Mark, as a (saddly) infrequent visitior to your club may I give you my honest feedback ... I appologies if any of it seems blunt, it's certainly not intended to be offensive in any way ... it seems I have a bit of a harsh vibe to my writing style!
Firstly
the venue itself is very good, plenty of space, adequate power and reasonable temperature control.
+1
The track surface, good carpet that isn't mega grippy and doesn't eat tires and also doesn't seem to offer a huge benefit to those with fresh tires over worns ... perfect for a club
+1
The layouts, sometimes I think you guys put features in for the sake of features. On a couple of occassions I have been to the club it has felt as if the car almost never has all 4 wheels on the ground. That makes it difficult to judge any potential setup improvements and makes it difficult to 'race' on IMHO. I know the majority are micro racers but it does make the track less enjoyable for 1/10th ... again just my opinion.
-1
The people, everybody seems nice and friendly and there doesn't seem to be any real cliques going on which is nice.
+1
The schedual, it does seem to be the case that it 'feels' like a long time form doors open to the start of racing. Once the meeting gets underway its totally manic to the point that if you break anything, not matter how minor, it's tough to get out for the next round. As I am coming from about 90mins away and I am leaving work about 4:30/5pm I am usually one of the first there. You know I am more than happy to help with the laying of the track but I do find it difficult to get involved as there never seems to be any sort of plan. All that ever seems to happen is that 1 or 2 guys "make it up as they go along" whilst the other handful of folks drag all the bits out into the middle of the hall and pile it up. I think a pre-drawn track plan would help loads to get the track layout communicated and as they say "many hands make light work". Your track marking system is really simple to set up and the only improvement would be for the lengths to be marked on them, that would allow anybody to be able to follow the plan if there was one. I wish I could do more to help with the packing up but have at least an hours drive back and invariably have to be up at 5am on a saturday morning for work
-1
The day, with more and more people working saturdays, often at even less sociable hours than in the week, a Friday night is a real PITA. The arguement for Fridays was always that the kids would struggle to get their homework done and get to a race meeting on a school night ... thing is there are next to no kids now and those that do race seem to be organised enough to cope IMHO.
Also only running every other week means it is easy to get out of sync with when it is on, a number of times I have found myself in a position to go racing on a Friday night only to look at the website and find that your not running that week. Often it's a more than a month before I get the chance to visit your club again.
Obviously that is going to be different for everybody you ask so this one is just my personal opinion.
-1
The location, Leominster isn't easy to get to from the south or (M50 side) in terms of consistency of journey. Easy enough to find but a horrible slow drive through the lanes non the less. Not sure on the access from the north side but looking at the map it seems a little better. If you could get it closer to Hereford without loosing too much of the space and storage of the current venue I think it would benefit the club as it would "feel" closer for many of the west mids off-road racers and that might get the guys from the Birmingham / Coventry / Kidderminster / Worcester areas along a little more often. I remember Worcester buggy club having 30-40 every week at a venue much smaller than yours because it was always good racing and easy to get to (must have been a while ago though as I also remember TQing regularly there lol).
It might be worth while posting a question / poll in the Mid West region section on here and asking if you can have a link on the Mid West website to judge what would be best to for the 'local' drivers.
The motivation, why am I willing to do a 2.5 hour round trip to race at Leominster / Hereford? Because I like the size of the tracks and the fact that I can use old tires without feeling at a huge disadvantage. That said there is no reason for me to become a regular, especially not seeing as it cost me £20 to do a club night there. If I knew there were going to be several quick buggy lads there to compare myself against (i.e get lapped by
) I would be there much more regularly.
0 (as not the clubs fault the quick west mids guys don't go)
Total rating = 0 (i.e. the negatives for me balance with the positives)
So what do I do instead of going to Leominster? Well the simple answer is nothing, I have very little other choice.
I could maybe go to Caldicot and maybe I will in the future but that is further in terms of time (or more expensive if I use the bridge) and the hall is much smaller than yours ... seem to remember it being a bit of an obstical course type track from some previous visits too.
I am getting my TC together to run at Gloucester, even though their track is VERY small it is only about 4 miles away and they do get a couple of quick boys there now and again (such as Mr Jefferies).
I might also go to Worcester on occassion with the TC once I have it running as I would like.
What I am looking forward to is Ledbury running on a Wednesday evening, hopefully I will see you there Mark.
You know I am a fan of your club Mark, the core guys do a great job and I am disappointed in the poor showing of support from the Mid West lads at the BWOC even though I pushed it as much as I could for you.
I really hope that the Hereford club keeps going and putting in the good work you have been, would be a shame to loose it ... even if it is a little too far for me to become a regular (although I will try to do once a month again soon)