As with the event I organised last year, I am organising another Charity Track Day weekend at RAF Marham, on 22/23 April – the last one was very successful and much enjoyed by all who came, so it would be foolish to miss it. The track day weekend last year raised £6,000 and the funds raised from this one will again go the selected RAF Marham charities for this year – not entirely sure which they will be yet, but to give you an idea, last year they were the RAF Benevolent fund, Marham First Response Paramedic Team and the East Anglia Air Ambulance.
It is an ideal venue for a track day. The airfield's main runway is one and a half miles long and over 75 metres wide - dead straight, smooth tarmac - enormous fun driving it and plenty of distance to not only achieve terminal velocity, but to hold it there for as long as you wish as the end of the runway looms! The aircraft taxiway, which connects the two ends of the runway, is a similar width and surface, and provides a further two and a half miles of uninterrupted tarmac, providing a proper full circuit of 4 miles in all. As a whole, the shape is roughly triangular, but with the width of the runway and taxiway there is ample scope to create everything from sweeping curves to chicanes. For those who came before, there will be some more curvy bits to add to the challenge.
Likely to run it to roughly the same timings as before, from around 1000 to 1600 on both days, with sessions of around 30 minutes (minimum of 6 sessions for all). All the necessary facilities, such as toilets, catering, drinks, marshalling and medical cover to support the event are available, and given the distance that some had to travel to fill up with Optimax during the day last time, I am going to try and get Shell Optimax or BP Ultimate petrol available on the Station itself for the weekend. The Station’s kart club will open its doors to visitors, and the Gliding Club will probably offer air experience flights again. The event would be organised and run properly, with appropriate public liability cover for participants.
So, fellow members, gather together and exercise your steeds, classic or modern, in the way that was intended when they were built. All this will be for the princely sum of around £60 on the Saturday and probably £40 for the Sunday as we will need to finish in tme for me to reinstate the aiorfield for use on the Monday morning! Incredibly good value when you compare that to normal track day costs. Everyone gets a good chunk of the time available – preferably as much as they want and the machinery will stand, but that will depend on how many cars there are in total. No money needed yet, but what I really need to know now before I commit my time/effort again and get on with any further planning/organising, and provide more detail for the event is quite simply how many CA’ers would be sufficiently interested to go beyond the “great idea” response and actually participate?
Please post your responses as part of this thread, but please keep the posts on topic and relatively brief at this stage. Naturally, I am happy to answer questions about the event itself on this thread.
All the best for now,
MG Mark
