hatzenbach run, I'd caught up with the guy ahead of me, so Peter was actually looking at him finish the sequence and only turned towards me as I virtually came alongside him. This meant he didn't actually see anything of my line bar the exit. When he reached my name in the list, he made a comment about me having a nice name, and having a car to match, and how the car must be good at picking up girls (like I'd had any time to find out ...) - anything to distract attention from the fact that he had no mark for me. :-) As I knew he had nothing to say, I politely kept quiet, but the rest of the group would not let him get away with it, so he eventually muttered "Good but could be more precise" and moved swiftly on to the next person ... The other thing we did in Flugplatz was clarify how the logistics of turning the cars around was supposed to work. Things worked much better after that. The next section was Fuchsrohre to AF. We parked our cars on the grass on the left and then Peter did a couple of demo runs.
As he was very hot on pulling people up for missing turn-ins by even a small amount, I decided to be cruel. I stood behind the armco close to the turn-in dot and took a photo as he reached the dot. :-)
We divided the group in two, so half made the run while the other half watched from AF. Although I use my Ixus for trip report photos, I was carrying my D200 in the car to take a few shots. I decided this would be a good chance to try my hand at being a Ring photographer. I set the shutter speed on 1/30th for panning shots.
Not so sharp on the last one, and I missed one person as I was adjusting the shutter speed to try it slightly slower. I then decided to repeat the dot-meter trick on their second run ...
It was also good to have the D200 with me for some empty track shots. I'll post a bunch of these another time.
At Wehrseifen, Peter suggested a line that was much more mid-track than the line to the dot. He demonstrated this, and while I couldn't see any advantage over the familiar line, it did clearly work.
The centre of his car was over the A of Alzen:
The one good thing about trying this was that it means that if you enter the right-hand entry fast, and end up in mid-track, you know there's no need to fight your way back to the right. Then it was time for lunch. The course is divided into three larger groups, and each of those three groups gets an hour of flying laps while the others have lunch. The flag-cones are thus removed on the way out.
We catch up with another group at Eiskurve, so have to wait for them to leave before we tag on the back.
The queue off DH was reminiscent of some of the more unpleasantly crowded weekends, but fortunately was moving very much faster.
After lunch, it was time for our flying laps. I found the SLK could really only cope with two back-to-back laps - after that, the grip reduced too much to make it enjoyable. I thus did two laps, including the obligatory full-throttle down the length of Dottinger-Hohe at the end of the first, then came off to allow the tyres to cool.
A lot of people seemed to find flying laps special. I found it quite interesting to discover that there is a bend under the bridge, but the novelty soon wore off for me. Fast along a straight doesn't, to me, feel very different to an autobahn. For me, the truly special part of the course was being able to drive the track backwards. This Cobra had had a little incident in the Karussell, and was parked between the Karussell and Hohe-Acht, but that was the only incident I saw in our session. Quite different to a normal weekend! There was, however, a rumour about a crashed CSL.
Time for a wander while the tyres cool.
I bumped into Thorlief, who was borrowing Steve Gill's high-def camcorder. We compared notes a little, with me commenting that our instructor didn't agree with some of the positioning of the dots, and Thorlief saying his instructor had painted them. :-)
One of the dots at Wehrseifen:
We had an hour's break when the final group were doing their flying laps, so I nipped back to the guesthouse to transfer pics, then had a quick go at photographing cars passing the car-park at full-tilt. The results are best described as 'artistic' ...
Then it was time for our two final sections. It was raining hard by this time, but we could hardly complain: we'd had totally dry laps in our free lapping time, when it counted.
The penultimate section was Breidscheid to Bergwerk. This was very slippery! No controversy on the line here - all absolutely standard. The concrete bridge bears a lot of scars:
Approaching Ex-Muhle backwards in the rain required a certain amount of braking ...
I had a brief moment at Bergwerk when the SLK decided to change up from 3rd to 4th halfway through the bend. This unglued the rear tyres and caused a little fishtail. Good job we had the skid training the previous day! Kesselchen to Klostertal was similarly non-controversial, though Peter did want to see us touch the white line on the left after Maddock Bend. Mutkurve of course required some care in the wet, but even more so heading back down.
