Another look at Brooklands....this time from 1974......and a few other pics from my time in the UK....

If you've extensively read my blog you'd know that I travelled overland from Australia to Europe in early 1974 and based myself in London for several years.
During this time I met up with Chas.Mortimer Snr, himself a former Brooklands car and motorcycle racer...a habutee of Brooklands as they were called prewar. His son Chas.Mortimer Jnr became a well known motorcycle racer on the GP circuits in the 1970's....
I had known Chas.snr due to earlier correspondence and I purchased used books from him. He gave me a copy of "One Man Caravan" which I did a blog on earlier and we arranged to visit Brooklands with him.
See.....
http://velobanjogent.blogspot.com/2009/04/one-man-caravanrobert-fulton-jnrs-epic.html
I also briefly touched on Brooklands in another earlier blog ........ 
http://velobanjogent.blogspot.com/2008/06/pictures-from-my-archive-frequent-dip_17.html
Brooklands built around 1906, closed to the public at the outbreak of WW2 when Vickers and others took it over for aircraft development and testing and remained closed following cessation of hostilities. 
Chas. "bluffed" his way in through the main gate to show us the starting area and clubhouse, we noted a mockup of the Concorde nose section beside a building and out of public scrutiny.
We then travelled around the side of the circuit through a housing estate to where part of the banking was , Chas took up through a known hole in the fence and lo we were standing on the top of the banking....
Following are photos I took at the time.....
As well them are some other photos from the same scanned negative collection.
Left click on the images to enlarge.....

 Chas. Mortimer Snr., with pipe....

A favourite spot I found and try to visit every time I return to the UK, was a flight of ten locks on a canal ...Foxton Locks...near Market Harborough in Leicestershire.

Final few pics from the 2010 Australian Velocette National Rally.....

John Jennings has sent me a CD with as he titled it..."Best of Lennox Head 2011"....photos he took during the recently run 2010 Australian National Velocette Rally....
Lets finish off the rally with some from the CD.....
Left click on the images to enlarge...
JJ and I dubbed it "The Great Australian Velocette Submarine Rally".....
These couple of shots let you see what we mean....

Velos at the Keyes Machinery collection....H'mmm sorta looks a bit like a dump to me....

Plenty of rivers to cross and ferries still used...

Activities involved tugs of war....the main rally dinner had pipers ....
The Club patron, Anne Frampton, Bertie Goodman's daughter attended for several days and did the awards......

Anne with husband Norbert and JJ ( on the right)

Anne presented an annual award....The Bertie Goodman Award, to Stuart Hooper for his record breaking with a Velocette.

The award....

Final few pics....
Lunch stop on a dry, day ride.....

The Watford Speedometer......a brief look at this early instrument...

If you've a motorcycle or car made from the 1930's onwards that is British, then Smiths or it's other company British Jaeger would have been the instruments fitted and available.
But prior to this, in the 1920's and earlier there were numerous instrument firms vying for your business to fit a new speedometer to your motorcycle and in the teens, your car....
Speedometers were not legally required in the UK until 1937....
So many motorcycles were supplied without a speedometer and you had to purchase one separately with the drive and cable, usually from a Factors business ( what we call an automotive or motorcycle accessory house today) ...examples are Halfords, Pride and Clarke etc....
Smiths were just one of the competitors...
So lets have a look at another of them....
The Watford speedometer....well they made tachometers and clocks also....is one we will look at in this blog.
I've a very nice early catalogue which I've scanned and is illustrated below....
As well I have a nice example of a Watford motorcycle speedometer and have photographed it...
You'll note it has two hands...the so called "maximum hand", which stayed at the fastest speed you reached, unless you reset it with the button on the side of the case.
Perhaps this developed with police speed traps and the desire to contest any "booking"....
A 1909 Smiths catalogue I have shows "maximum hand" speedometer which had another, perhaps "bizarre" use...
These were able to be locked and, quoting the catalogue... "allowed owners to check on any furious driving by their chauffeurs"....
Watford speedometers had nickel plated cases and as chromium plate wasn't utilised until after 1926, one can date an object.
As well the speedometer, as did many of the period, has a beveled edge glass and again these disappeared in the late 1920's....
Left click on the images to enlarge them....
As you will see they were made in Watford, North London, hence the name, by the firm North and Sons Ltd, who dabbled with magnetos also. 
The business started in 1905 but there is little reference to them after the  the Great Depression , although they were still filing patent applications for odometers and some ignition system modifications up to the mid 1930's, and the dial on the speedo I have has several patent numbers, but these I seem unable to track down......but I suspect they went under like so many other companies of the time, not surviving either the Depression or WW2.
In my time, when I was active in the instrument restoration business, I can honestly say we only worked on a few examples....
So they are rather rare, but form a nice fitment to a motorcycle of the era as an alternative to Smiths/Jaeger....
The calibration factor for this following example is 710 cable turns per mile, so they were only suitable to be driven from an open gear drive setup on the front wheel, with a large gear attached to the wheel spokes.
It may well be that the calibration factor for other earlier Watford speedometers differs from this...highly likely, as the "opposition", Smiths governor speedometers used calibration ratios from 1600Tpm to 4400Tpm...they used a letter rather than a number, so you need the specific information as to what they referred to from a Smiths repair manual...pretty hard to come by. For example "A" was 3360Tpm..."D" was 1610tpm....
The only way to ascertain the calibration ration of any speedometer is to run it on a tester to indicate 6omph and read the rpm the cable is driving it at.
This rpm is the calibration figure.
I'll run a blog on this drive system in the future....

Advert for Watford speedometer....

The Watford catalogue....

DQ's back in town...after spending the last week at this years annual Australian Velocette Nation al Rally....

 Well a week away at the Australian National Velocette Rally for this year proved a bit of a revelation....
I'm renaming it "The Great Australian Velocette Submarine Rally"....
Did it rain.....every other day it seemed... yes they sure had some in the Northern Rivers area of NSW where it was based at the coastal town of Lennox Head ( it was belted around a bit some months back when a waterspout/cyclone hit it, de-roofing many houses...)...
250mm some days... local roads closed due to flooding, made it a nightmare for the dedicated organising team to get any of their planned ride routes on schedule.
The camaderie from the group of over 130 people with over 90 bikes, including 72 Velocettes was excellent and I counted around 60 Velos on the road on Thursday, the last day I participated.....
So where is Lennox Head....??
As mentioned, it's a sleepy coastal resort town in northern NSW, Australia some several hours south of the Queensland border.... "X" marks the spot-

Australia's a pretty big place and it was pleasing to see members from all of the States and two Territories bring Velocettes....
A montage of Australian State and Territory licence plates on Velos....

As well we had a good contingent from New Zealand and two Californian's...Mick Felder and Gil Loe attend.
NZer Cheryl Mickelson, pictured below, is a great supporter of the marque in NZ, edits their news sheet, contributes a report to FTDU the Aussie Club magazine and rides Velos and races in Historic events there with husband Neville also over with his father Jack, pictured to the right with John Jennings from Western Australia, former Club President and current Club Secretary.

The record breaking Velocette , built and ridden by Stuart Hooper was a prize exhibit at the Rally and as Stuart and Keith Canning had just completed a rebuild of the machine in readiness for a further attempt on his current record of 139.001mph at Lake Gairdner in South Australia next February and had yet to start the bike, they confidently decided the rally was the place to do this.
Rollers started the engine, running around 14-1 CR at the first attempt to the delight of the large crowd....
A few pics, below, record this and give a better view of the machine.

And finally a pic or two more from the Rally....