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Don't worry about the S1000RR in rain mode! I found it quite docile in rain mode. During the day you're allowed to upgrade to the sport and race(?) modes. With Sport mode, it started to feel like a (sports) literbike, and only in the "higher" modes did it start to feel brutal. As long as you're used to "feeding" the throttle on your ZX6 (as opposed to just wacking it to WOT), then you should be just fine. As I recall (this being almost 2 years back now) your ontrack coach will inform the offtrack coach and Course Control (Hi Trevor!) whether you're good to go to the more higher power levels.

Well, VW still manages to foul up the automatic transmission gearbox software on some models, so maybe it's not so easy...

@fritzdacat: or if the ABS system fails.

What lip you talking about? I must be missing something. I've added two arrows to your rear tyre picture to show the "lips" I think I'm seeing. What's the rotational direction on that tyre? I guess the tyre would rotate upwards in the picture, so the "lips" are on the following edge of the tyre. Did this make it any clearer to you?

@csmith: I would take a look at your suspension settings, with such a "lip" growing around the sipes. If I remember Dave Moss right, your rebound damping needs some changing.

Less wind drag.

Do not mix brake fluid types, e.g. 3 vs 4 vs 5.1 When I have cleaned my brakes, I have always used a brake grease like the red Castrol you mention for the seals. But having it available also makes it a bit easier to do so.

Funny you mention the figure-8 riding. Anders Rasmussen, 1-time European Superbike Champion back in the '90ies, was well-known for practicing figure-8s on grass, with a 500 2T on the day (I forget which one). He did this as spring training at least.

I use SBS Dual Carbon on the R6 '08 racer. Carbon pads are supposed to require heat-up time, but I haven't noticed that. However, I do run HS organic pads in the wet. Tyler, I believe that you have already replaced the stock rubber lines with steel braided lines, right? Otherwise this is an excellent and quite inexpensive upgrade that reduces fading and improves brake feel. Kai

Is he asking the riders just to lower the chin/head, or could it be that he's trying to get the riders to do a "hook" by lowering the entire upper body?

Beautiful!

For an airplane yes, not for a motorcycle. Can you be a little bit more specific?

I've changed springs on, uh, 4 bikes now for the very same reason as you, warregl: bottoming out. the first time I did this was with my first sportsbike (a YZF600R "ThunderCat"). I purchased 2nd hand Ohlins springs/spacers and this completely transformed the handling of the bike. I went from bottoming out the fork all the time (deliberately or not) to just doing gently rolling stoppies After a couple of years, I also replaced the then-worn out stock rear shock with an Ohlins unit. Just wow, such difference it made. Before changing the shock, it felt like the rear tire was just slightly greasy in all the corners. After it got the new Ohlins shock on, the bike was suddenly on rails Since then, I've replaced springs on my R6 racebikes and my R1 roadbike. On the R6'es I've done this myself, but the preload on the R1 is so hard and the fork is rather complicated to work on, so I have taken it to a workshop to have them replace the spring. My '08 R6 has Ohlins cartridges in it (installed by the original bike owner) but I clean & replace the oil in the forks myself. Last time, I even took the shim stacks apart and cleaned them as well. It was much easier than I had feared! For the shocks (Ohlins on both bikes), I take them to a suspension guy who has the knowledge and tools to take them apart, clean/repair/refill oil and charge the Nitrogen. I have never played with the valvings, and so far I don't drive so fast that I have had to pay attention to that. Maybe I've had a little more tyre wear, but at my level that's probably a good financial tradeoff. I advice to anyone is to spend time on getting the suspension sorted out first thing, when they get a new bike - first the front and then the rear.

I can only +1 to warregl's statement. I flew in from overseas, so bringing a bike was out of the question. I did bring my leathers, though. Something to do with a non-standard body size.

Rossi is 6'0 as well, but I guess he is somewhat slimmer built than both you and me. I'm 6'6" and 195lbs. Height and weight can be utilised to move the center of gravity further inside the bike, but I am not sure of the overall effect. It's salad all the way if you want to improve the acceleration. Or find a diet that helps your body slim effectively. I found that changing what I was eating made a big impact. Out with high GI foods, and the pounds dropped off quickly.

To paraphrase the mountaineer George Mallory: "Because you can?" Because it gives other challenges than racing on the track?

6- or 9-axis accelerometers are getting quite cheap, and are easy to combine with a GPS. But downloading, analyzing, and communicating the data to the student could be a big task. I guess this would be similar to the camera-bike setup.

Oh. I hadn't heard this. Not good for the sport, for sure.

What's the gloomy part about AMA in '14?

Go riding on both the street and track bike. Last time I rode a bike was CodeRACE in October 2012.

At work, we bought a load-cell that can measure travel vs force. IIRC, it was around USD25K, but then again it has several load cells with different ranges/resolutions. The Omega link looks interesting. I'd contact them and explain what you'd like to do/measure and see if they can recommend you how to go forward. Seasons greetings to everyone.

I have a Starlane too (Stealth-2 GPS), with a 5Hz GPS. If you want to play with more than just laptiming (i.e. doing a bit of data acquisition) then XTRacing's GPXpro is worth looking into. As for the GPS'es in a cellphone, the one's I've used were not very accurate (10-30m accuracy, 1-2Hz updates) - definitely not accurate for racing around on a track.

The outer plastic is mostly for cosmetics - the steel braiding will pick up a lot of difficult-to-remove dirt without the outer tube.

Hotfoot, Sorry to hear about your broken fibula. I've heard that riding organic horsepower is more dangerous than mechanical horsepowers.

I wish I could get to do the no-brakes drill with just me (and a coach) on the track. I often found myself being frustrated by some of the other students during the first no-brakes session, because I from time to time have to touch the brakes in order to avoid running into the back of the bike in front. Hmmmm. Private track time, anyone?