Klostertal was the turning-point:
We finished at 8pm, and I'd booked a table for our entire group at the Piskenklause at 8.10pm, so straight there.
Steve showed some of the video footage from Thorlief's laps. The roll-cage mounting worked really well, showing the steering wheel as well as the track.
When I'd originally booked the trip, I didn't know whether I'd spend the entire nine days here or just do the two weekends, returning home between them. (I wasn't aware of the BMW Club course at that time.) As flights were cheap, I'd booked both options. Checking email, Ryanair had cancelled my no-longer-required Friday flight out, which meant I could cancel the return trip on Sunday also and get a refund on both flights. I checked that Darren could accommodate Ross also, and that Ross was ok taking Monday off work. The answer to both was yes, so we were then sorted for the return journey. It was, however, going to mean getting up at about 6am on Monday. And so to bed, ready for a relatively civilised 8.45am start. The course was again divided in three for what was scheduled to be free lapping, each group getting one hour. These were 8-9, 9-10 and 10-11. We got the 9-10am slot, which could have been worse. There seemed to be a bit of a misunderstanding somewhere along the way because instead of letting us out for free lapping as expected, our instructor instead led us out on a convoy laps. This was done at slow-ish speed, and with other groups apparently doing free lapping, the speed differentials made it rather dangerous. I stuck with it for a while but then decided that it was far safer to join the free lapping.
One luxury of a course is the warnings you get of oil-spills. A BMW had blown its engine in Fuchsrohre and left oil all the way down. A marshall came to warn our group before we went out, and there were initially flags all the way down the spill. Quite a difference to TF laps! This video was shot during these open laps - you can first see me in Flugplatz one car ahead, he comes behind me in Fuchsrohre and overtakes me approaching Kallenhard. The video is courtesy Leo Nutz - www.leo.nutz.de: Eine_Runde_Nordschleife_8.2006.wmv The SLK's tyres were not too bad, but not really designed for the kind of use they were getting.
They gripped reasonably well on the first lap, were pretty slidy on the second and were hopeless on a third. I took to doing 1 or 2 laps at a time, then giving them time to cool. The car also drinks petrol at an alarming rate. If you owned one, you'd be getting a frequent customer card from the Ed Tankstelle.
Driving back to the Ring, a car pulled out in front of me from the junction on the right. I was glad to be able to stop: I knew nobody would ever have believed how the SLK ended up crunched! 10-11am was free-lapping for the final third of the group, then the assessment laps began. Ours wasn't until 2pm, so that left us with four hours free. I decided to go play Ring photographer again, starting with Hocheichen. I always loved this view:
And today learned gratitude for the photographers who shoot it! You have to shoot through a purpose-built slot in the fence, and this is a good 40cm below comfortable standing height, so you have to crouch uncomfortably. Just to add to the fun, it started raining, so I had to go back to the car to get my jacket and then rig up a kind of hide to keep the rain off me and, more importantly, my camera.
I had both 35-70/2.8 and 70-210/4 lenses with me, and tried both, so I could experiment with a number of variations:
The shot above was during the assessment lap for group 1 (the first of two bike groups), and you can see the judge with clipboard in hand. Details of the assessment system later. Unfortunately the session was interrupted by an accident:
After 20-25 minutes, the session still hadn't restarted, so I decided to make my way to Schwedenkreuz. The track there is deeply rutted in places, and the rain made it quite an obstacle course in an SLK. I reckon I should have got some kind of award for successful completion of the section:
Those paying attention will have noted that this photo was taken on the way back. The judges all drive to their positions on the track. So the Schwedenkreuz judge was inside the fance but he gate was locked. He saw my camera and said that it used to be possible to get right to the armco there, but it was all fenced off when they remodelled. He said I might be able to find a way in through the forest (which presumably meant he wouldn't mind), so I took a walk.
It wasn't the easiest of entrances, involving climbing two fences and a lot of undergrowth:
But eventually I made it to the armco and then walked down to Aremberg. Which, on the way back to the car, I discovered I could have avoided by simply continuing on the path. Ho hum. It was no surprise how much debris I found by the armco. This is just a tiny sample:
Schwedenkreuz wasn't a particularly good photography point, but Aremberg was ideal for panning shots.
