Steve-A

Stick some light 80mm forks and as suggested above 22-12 or 22-13 ratio on and it works fine. Yeh its not a proper jump bike but it does the job if you've nout else. I've also taken mine cross country with a long long seat post and a rear cassette giving me ratios between 22-24 and 22-11. Was great on the technical sections, not such a great climber

Awesome. Joe lived local to me when he was in England, used to ride with him a fair amount when I was in college. He was pretty damn good back then, and is obviously geting better and better! Nice amonut of gloss on the video too, though IMO should have been a little shorted and slightly less filler.

As long as I hold my Iphone landscape it works fine for me as it is.

Faster = more fun. Its that simple. Slow = boring, so you have to spend the whole time polishing and making cosmetic changes to keep it interesting. When you can go fast you don't care

Having had someone throw a cigarette out of a car window and it bouncy up and hit me in the face I have to agree that its one of the things that really pisses me off.

Have you seen some of the v4 2 strokes guys have modernised? Take one rg500 v4 500cc 2 stroke engine, drop into rgv/rs250 frame with tz 125 top ends, and you have 140kgs wet and 160hp with that crazy power band Also one day I will own a rotary powered car but it will have to be when I have a job/better job. Back on topic, realistically as others have said its a tough comparison to make. In day to day life the bike will be faster in a straight line and the car faster round bends, with average bikes, average performance cars and average riders/drivers. I love both my bike and car, they are very different experiences.

I also thought it was the best of the three so far. And have also dreamt of Lancias for aaages. My dad had a Fulvia when I was born, but sold it because my car seat didn't fit very well. Stupid me

I'll get it out when I can, might be a few weeks yet! Only been out properly filming once so far and that ride was cut short by rain. Joel, I've had to revert to a brake. Riding places like bristol there's lots of opportunities for interesting brakeless lines, but come back to Worcestershire and its a different situation. I'm happy for the moment with the compromise of a rear brake but no front brake.

You should only need to set the shutter to something like 1/250 to remove most if not all blur. I'll be interested to see how the test clip looks

On the hf200 you'll have a shutter speed priority mode. Try using larger numbers, faster shutter speeds. That should reduce the blur. You'd have the same high speed blur with any camera when the shutter speed is set low. Like Rowan, I've got a canon hf series camera and it's blur is exactly the same as my Sony z1 and sony mini dv camera. Ben, there are no frame rate options on the hf series besides 50i and 25p. Unless you're on shutter priority and have asked for a shutter speed below 1/50.

The Canon HF series cameras are really good in their price/size bracket. What is it about the camera you dislike? Cameras that use a flashdrive/hard disk for recording normally use an mpeg or AVCHD codec, which means the images are recorded at full quality then compressed down, like you would an internet video , to fit on the media. Mini DV, to simplify it slightly, records all the information about the luminance of the image but only every other pixels colour. So, in slow moving shots and flat light conditions the flash cameras will record nicer colour depth and vibrance, on the other hand for fast moving sports stuff you may start to see compression artifacts as their data rate is limited. The Mini DV camera will never show any signs of compression, but in some conditions the images will look less saturated and glossy. CCD and CMOS are different types of image sensor. Both have their faults. CCD sensors aren't great in low light and super bright objects (like reflections of the sun or light bulbs) can cause the pixels ot overload momentarily causing a kinda vertical streak on the image. CMOS sensors use a different shuttering system, which means if you're using a slow shutter speed you can get a certain amount of wobble and twist in your video image when doing fast movements with the camera. This effect is usually not so noticeable. If you are filming while people shoot photos, the flash can cause nasty artifacting on the final video. Whether CCD or CMOS the larger the sensor if physical size the better. Larger sensors work better in low light and offer a greater range of depth of field. If you're using a fisheye with any corner vignetting then you will need to turn steady shot off yes. DIIC DV III is just a Canon brand name, and holds as much weight as bividus digestivum or whatever. As far as recommendations go, if you want a small HD camera that produces nice high gloss images then the HF200 really isn't a bad call. If you're less worried about gloss, but want to capture action accurately then an old Vx2200 or similar Sony Mini DV camera was/is practically the standard for skate/bmx videos. If you've a little more to spend then one of the Sony HDV camera such as the FX1000 offers both HD quality with tape recording and a larger camera size with top mounted handle. To get frame rate options you'd need to spend a fair bit more than any of those cameras. That said its amazing the quality of slow-mo that can be produced using video shot at normal 25fps. The key is all in the way the software slows the clip down, high level software like Adobe After Effects can slow video down to 1/8ths speed and still look smooth, where as windows movie maker 1/2 speed often looks a little notchy.

I think it is Kleivard. I remember being wowed by his smoothness. Hes not really doing much in that video, but IIRC that video was filmed in the warm up/practice. Its certainly missing some of the bigger moves of the day, some of Vinces lines in the finals were huge and Et and Akkers.

We gonna give this another shot? Meet V94 sometime mid November maybe?

