Time to start sharpening the tent pegs…

Yes - we're all in it. 

I don’t like racing but I’ll be happy to help during the weekend, who can I contact to register?

I volunteered during the 2022 WC in Jura and had a great time 

A Frenchman too lazy to train.

Just registered on line, all very smooth and managed to register 2 bikes.

There didn't seem to be an option to book camping, does this have to be done seperately?

Stuart

It didn't appear when I logged into the shop, although the page refers to book below. When I follow the link I get error 404.

No rush, off for my Sunday tea now

Stuart

Something mangled the URL in Alan's post above.  I've just un-mangled it.

https://shop.bhpc.org.uk/wc2024-camping" rel="nofollow - https://shop.bhpc.org.uk/wc2024-camping  works for me.  You'll get a "page not found" error if you aren't logged in to the shop.  Otherwise, it should appear under https://shop.bhpc.org.uk/wc2024" rel="nofollow - the WC2024 Registration section .

Just used that shop link and it is page not found for me when logged in. 

"

One way to keep the riff raff out I suppose... 

Just checked my emails and I have received an order confirmation. It's also showing on my credit card bill. Thanks to all who sorted this out. Anyway, I am booked to ride and camp so happy now

Stuart

The race programme is now available for viewing:

Currently just in online form but a downloadable PDF version will be there shortly.

Also keep an eye on the list of entrants - updated as people register owing to some Magical Wizardry by Kim:

Will it be possible to camp from the 15th? 

There is camping available at the fishing lakes next door...  https://www.cottingtonlakes.co.uk/caravancamping/" rel="nofollow - Caravan/Camping (cottingtonlakes.co.uk)

Rob and I were going to take 2 cars to Betteshanger, and we had input the registration numbers when we registered for the event. We have now decided we might be better off renting a van for the weekend. The problem is that we won't know the registration until we pick it up on Friday, will we still be able to park without getting fined?

Stuart

The Competition Rules are now published. You can see them on the WC2024 website:

and download them to keep and maybe turn into a handsome wallhanging or attractive coaster:

I would like to know if there is a place where I can store a few bikes in Deal before the World Championship?

I  sent a mail Betteshanger Park  a week ago but got no reply.

The complete Event Programme is now available to download from the WC2024 website:

Riders will get a print copy of the Programme in their Welcome Packs however this is a chance to have a preview before you arrive.

The Programme contains the Classes riders have been allocated to as well as the race schedule, rules and much, much more.

Are riders 713 Aeryn Parsons & 636 Kim Wall in the right category? They are both allocated to 'Faired' currently.

I wonder what tandem ICE are bringing?

Russ

ETA: Rubbishness increases as riders drop out.

 

ICE Trikes will be there with a race team and offering mechanical assistance to competitors.

If three upright trikes actually make it to the start line, I look forward to getting a gold star for completely missing the point of entering the recumbent world championships.

However, it's not the recumbent world championships is it , it's the Human Powered Vehicle, so as long as no motor, anything goes, recumbents gravitate to it as no other clubs will let them race as peers, cos UCI rules innit!

Rob and I had a great weekend, big thanks to all involved in organising it, especially "The Voice" for keeping us all in order. It was great to be with people who apprecaite the great engineering of Moultons and Bromptons and not just dismissing them as "shopping bikes".

Does anyone know where and when next year's event will be?

Stuart

It was supposed to be Germany but the latest I've heard was that they have pulled out and it may not happen at all next year now.

There was a meeting of the European clubs on Saturday at Betteshanger but I missed it as I was still marshalling.

I'll hopefully hear the outcome of that later in the week.

thanks a lot for hosting the WC24 at Betteshanger. Ever since I watched the videos from 2018 I wanted to visitit this venue. Hope Betteshanger will make it one day again in your national racing series, which should be a stong reason to revisit Kent.

Best wishes, Rai.

Hello Kim,

special thanks to you for all the efforts with the time measurements and stuff. I checked your GH forks and can imaginge how much work this all must have been.

One feedback I want to share. Maybe it would be possible to avoid the "zone of death" around the RFID antennas by applying some kind of signal damping? I mean, there are card holders that suppress the RFID function. And a tagged recumbent bike is nothing else than a bank card. Well, in a way, and I do not mean the costs. It would require some bigger among of the damping tissue that is used for RFID suppressing wallets. The back of the antenna could be covered and at the front there could be some tube made of that tissue that allows a sight along the finish line towards the other antenna. This would reduce the solid angels of the antennas a lot (and, of course, I do not know their characteristics), and maybe it would not work. On the other side the overall time measuring system seems to be able to measure milliseconds, implying that its frequency could be high enough to work with such a small solid angel (I assume, both antennas need to receive a signal to save the measurement). Then there is always the possibility to widen such damping tubes at the ends. Such a thingy could save the lifes of many recumbent bikers.