The judge was on the outside, close to the exit:
Driving along that track left the car looking like I'd had an Adenauer-Forst moment. But a quick visit here:
Turned this:
into this:
We had about an hour before the assessment. I couldn't be bothered to go to the Dorint for lunch, so headed back to the car-park and grabbed a snack there. Cars were lined-up in their groups, then each group in turn waited at the barriers to be waved out one at a time.
Joerg was in group 5, and was debating whether or not to take the roof off. I advised him that I would be forced to report him to the Roof Police if he didn't.
Returning from his lap, he warned me that the oil was still flagged-off in Fuchsrohre. He said his lap had been average, which has the virtue of providing feedback on a typical lap. It was clear that some were taking the points thing more seriously than others, with some tense-looking faces. I decided to do a normal lap (or as close to normal as I could in the SLK) and get feedback on that. The only compromise I made was to try Peter's mid-track line through Wehrseifen, of which more shortly. When our cars lined up, I noticed a trail of fluids from the rear of Steve's CSL. However, a careful check revealed that, while fresh, it wasn't from Steve's car, nor from the next several cars down. And then it was time for my lap. The marshalls seemed to be leaving variable gaps between cars, sometimes only 45-ish seconds, sometimes several minutes. I had about a 3-4 minute wait.
It was a fabulous and very privileged feeling to know that, for the next few minutes, the track belonged to me. The gaps ahead and behind meant I shouldn't (and didn't) see another car the entire lap. There were 18 judging points, though we only got to know exactly where these were when we got there (though admittedly my photography break meant I'd had a sneak preview of two of them).
The judges gave a numerical rating to each person, ranging from 1 to 10, where fewer points is better. Peter showed us the scoring sheet afterwards:
The literal translations will follow, but I asked Peter to talk us through them, and what he said about each was: 1: World champion He said 1 was very rarely awarded, and 5 was the average score. I mention this mostly because of Wehrseifen ... The BMW Club line is very much the line most of us do anyway, with a couple of exceptions. First, at Adenauer-Forst, most of us go in a straight line from the right-hand entry to the very late left. The BMW Club line is to follow the curve around the outside. I tried it a couple of times, but couldn't see any point to it: it doesn't make the entry any easier, and it involves some unnecessary steering. I duly did my normal straight-line entry and got a 6. The other exception is Wehrseifen, where Peter at least wanted us to take the mid-track approach to the hairpin. I was still experimenting with this one, so decided to use Peter's line on the assessment lap. This didn't work out terribly well ... The SLK being a heavy beast understeers a fair bit on turn-in, though it does then drift rather nicely. I carried a bit too much speed into Wehreseifen and then took the mid-track line. The result, as I turned the hairpin, was a biiiiiiiiiiiiiig drift. If I'd gone much further, I would have been in Adenau town square. I needed my 70-210mm lens to see the apex dot somewhere over to my left. I did at least keep it off the kerb, but it had to be an 8 or 9. However, it seemed the judge was being kind, as I got a 6 for that. I figured that AF and Wehrseifen cancelled each other out: 3 or 4 would have been reasonable for the former, and 8 or 9 reasonable for the latter. My third 6 was a complete mystery to me. The Club line through the Karrussell is absolutely standard. The entry dot, intended for the middle of the car, lines up perfectly with the bent tree. The exit dot, also intended for the centre of the car, is exactly at the concrete corner I use as my marker. Within the bend, they wanted to see the car completely on the concrete, and not on the tarmac. All of which is exactly what I did. Most odd. One drawback of trip reports is that while everyone else gets to keep their scores secret, I pretty much have to confess mine ... so here they are, with my comments in italics: Hatzenbach I: 4 Agree Your worst score is ignored, so that gave me a total of 63, so an average score of 3.5. While not exactly the best lap I'm capable of, I didn't think it was too dreadful for an SLK. :-) While this wasn't enough for a trophy, Thorlief restored the Ringers honour by winning second-best in the course out of about 200 participants with an amazing 28 points (including no fewer than eight 1s). (The scores logically belong in this part of the trip report, but we didn't actually get to know them until after dinner.) The other groups' assessment laps were going on 'till 5pm, with the public session opening at 5.15pm, so that gave us a couple of hours to kill. Most of the group went to Pflanzgarten 1 to spectate.
