As I mentioned in my introduction last month, I am a navigator in a historic road rally team, and we call ourselves the silly name Team Spider Pig. We also have a silly mascot, pictured above.
Team Spider Pig
Team Spider pig is made up of two Mini enthusiasts, myself Mark Smith as navigator, telling owner driver Robert Bateman where to go. Robert is an ex-Policeman, injured and retired in the line of duty, and is pursuit trained, making him the better and more experienced driver at high speed. I am more experienced at navigating at altitude, but, I prefer it if he keeps the wheels on the ground.
Due to Robert being injured in the line of duty, he is disabled, and due to this we compete with the most basic motorsport licenses. We both have Clubman motorsport licenses.
Felicity
We rally a 1967 Mk1 Mini which we call “Felicity”. To be accurate an 848cc Morris Mini Minor with a magic wand gearbox. The engine is tuned, and is quite high revving, and is mated to a three synchro straight cut gearbox. Double clutching for 1st and reverse. I do have some concerns about the longevity of this in a competition car, and I have broached the subject about converting to a future 1275cc or 1293cc engine.
Historic Road Rallies
Our interest is in Historic Road Rallies, and here you can see us both competing in a off road section of the Yorkshire Wold Rally of 2022. We started well, and were very competitive until after the 1st off road stage, a little after this photo was taken of us going slightly sideways, we broke the gearbox selector linkage, sadly forcing a retirement from the event.
Navigation
Navigating for a rally team is completely different than flight planning. The organisers may give you hand written stage notes like pictured, or, you could be working from an Ordinance Survey 1:50000 Landranger sheet, and obviously we are going to drive this at speed, and hopefully no altitude. However, I have to remember that it is left and right, not port and starboard. Compare the hand written stage diagram compared to plotting a flight path on an aviation chart. I also do not need to consider endurance, nor fuel load, and I guess weather is not quite as important.
You can see a picture of me in the rally car, “my office” if you like. With the car being so small, we’re not sat side by side, my seat is offset more to the rear, which gives me more room for my office equipment that you can see in the photo. The large orange thing you can see hanging from the dashboard is called a “potty”. No, it is not for incontinence, but for map reading at night. It shines light onto the map (or chart) and rally notes, and it is called a potty for it’s shape. It is designed that only the navigator can see into the potty. However, on a rough track, it is difficult from it bouncing and light escaping into the drivers eyes. I keep it clamped tightly to the paperwork.
In historic rallying, GPS aids and satellite navigation systems are not allowed. It would be cheating to let a computer do the work, and then what would be the point of the navigator? The navigator would just become a passenger, and be dead weight in the car. Amusingly, remove the navigator and go faster..! No wait, remove all team members and have a driverless car. Now I am just being silly for a moment. Prior to 1980, there were no sat navs, so the rallying is old school, and competitive at a clubman level needing pens, paper, charts and stop watches.
You will also notice from the photographs, that I have my own “horn” button. And yes, I have needed to sound it before now. I don’t know what is louder, the horn or the straight cut gearbox at full chat..!
I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings about being a navigator for the rally team I am in. I didn’t want to get into too much technical detail, as navigational planning can be a really dry subject, but, I wanted to expand on my mentioning navigation last month and give you an overview and flavour of my hobby.
Mark Smith
“The Rambling Motorist”