Some of these things are perhaps obvious, but I was still surprised by the degree, severity and changeability of the conditions.
Climatic conditions
Very hot
Normal battery chargers cut out because of heat in the day time
Equipment left in sun becomes too hot to touch… you could burn yourself getting into a car!
Plastics deform, or change property ( eg become soft)
I did not take temp data over one particular day, but judged from the temps recorded by the cars ambient temp gauge over a number of days during ‘roll-down’ and ‘braking’ tests this is a reasonable temp profile..
7am, 70F, 9am 74F, 11am 90F, 1pm 96F, 3pm 95F, 5pm 96F, 6pm 80F
Very Bright
Sunglasses have to be very opaque, seems a lot brighter than being on a ski slope.
Laptop, Camera, & phone screens are impossible to see in direct light, and even in the shade, (say in the shade of a car) are still very hard to use. (but ok and as normal inside the back of my ‘Ugly’ car with very dark rear windows)
Very Salty
Very corrosive atmosphere. People there seem to share a deep concern over the susceptibility of electrical faults. I witnessed Lemo style electrical plugs being gaffer taped over to help prevent ‘problems’. Not sure if the problems were always directly caused by the salt, or the washing off of the salt from the bikes by hand held water spray guns …. (Identical to my anti scab apple tree spray gun).
The mechanical fault we did see the consequence of, (Bub7 catching fire because of an oil leak), did also have an electrical angle. Neither the fire detection system, nor the bikes extinguishers worked, the rider was unaware of the fire until the crew following the bike spotted it and put it out.
Very changeable winds
When waiting at the start with the bikes, and when listening to the stewards cb radio traffic it becomes apparent of how different conditions over the course are, and of how quickly they change. Bikes waiting to start with flat calm conditions at mile 0, may be prevented by 5mph head winds at mile 7, and 5 minutes later the conditions could suddenly change to 4mph side winds the length of the track, and change again in another 5 minutes.
Early morning conditions were the most stable witnessed, at dawn the wind conditions were each day perfectly calm, visibility is also much better. Early in the morning we could clearly see the flags denoting the 3 mile point, and with binoculars make out the 4 mile flags. In the heat of the day a heat haze near the surface of the salt prevents seeing bikes on the salt surface, or the marker flags further than 1.1/2 miles away.
Personal things
Have to drink lots of water to maintain fluid levels … for me that meant ½ ltr bottle of water every ½ hr plus 2 litres of orange juice at the hotel at night. I didn’t get sweaty, no beads of perspiration or ‘it aint half hot mum’ style discolouration of tee shirts etc, the water just evaporates from your body.
Much preferred the cover up approach, long trousers and sleeves, rather than industrial use of factor 30 sun screen.
Personnel things
Over the course of the meeting I tried to observe from a respectable distance the goings on in the most relevant team camps:
There was a lot of ‘sitting down’ in the shade, there was a lot of inactivity… probably because of the heat etc, (less charitably also because of the advancing age of most of the crews I tracked). And probably because the problems witnessed were of the ‘Why does the Electronic controller not behave correctly?’ needing only the attention of one man with a laptop, rather than the ‘We have to change the rear sprocket, wheel, and chain’ variety.
Bike specific things
Operational aspects
Related to the shadowing of bike preparations (see personnel things above) I twice witnessed the pit preparations for Bub7, and a set of preparations for Ezhook. Both teams used check sheets, (I only managed to photo Bubs check sheet). Neither gave any info away, (Bubs sheet was surprisingly marked “using mystery oil” so they may be cannier than I give them credit for). The sheets were simple tick box affairs.. Tyres’, Oil level, etc.. this suggests to me that the teams came to the salt 100% certain of the intended setup and were not trying, or testing anything out of the ordinary or unexpected .. ie no boxes or comments heard saying things like “now with trailing angle 43degs”.
Dennis Manning made a big play of telling everyone, more than once, of how he had pressurised the tyres to 150psi … I thus suspect the tyre pressures were pumped up to something else. I also witnessed the panic in the Bub camp when they had run the engine to try and diagnose a timing fault but had forgot to connect or set up the other engine controls and trips, thus risking oil starvation, overheating or causing other faults. …we need everything to be fail safe… or in fault finding mode need two or more people in 100% quiet concentration… and someone else looking after the wider implications of what’s happening.
I was also surprised at how relaxed the Bub7 crew seemed to be whilst waiting at the mile 0 point for the conditions to become acceptable to start. Once conditions were pronounced “ok” they then started the checks and setup, which took ½ hour to complete. I expected them to get ready and then wait for suitable conditions and then “go” at say 10 mins notice; maybe part of their thought process is that the conditions have to be ok for ½ hr before a run can take place? Or maybe they believe their own showmanship “We only do record attempts” (ie we don’t need to do trial runs) and were only after a minimal amount of runs from the event?