Man that was a crazy day. Furthest I'd ever been on the train at the time. My friend Ben, who came with me, broke his bike 5 seconds after we arrived in Nottingham forcing us to walk across town. Sanding on upturned bikes on the bashplates to see over the crowds heads. Awesome riding. Met loads of cool people. Riding after the battle with DJ. The riding was mental too. Lets have another one

Yeh climbing shoes are a must, and they must fit right. Its much better to goto a shop and try some on than buying off the internet. Another semi-essential for bouldering is a bouldering matt. A light weight portable crash matt that, whilst not comfy to land on, will stop you breaking your ankles/ribs when you fall from 15ft up. For similar reasons going with at least one other person's not a bad idea. Its also well worth buying a bouldering guide book covering the area you wish to climb. The guides give you information on access rights to private lands, places to park, pictoral guides on established routes up the rocks with gradings allowing you to make the most of your day.

Yeh, its something I've noticed. I guess you could say that bouldering is to trad climbing, what XC is to trials. When I was more heavily into the climbing scene I noticed that many of the guy I knew that liked long days out trad climbing enjoyed the adventure and time outside as much as the climbing. Like going for an XC ride if you're doing a 5 pitch trad route there are likely to be some easy pitches and some harder, but because you'll be up there all day the hardest ones aren't likely to be at your true limit. Bouldering on the other hand is very like trials. It's yourself Vs an object, A to B without breaking rules. In trials those rules are putting your feet down, with bouldering its more etiquette about not using knees/elbows/etc. Bouldering is a short intense experience, and to me feels much more 'pure' than trials. There's good bouldering all over the peaks. Stanage, the Roaches and Burbage are probably the most well known. I've not personally done Stanage, but I've done the Roaches and Burbage many times. Heres a few random pics from over the years. Roaches lower tier, the classic 3 pocket slab problem. Roaches upper tier Roaches Doxeys Pool, one of my only V5 graded outdoor problems. Havent got many Burbage pictures, but heres one from a very cold January morning (-4 with wind chill!) Nesscliffe isn't too far from the south west of the peaks. There's some nice bouldering. If you venture further along the A5 there's some nice sport routes in the Trevor Valley If you're really up for a trek, the bouldering in the Llanberis pass is to die for.

If you've got air in the slaves/crossover then this could cause the problem.

Fair enough, knowing how busy it is for you guys I had presumed it was done last night/lunch break. I wish I had somewhere to ride when it rains!

While the cats away the mice will play aye?

I have to say I'm impressed by your manual control. Having tried to ride a mod as BMX myself I know how much of a bitch they are. The video on the other hand did little for me. I disliked the music and the head banging, and I found the lack of variation irritating just as a TGS video is. I think if you'd done more of those lines on more interesting obstacles, rather than many clips on the flat/curb height it would have helped. As for your wish for a hybrid bike, I think you should really reconsider. The riding you're showcasing in that video really is pure BMX. If thats what you want to do then really just give BMX a second chance. I've had a couple of BMXs over the years, and always came to the conclusion that I suited the trials bike more even when I rode mod. More recently I bought another BMX to give it a final chance, modern BMX geometry is much more suited to a trials way of life and I'm pleased to say I'm really getting on with it. Its a very different way to ride and its taken me weeks to get my head around it, but now I have things just work so much better. Riding a proper BMX will really improve your street technique as well. In the video you are using lots of bitch kicks to make your spins work, something thats easy with trials gearing, but try that on BMX gearing and it wont work. This mean you have to learn to do it properly, and once transfered back to a trials bike will look smoother and more stylish. If you insist on riding a trials bike, then I think you would be more suited to a different bike. The biggest difference in feel between a BMX and a mod is the stem+bars. Try putting a bmx stem + bars on a mod and it really rides like a BMX. Awesome to bunny hop and spin, horrible to back hop. Put trials bars on a bmx and it will feel like a mod. I've tried both, it really does. Whilst I was trying this I also wanted a hybrid bmx/mod, so I had a stem made up to use with riser bars to give a compromise between BMX and trials stem geometry. The outcome? It sucks. I couldn't ride bmx on it any better than the trials bike, and I could barely ride trials better than on the bmx! The best compromise I found was simply riding one of the 2000/2005 Monty's, in full trials set-up but with smooth rim brake and hard tire pressures, which is pretty much what the lad from 26twenty did. Obviously its you're riding and you're life, do what you want. I just think its a shame to be so stubborn and not open the idea of different bikes. I don't think you should 'just buy a bmx' like many will say, it's a line thats been said to me very often on here, BUT I do think you should reconsider your bike set-up. Would you be better with a BMX to supplement your trials bike? would you be better with a Monty? Would you be much better with a 24" trials bikes thats a much better BMX/trials hybrid than a 20" will ever be?

Fair nuff I presume you don't want an Mx5 turbo instead of your Rx hahahahaha

Thought you were getting something new in time for this meet anyway? Time attack + EDC does sound tempting, I've been meaning to get to one of these joint rounds all year and failed to do so....

I think Muel pretty much hit it on the head. i.e. A 'normal' sidehop, followed by a drop. i.e. An on/off sidehop.