I'd spotted photographers on public days behind the tyre wall at the end of the gravel-trap, so guessed there was an easy way in. This turned out to be the case, and I took yet more panning shots.
There was a pause in the proceedings, and I saw the air ambulance flying over, but I didn't hear any reports of a serious accident, so hopefully that was just coincidence.
We returned shortly before the public session began, and there was of course the usual mix of vehicles in attendance ...
I texted Karl to try to tempt him out, but not even the prospect of GT3s to overtake in the Mondeo could tempt him away from work. I'm getting worried about that man's priorities. It was interesting to find that quite a few of the course participants viewed the public session as somewhere in the terrifying to beyond-consideration range. The latter simply didn't go out at all. For me, of course, public sessions were normal and the course was luxury. Different perspectives. The session was much busier than would usually be the case for an evening session. Locals were joined by both us and a Porsche driving school that I think was starting the following day. I was lucky enough to be one of the first out, so got a clear first lap but a busier second one. I parked the car to allow the tyres to cool, then went out for a paxlap with fellow group 7 member Spokey in his M5.
I then did the same with Tony in his GT3.
The SLK tyres had had two laps to cool by then, so I returned the favour. There was a crashed BMW at Kallenhard, but it was some way beyond the exit to the bend, everyone was out of the car, and it was on the grass, so I didn't think it would merit a closure, but apparently it did. The Ring was closed for about 40 minutes, which is a big chunk out of an evening session. I'd run into Ross and Bren, so chatted with them during the closure. It reopened just before 7pm, and I took Ross out for a paxlap in the SLK. Back in, another group 7 member, Mark, was going out in his M5 with Steve in the passenger seat. But an M5 has three of those, so a couple of us hopped in the back. I told him he needed to be four-up as it was more fun overtaking GT3s. He seemed sceptical about the idea, but sure enough, we did. :-) The red light was on as we came in. I just had time to nip into the Forsthaus to transfer pics before the dinner at the Dorint.
They had a projector set up, which was showing edited videos from previous courses, followed by photos from our course.
Earlier in the day, Thorlief had predicted he would be #1 or #2 in the course, "but definitely not number three." He was of course correct.
Our score sheets were handed out, we all made our various excuses, and that was the end to a hugely enjoyable course. The course wasn't perfect, of course. The degree of input from the instructors seems to vary between groups, as does their opinions on the line. There were times - within our group at least - when the disorganisation was most un-Germanic. We were allocated sub-groups within the group, but the cars very rarely ended up in the right order for these sub-groups. You wouldn't believe how many systems were employed to turn around 15 cars on a narrow track, all the more surprising when a previous course participant was able to describe an amazingly simple and efficient method (see below, if you're curious). The rotating behind the instructor was also rather haphazard, with some participants seemingly unaware of it. Those who'd been attending for years tell me the logistic issues were very unusual. But these are in any case pretty minor complaints about a tremendously fun three days. Great company, lots of laughs, exclusive use of the track, the ability to stop in bends and look at them in detail, human dots, following close behind an instructor, the skidpan - and, most especially for those of us who have done a lot of public sessions, the sheer magic of being able to drive it backwards. I'd recommend the course to experienced Ringers for that alone. For beginners, the course really would be the ideal introduction. Oh, and that system to turn the cars around? The cars drive on the right side of the track. Each turns left, as if into a slanted parking bay on the left. Each then applies opposite lock and reverses, as if out of the parking bay, leaving the car facing the other way. Then drive forwards. On the occasions this was done, we were able to turn 15 cars in about a minute. And now I have two days of actual holiday. The type where you lie-in in the morning, read books, go for walks, that kind of thing. Well, plus drive the evening sessions, of course ... After getting to sleep at 4.30am, I finally surfaced around noon, to find John Safe had dropped round to deliver a course participants plaque at 11am when I was still dead to the world. I'm thinking of having it engraved with Flugplatz World Championship #1. I made my way to the car-park to see what was happening on the track. I'd seen a Porsche Sports Drivers dinner at the Dorint in an adjoining room to ours, and suspected that's what it would be, which was the case. A Carerra GT was sitting on a recovery truck.