Anyways, your efforts were much appreciated, says the guy who asked you at the venue about the not updated browser cache on his mobile phone while trying to see the live results, which is a very cool feature (the live results, not the cache). Cheers, Rai.

Yes, it's been countless hours of work over a couple of years to reach this point.  That includes developing hardware like the LED race clock, the sprint timer device and the backup power supply for the tag reader.

One feedback I want to share. Maybe it would be possible to avoid the "zone of death" around the RFID antennas by applying some kind of signal damping? I mean, there are card holders that suppress the RFID function. And a tagged recumbent bike is nothing else than a bank card. Well, in a way, and I do not mean the costs. It would require some bigger among of the damping tissue that is used for RFID suppressing wallets. The back of the antenna could be covered and at the front there could be some tube made of that tissue that allows a sight along the finish line towards the other antenna. This would reduce the solid angels of the antennas a lot (and, of course, I do not know their characteristics), and maybe it would not work. On the other side the overall time measuring system seems to be able to measure milliseconds, implying that its frequency could be high enough to work with such a small solid angel (I assume, both antennas need to receive a signal to save the measurement). Then there is always the possibility to widen such damping tubes at the ends. Such a thingy could save the lifes of many recumbent bikers.

The RFID system can read *checks maunufacturer's specs* up to 1100 tags per second.  (It's designed for stock control in warehouses, where you might wheel a pallet of hundreds of items past the reader in one go.)  Typically it will read each tag 10-100 times as a rider passes through (depending on how fast they're moving and how many other tags are around), and CrossMgrImpinj performs a quadratic regression analysis on the signal strength to work out when they passed closest to the antenna.  Time precision is variable (and also depends on good clock synchronisation between the computer and the tag reader - we now have a GPS time source to keep things in sync), but it can be as bad as 1 second, or as good as a few milliseconds.

It only needs one antenna to read the tag, it will pick which one it uses based on which has the best signal strength.  The main reason we have antennas on both sides of the finish line is to reduce the chances of them being blocked by another carbon fibre HPV.  (The Pedal Car racers solve this by having the antennas pointing down from an overhead gantry, but that would be impractical to transport or set up / take down at most of our BHPC races, where we only have the track for a few hours.)

We can easily reduce the effective range of the system by reducing the transmitted power or receiver sensitivity, but this is a trade-off against missing reads from tags that are damaged, attached to bad surfaces, or at less good angles.  For the World Championships our priority was to avoid as many missed reads as possible, so we wanted maximum power.  The side effect is that the antenna can pick good tags up from the far side of the track (so shielding the back of the antenna won't help).  Narrowing the beam would reduce the number of reads it gets as riders pass through, so there would be less data for the QuadReg algorithm to work with, reducing time precision.

The opposite problem, of riders bringing stray tags into the detection zone, is normally dealt with by filtering; the timing software just ignores tag reads of riders who aren't in the race.  That's usually sufficient for BHPC events, where we mostly do criterium races split into two groups, and the people hanging around the timing tent are usually not in the race.

For the world championships our main concern was riders stopping during the 3-hour race, and walking near the finish line to fix a puncture or go to the toilet or whatever.  Since they're supposed to be in the race, we wouldn't be able to filter them out.  With only an hour to produce some kind of results for the prize giving, we didn't want to have to deal with spurious laps, so the exclusion zone made things much simpler.  By having it in place for the whole event, people got used to staying out of it, even when it wouldn't have caused a problem for the system.

You mention card holders: We do actually use one of these to store spare tags inside the timing tent without causing problems.  It works well, and means we always know where the tags are.

The flying sprint is a special case:  As we need much higher precision than the RFID system can provide (two riders were 1ms apart!), we use the tape switches which detect the tyre rolling over them, triggering a dedicated timer device (with precision in the tens of microseconds).  The software then correlates this with RFID tags seen at around the same time (doesn't have to be very precise), and works out who the rider was.  For it to work it needs an exclusion zone, in case someone (inevitably) wanders over to ask what their result was and 'claims' the time of a rider passing over the line.

The time trial that we ran on Sunday Morning used the RFID to detect the riders starting, so there's a similar risk of riders coming into the zone and starting themselves early.

(For the standing start sprint, we switched the RFID off and entered rider's numbers manually, so no problem with them queuing up inside the zone.  Friday's aborted time trial used manual entry to start riders, but RFID for the finish, so stray tags weren't a problem.)

