Lottery grant for new SI kit for junior/schools development

Lottery Grant for new club SI kit

In mid 2006, the committee began looking at ways to extend or replace its stock of SI control boxes by purchasing some of the newer, smaller & more user friendly boxes: we decided to replace the old stock at the rate of about 10 boxes per annum for the next 5-6 years. The older boxes have been heavily used and we expect to have a few fail each year from now on. The newer ones are easier to manage, which aids the burden placed on Cris Tween, have a much greater battery life and should thus be more economical to run.

At about the same time, John & Di Tilsley proposed that we should be looking at getting an SI schools pack which could be used for by the club and also by the schools in the very successful schools league they have run in S. Dorset for the last 15 years ago. This mini-league runs for about 6 weeks in the second half of the Spring term, using maps of school grounds produced by Di (who has mapped over 130 Dorset schools in the last few years) with events after school, mid-week, finishing with a final event at Nothe Fort in Weymouth. For the last few years, the club SI team have helped to provide the computing for this final.

You will also remember Di's article in Waffle last year detailing her schools mapping and asking for support in running schools events in Dorset.

As a result, after discussions with the committee, John Tilsley produced the specifications for a bid for Lottery funds, the purpose being for the club to use the equipment mainly for schools development and junior coaching/training as well as for club events.

We heard recently that we had received a substantial grant, to which the club is also adding a significant amount, the money we had set on one side to spend on new boxes.

With all this money, we are purchasing the equivalent of three school sets. Each school set has enough boxes for 10 controls as well as the usual Clear/Check/Start/Finish boxes, 20 dibbers & a thermal printer. WIM already have plenty of dibbers so we have opted to replace the dibbers in the sets with more boxes. The equipment will usually be divided as follows:-

One set kept in the Poole/Weymouth area maintained by John & Di, and used by them for their coaching work.

One set kept in E Dorset, to be used mainly for schools coaching, junior coaching, work at Moors Valley etc.

One set to be kept in the Blandford area, to be used mainly for schools development in N Dorset.

Cris Tween will hold any remaining new boxes along with the rest of the club stock.

This will enable us to use the sets singly in schools, with the option of adding extra boxes from the club stock if necessary.

By adding two or three sets together we have sufficient equipment for Schools League/Local events.

By adding the equipment to the existing stock we have the necessary equipment for big events without having to borrow kit from other clubs (eg for the Caddihoe Chase, we had to borrow kit from Devon & Kerno)

The older boxes, having less heavy use, should now last a lot longer before they give up the ghost.

The order has been placed and we hope the new equipment will be available before Christmas

Apparently, clubs all over Europe has decided to re-equip with the new boxes, which has led to a shortage of them, exacerbated by a shortage of the chips they use. At the same time Seiko have discontinued the printer that SI uses and have produced a new model which is still in process of shipping from Japan.

So although our order went off months ago, we are still waiting for the kit. We were hoping to have it for the Boxing Day Canter - now we probably won't get it until after the Regional Event at Ibsley.

However we have finally got, on loan, 25 new boxes to practice with, and the club used these for the first time in a training session with a group of youngsters at Clayesmore Prep school this week.