There was no visible damage, so I guess a breakdown. One of my plans for the holiday was to take photos of the empty track. I'd bought a Sigma 10-20mm lens specifically for this. Cars were entering and exiting the track remarkably infrequently, so it looked like this would be the perfect day to put the plan into action. I nipped round to Brunnchen and found the dedicated SLK parking zone.
I walked from Eschbach through Wippermann, Hohe Acht, the Karussell and down to Steilskrecke Kurve. These are just sneak previews of a few unprocessed pics, but a whole range of them will be added to my site shortly in wallpaper sizes.
This is a long-ish walk there and back, and I realised I probably wouldn't make it back for the start of the public session at 17:15. Astonishingly, this didn't concern me. I wasn't exactly Ringed-out, but I was at least temporarily sated. As it happened, the opening was delayed for about half an hour so I got there on time. I set off on a lap, and forgot to raise my window. Exiting Metzgesfeld, the turbulant air caught my contact lens and shifted it so that I could hardly see a thing. I braked and slapped the hazards on. The lens then flew out altogether, so I could now see something, albeit blurry. Between Metzgesfeld and Kallenhard was not a good place to stop, so I slowly went round to the safety car position I knew was at the entry to Spiegelkurve. I reversed into that, to get the car safely behind the armco.
I keep spare a spare lens in the CCar, and also in my jacket. With the CCar at TTE Racing and my jacket in the UK, this wasn't a great help. I phoned the office to see if a safety car was circulating. I just needed a lift back to the car-park and then I could fetch a new lens (I wear daily disposables). They said they could only send a recovery truck, which I didn't need. The car was posing no danger to anyone, so I told them all was ok. I then texted Ross to ask if he could find someone in the car-park to pick me up. Thorlief was ready to come to my rescue, but I noticed that the traffic had stopped, so it seemed the track must be closed. I decided I could see well enough to circulate slowly back during the closure. I got as far as Schwalbenzschwanz before the first bike appeared, so an easy run back. Back to the Forsthaus to pick up a spare lens, or rather three lenses: one to wear, a spare in my pocket and another spare in the SLK. Straight out for another lap.
Coming back in, I met up with Steve and Tony, and jumped in with Steve for a paxlap.
I then returned the favour. With the track closing, I booked a table for 10 at the Pistenklause.
I of course brought my laptop along for a slideshow.
There was an American driver called Norm, who Steve said was a fast driver. With wifi in the Pistenklause, I was able to download a video of him driving a GT2 at the Sebring. Impressive stuff. He was in one of the Ring Rentals BMWs, so I arranged to go out with him for a paxlap or two in tomorrow's evening session. Thorlief brought along the plans for an apartment complex he is planning to build in Nurburg. He had proposals from two architects, and we all agreed which one had to be built. Absolutely superb. Another holiday plan I had was to try to get a light aircraft flight around the Ring. I asked the others if they would be interested. Steve, Debbie, Kevin and Thorlief all said yes, so I would visit the nearest airfield the following morning and see what could be arranged. Thorlief and I closed the place at 2.30am, and it was 4am by the time I'd finished the trip report. Tomorrow was going to be a leisurely start. I had only one mission today: to try to arrange the flight around the Ring. Well, actually, I had to move first. When I'd booked the Forsthaus, they had a room available the previous weekend and the week, but not the DTM weekend. Frank had arranged for me to stay with a neighbour this weekend. The neighbour was indeed local, which was just as well as my luggage didn't fit into the SLK. Heidi went with me to introduce me, so we drove a few hundred metres down the road with the foam on Heidi's lap and my roller-bag balanced on top of the folding roof ...