Anyways, your efforts were much appreciated, says the guy who asked you at the venue about the not updated browser cache on his mobile phone while trying to see the live results, which is a very cool feature (the live results, not the cache). Cheers, Rai.

We have various long laps in the 3-hour race that are probably due to riders stopping and not telling us.  (The lap notes in the Chart view at the bottom of the page show what we've edited and why.)

Here's the view from the timing tent:

Sprint timer on the left, main timing computer in the middle showing the SprintTimer application.  Second monitor on the right showing CrossMgrVideo capturing 5-second clips centred on the rider triggering the switch (it keeps a loop of video in memory, so it can record a few seconds into the past).  Chromebook on the right showing the current result in Big Friendly Letters™.  Mobile phone for the live results:

Underneath, a rat's nest of power cables, then the flightcase containing the RFID reader (silver box lower right), dual power supply (black panel, lower left, and the heatsink on the back wall to the right is the DC:DC converter), a power drill battery with adaptor in front of it to power the system for a couple of hours if the generator fails.  An old ADSL router in the lid functions as an Ethernet switch and WiFi bridge (the LED clock connects using WiFi).  There's also a GPS-referenced NTP time server top right, which the tag reader, computer and race clock synchronise their real-time clocks to.  (Spare timing tags behind the router don't get picked up because they're overlapping each other.)  Pentagram, because all this radio is basically witchcraft.  Having this all built into the case like this, with a single AC power cord, means there's a lot less plugging and unplugging than there used to be:

An innovation for the World Championships - by mounting the big RFID antenna on a step ladder at around head height we get better reads from the helmets of upright bike/trike riders.  It can also see over nearby velomobiles.  A smaller antenna lower down only has a range of about 5 metres, but stops anything sneaking past underneath.  The security camera housing contains a USB global-shutter machine-vision camera.  Image quality is fairly poor, but it captures at 60fps with no distortion on fast-moving objects.

Not currently in use here is a piece of drainpipe which holds an infra-red beam-break sensor (in the box with the tag-reader above) - the beam bounces off the reflective tape on the large RFID aerial on the other side of the track, and the long pipe keeps sunlight out of the sensor.  This is used to trigger the video capture if the RFID doesn't pick a rider up.  We can then identify them from the picture and get the missed lap time from the video timestamp.  In the foreground a tape-switch is laid across the track.  This simply completes a circuit when pressed, and triggers the sprint timer or time-trial start:

https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBEK9s" rel="nofollow - https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBEK9s

I've still got some more to add I'll upload them to this album over the next few days.

David

Stunning photos (and editing!) as always David, many thanks. I'll wait a few days for you to upload the rest, but are you OK with me posting a link to these on the HPV World Champs Facbook group?

Russ

I've just added the last of the 1 Lap Time Trial photos.  I'll try to do the 3 hour race and awards tomorrow.

David

And I've just done a bit of bonus hacking to add the nationalities to the points table.

https://wc2024.bhpc.org.uk/results/" rel="nofollow - https://wc2024.bhpc.org.uk/results/

(If you're reading this in The Future and the wc2024 site isn't there any more, try looking for previous results on https://www.bhpc.org.uk/" rel="nofollow - https://www.bhpc.org.uk/ )

Wow! - Amazing photos. The ones from low down with the heat haze on the track are brilliant!

Russ

Like Russell said "Wow" - what a great collection of shots! Thanks for sharing here. 

@Carsten - could we use some of these in Laidback Cyclist (with credit)?

Hi Nigel, nice to hear that you like the pictures. Feel free to use the pictures for any publications.

https://wc2024.bhpc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/wc2024/wc2024_points.html" rel="nofollow - https://wc2024.bhpc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/wc2024/wc2024_points.html

Excellent commentary as always.  Rotten luck with your crash - strange for it to lose grip so badly for no apparent reason.  

Good news:  The BHPC will be organising https://www.bhpc.org.uk/events/2026-races/" rel="nofollow - a weekend at Betteshanger on the 26th and 27th of September 2026 .  We have exclusive use of the whole circuit, and welcome entries from European HPV enthusiasts.

Yep, thanks, already noticed it on the BHPC website and marked my calendar. But right now it is too early for me to book a hotel, etc., but the wish is there.

We have this thread over here for your race series: https://www.velomobilforum.de/forum/index.php?threads/2026-british-human-power-club-race-meet-calendar-bhpc.78771/" rel="nofollow - https://www.velomobilforum.de/forum/index.php?threads/2026-british-human-power-club-race-meet-calendar-bhpc.78771/

And in The Netherlands in July there is also an oportunity to promote Betteshanger 2026.