WozzTopia

The Winter Classic Trial and Tour, formerly the Winter Classic Rally and Winter Classic Rally and Tour, is a 3 day multi club event run by Ballarat Light Car Club inc., on the last weekend of August each year. With a 13 year history the event has become a regular for many competitors. The Winter Classic is a Tarmac only event (making it suitable for all types of vehicles) consisting of a Trial or Tour and good number of Driving Tests over the 3 days. The event is set around areas of the Central Highlands and includes some challenging and picturesque scenery.

The Winter Classic Trial and Tour has continually evolved over the last 13 years with this year being no different. Competitors this year were given a choice to enter the full event eg. trial or tour and driving tests or driving tests only. After several years of maintaining the Winter Classic website the new option of competing in the driving tests only, not to mention the reduced price. I was contacted by long time friend and fellow BLCC member Mick, who asked if I was interested in being co-driver for him in his Subaru on the Sunday only. My instant response was h**l yes! To my utter delight after a night to think on it just Sunday soon turned into the whole 3 days.

After a couple of days madly trying to organise my club membership renewal, a helmet, and a CAMS license, the event finally kicked off Friday night the 26th of August at the Ballarat Show Grounds with 3 fast paced laps under lights. What a way to be initiated into motor sport, although I am a long time BLCC member this was the first real event I had participated in.

Saturday saw us at Victoria Park Ballarat for an almost 2.5 km dash through the big old Oak trees. It is good to see the return of Victoria Park to the Winter Classic repertoire after several years. A few chicanes, dog leg turns and a stop, reverse, go kept the speed down on this track for competitors safety. From here we had a couple of hours to fill while the other entrants did their Trial or tour before we had to be at Myrniong for an uphill (not a hill climb) test of about 1.4 km that was all over in under 50 seconds for some competitors.

Next it was back to Ballarat for some more tests including the old favorite the bus park at Morshead Park, the FMP car park and a new test at Villiers Drive Wendouree that was well received by all. Sadly this test saw Rob P hit the gutter, pushing his front right wheel back and well out of alignment, causing the early retirement of this car from the running, but it was good to see Rob pull up in his road car on Sunday morning intent on finishing the event.

Sunday started off with a slightly shortened heart starter run around the car park of Bartlett Blinds, due to a few items being left out in the proposed test track. Next it was off to Clunes for another uphill run up Scenic Drive. This was a great test starting at a creek crossing with a family fishing just metres from the start line. This series of tests proved somewhat eventful for Mick and me with the Subaru jumping out of first gear on one run and totally demolishing the finish garage on another. (see video)

Back to Ballarat Sunday afternoon for our final series of tests starting off in Old Creswick Road for a fast run around Anchor Drive – Golden Crescent that nearly saw the withdrawal of Mick’s car from a strange shudder and noise in the left rear. Next was a tight Motorkhana style test on the car park of the Wendouree Pool. After just a few seconds on this test Mick made the decision to withdraw because of the vibration again.

While driving to the last test location at Villiers Drive Mick decides the car works well in a straight line and when turning left, we’re back in baby! We then head back to the previous test to put a time on the board and then to the final test site that just happened to be predominantly left handers. The car went well and let us put 2 final times on the board.

What a weekend! I can’t believe how much fun we had and the camaraderie with other competitors was great. I can’t wait for next year, maybe I’ll see what else I can do between now and then.

My first visit to One Tree Hill since 2000 where I believe I caught a staphylococcus infection that caused a brain aneurysm. With any luck things won’t turn out that drastic this time:)

With the demise of the Ballarat Light Car Club run, One Tree Hillclimb in 2002. A small group of local motoring enthusiasts met and resolved to “Re-climb the Hill”.

The Ararat Car Club was formed and after much hard work and frustration, in 2008 after a 6 year hiatus they ran their very first One Tree Hillclimb.

Below Steve Grinstead proving he has what it takes to please the crowd.

A bit over a week ago I helped out at a Khanacross held by the Ballarat Light Car Club. I drove the stop watch while another club member Noel wrote the competitor’s times down. It was possibly the coldest June day I have ever experienced with wind that went straight through us. My nose was running my eyes were watering but I still had a good time.

A khanacross is an inexpensive, safe way to develop your driving skills and have fun!

The competition is held on unsealed surfaces and involves a series of timed tests utilizing various layouts. The Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS) has stipulated that since a khanacross is not a “speed event” no straight section of the course is allowed to exceed 150 metres and this means the speeds are relatively low. Only one car is allowed on each test at any one time.