The neighbour was relatively convenient for the Ring:
Frighteningly, I spoke more German than she did English. You will appreciate that our conversations involved large amounts of sign-language. I nipped back to the Forsthaus to ask Frank if he knew of a local airfield. He didn't, and nor did Heidi, who was local. Frank pulled out a map, but it didn't show any airfields. I'd seen low-flying planes over the B258 not too far from Bren's place, so decided to see whether a mix of Zen navigation and asking locals would do the trick. It didn't. I enlisted Birgit's help. While I was sat in the car in the middle of nowhere, she looked at a map on the web and gave me directions to an airfield about 10km past Koblenz (details and directions will be added to the site in the next couple of days). Arriving there, some people were packing away a glider.
I found that a flight would be possible at 4pm. It was now 3.25pm, so I phoned Steve and suggested he put his foot down. :-) He duly did. This was our transport - I hoped neither Steve nor Debbie were nervous flyers, given the slightly worrying registration:
I explained to Bernd, our pilot, that we wanted to fly around the outside of the Ring as low as permissable, and then return. The charter cost €4 per minute of flying time. The complete flight, including two laps and a few 360s around points of interest, lasted 34 minutes, so €136 between three of us - I thought this was an absolute bargain.
I claimed organiser's privilege and got the front seat. Three happy people:
Bernd didn't need his GPS to find the Ring - I guess one or two other people might have selected that as their destination ...
Bernd did a great job in following the Ring around the outside.
I took quite a few photos, but it was a windy day and the plane was jumping around a fair bit. I upped the ISO to 400 to get higher shutter speeds, but many were still blurred. I decided this was a good excuse for a second flight the following day ... I asked Bernd to circle the car-park as I thought there may be some Ringers' cars there we might be able to identify afterwards. We also circled the Forsthaus. More photos to follow. Ringers of course rarely do just one lap, so we headed round again for a second lap. It was fascinating seeing it from the air. The availability of satellite photos, and especially Google Earth, means it doesn't quite have the novelty it would have had years ago, but somehow those things aren't the same. It was a great experience. So that was two new perspectives in one holiday: driving it backwards, and flying around it. And then it was back to the airfield.
And straight back to the Ring for the evening session.
The petrol gauge was showing quarter-full, which I guessed was enough for a couple of laps, then I would refuel. Or, er, not. By the time I got to Breidscheid, the low fuel light was on, and by Dottinger-Hohe it was virtually on empty. Driving straight to the petrol station, there didn't seem much point in removing my helmet when I was going straight out again. Darren of ringweekends fame pulled in and said I must consider petrol stations dangerous places. Straight out for a second lap, then in to allow the tyres time to cool.
Keith was back over for his now-annual pilgrimage, once again in the Speedster.
He was just heading out for a couple of laps, so I hopped in.
I then took him out for a lap in the barge.
As the tyres had had only a relatively short break, they grip faded faster than usual, so I kept it to one lap. I then positioned myself strategically by the barriers, helmet in hand, ready to jump in with the first Ringer who happened along. This turned out to be JW in the Squealmobile.
Last entry is supposed to be 19:20, and we got back to the barriers at 19:22, but the marshalls were obviously in a good mood as they let us out. Three bikes made it behind us, then we saw the flashing lights go on. I called the Pistenklause and booked a table for dinner. I dropped the car at my temporary guesthouse, picked up my laptop to show the aerial pics and Matt gave me a lift to the Pistenklause.
You could tell who'd arrived that day and who had been there for a week already: all the new arrivals went for the steak on a stone, while the rest of us went for something different. As we still had at least three people wanting a flight over the Ring, plus me for another one with a higher ISO to increase my shutter speeds, I suggested that those interested head off there at the first closure. Thinking about my recent late nights, I hastily modified that to 'the first closure after 10am'. Keith had arrived that morning and was pretty zonked from 24 hours without sleep (he mentioned this after I did the paxlaps with him ...), so headed off around 9pm. Matt had been up at 4am (coincidentally, the same ti |
Photo: Keith Maddock (taken on Friday) 
Photo: Keith Maddock (taken on Friday)
Webcam capture courtesy of Ufuk Dirim 
Photo: Keith Maddock (taken on Friday)
Photo: Keith Maddock (taken on Friday)
Photo: Keith
Maddock 
Photo: Keith Maddock