Many of our club members use purpose built vehicles (which are also suitable for most other forms of competition offered by our club) and these can often be developed to a competitive standard for a total cost of less than $4000.00 (sometimes much less!)

Rally type winter tread tyres are usually permitted in our khanacrosses although our popular once a year Stapo’s khanacross allows only less aggressively treaded road tyres.

Your road registered “everyday” vehicle is also suitable for khanacrosses provided it is well maintained and equipped with an approved fire extinguisher.

All drivers must wear an approved safety helmet and possess an easily obtained CAMS level 2 NS licence.

More Info at BLCC Website
Full Image Gallery

A favicon is a small, 16 ×16 image that is shown in a browser’s URL bar, bookmarks menu and page tab when your site is visited. It is a good way to have your site stand out and increase its prominence in the bookmarks menu.

Adding a favicon to your self-hosted WordPress blog is relativly simple, the following will guide you through the proccess.

Create your Favicon

If you are talented with Illustrator or similar packages you could make your own image themed to your blog, try and keep it fairly close to square. Or find an image that you want to use and crop it square like I have .

Now it a simple matter of using a Favicon generator to create yours. Hit the browse button to upload your image, and click “Create Favicon” button. Then on the next page click the link to download you icon it will be saved to your computer as favicon.ico

Installing your Favicon

Use any FTP client and  upload the favicon.ico, into the main folder of your current theme. and another copy should also go in the root directory of your blog, eg http://yourblog.com/blog/ so that it is visible for news feedreaders.

Now login to the admin section of your blog and select, Appearance –> Editor .

Choose “Header” from the list on the right.

Search for the line that begins with, <link rel=”shortcut icon” and ends with /favicon.ico” />

and overwrite it, (or if it doesn’t exist) add the following code just before the end head tag </head> as shown in the picture below.

Nessasary Code

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”<?php bloginfo(’template_directory’); ?>/favicon.ico” />

Click “Update File” button and restart your browser. Navigate to your blog and the favicon.ico should now appear in you browser address bar, bookmarks and tabs, if it does not hit the refresh button once or twice to force a refresh.

Below is a video tutorial depicting the steps to edit the theme and upload the favicon to your blog via FTP.

Favicon_demo.swf

The easiest way to tag your MP3 files and add album art by far!

Tag&Rename is a music files tag editor that easily handles all popular digital audio formats. No matter what music compressor you prefer, you can keep your music collection organized with Tag&Rename. It is the only tag editor and organizer which has full native support for: mp3 (ID3v1, ID3v2.2, ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4 tags), MusePack mpc/mp+ (APEv1, APEv2 and ID3v1 tags), Windows Media wma, asf and wmv files, Ogg Vorbis/Flac/Speex (vorbis comments), Apple iTunes and iPod aac (m4a) files including mp4, lossless m4a and protected m4p files, most popular lossless codecs including Monkey’s Audio, Flac, Wav Pack, Optim Frog, True Audio, Apple, Windows Media lossless and Wav.

Tag&Rename supports many additional tag fields including lyrics, cover art, rating, mood, disc #, part of a compilation, album artist, classical music fields (Composer, Conductor, etc.), file related URL’s and so on. With Tag&Rename, you can:

• manually edit music files tags
• automatically fix and complete file tags using online freedb database
• load titles and cover art from amazon.com server
• load titles from tracktype.org server
• get tags data from file names and its folders structures
• rename your music files and folders according to its music information in a batch
• create play lists
• export files information to CSV, HTML, XML and text formats and more

Tag&Rename supports many files and tags standards in an easy and intuitive way, so you can work with music metadata and not have to think about files codecs and tags versions – Tag&Rename does it all.

Download Trial Version

The Winter Classic Rally and Tour is an event put on by the Ballarat Light Car Club ( http://blcc.net.au/ ) annually in late August. It comprises several tests, navigation and touring events.

The Rally format has been developed to suit entrants who have competed in events of this type before who enjoy driving tests and relish the challenges that navigationally oriented touring sections provide. The Rally format includes a mixture of challenging driving tests each day to guarantee a true team effort. The Tour, with clear and full touring instructions, suits navigationally inexperienced competitors, first time competitors or those who simply wish to enjoy their driving tests without the highs and lows of finding their way. The Tour uses guaranteed sealed roads, hence making it suitable for all vehicles. Both the Rally and Tour use the same driving tests, allowing all drivers to compete against each other in this part of the Event.

Image gallery Saturday Image gallery Sunday

www.winterrally.ballarat.net.au/