My wife has tiny hands (XS in womens gloves) and we can get Avid Elixir CR levers set up to work for her. The levers are about 1″ away from the bars when released and provided they are properly bled and set-up the brakes pull up at full power before they hit the bars.

I do mine by leaning very gently on a wall with my shoulder for balance and set both ends with me standing up so all my weight is on the pedals. It’s easily replicated for checks and seems to get my bike about right for descending. Setting the sag sat down would make it too hard at the back and too soft at the front when I’m descending and want it working the best.

5-Spot with 150mm Revs, reverb etc has been my only bike for a good while. Only ride off-road and don’t feel the need for anything else… at the moment.

Our dog, a collie cross, used to do the same things with taking shortcuts and squashing the jumps so she didn’t have to slow down. It’s amazing how fast she would take a jump that must have been blind for her just on the reassurance that you were doing it too.
She’s had to retire from MTBing these days though sadly :-(

Seems like essentially, the energy came from whatever powered the process of collecting or creating the helium. Once that was done the helium stored the energy until it was used to lift capsule and ultimately fully dissipated into chaos again once the balloon went high enough to pop and release the helium again. Some of the energy will have been turned into heat by Felix himself and his parachute, and that on the capsule as they all descended again.

Similar to most folk but I’ve found upside down on the short extension and then tip it down until it won’t go any further is spot on for me and reduces the chances of bumping it and having it sag down. Looks far too high when you are not on the bike but it’s right once I’m riding. Using resolution 4 on the camera it is fine for etither sitting or standing without moving the camera.
For me at least (6ft with approx 38″ chest) all of the straps on the mount need to be as tight as possible which makes it feel snug but gets it higher up on your chest which also helps stability. The final thing that helps is if you use a Camelbak or similar with a chest strap, tighten that right up too so the chest strap of your pack also runs across the plate of the chest mount (just make sure straps / hose etc won’t show on the camera). If I do all of these it is fairly acceptable even on bumpy terrain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qmQrEM5rVA&feature=player_embedded
Favourite non-chest mount position so far is under the bars pointing back.

what are the regular ones like? ie if i run one on the back for longevity (and cheapscatedness)will i die? happy to run a grippier BC version up front

Probably fine but the cheap ones are very heavy, i.e 1100g per tyre rather than 850g for the BCs (which is already at the top end of acceptable for trail riding).

How do they come up in size? Are they like the rubber queens ie a 2.2 is actually 2.2, not 2.0 as with schwalbes?

Deeper tread and smaller casing than the RQ to give a simlar overall size but if anything a little smaller both in width and sidwall depth than a 2.2 RQ.

grip in clag + clear very well

+1
Also good in harder conditions and roots rocks etc. Only real draw back is slightly draggy and a wee bit heavy. Seem strong though.

The Civic 2.2 diesel I drove was just like a turbo petrol. If I’d put a sticker over the rev counter that went 0-8000 instead of 0-5000 and put the stereo on full you would never have known

This. I went from a turbo petrol (Subaru) to a turbo diesel (BMW 530d) They really aren’t that different, the Scooby pulled hard from 3000-6000rpm, the BMW pulls hard from 1800-4000rpm, so either one could double it’s speed in one big pull without changing gear, the only difference is that the Scooby would be a gear lower to do that at most speeds.

Plenty of biking near Kintore. Maybe not ride from your doorstep but you are only 15 – 20 minutes in the car away from Pitfichie or Bennachie Donview carpark and only 5 – 10 minutes from Kirkhill for a short winter evening blast.

If you’ve got access to a known good wheel, pluck a few spokes with your finger nail like a guitar string and listen to the noise, it should be quite a high, bright “ping”. Aim for something similar, it doens’t need to be exactly the same, and probably won’t be, but just aim for somehing similar, not a flat twanging noise.
I’ve seen an article in the past that demonstrated that even an average person that doesn’t have perfect pitch can easily hear a difference in tension between spokes about 4 times smaller than you can reliably measure with a tension meter.
Edit:
If you are only doing a few spokes, they should match the spokes they are next to, or as close as they can be and get the wheel straight. The tone will be different on the two sides of the wheel due to dishing but all spokes on each side would ideally sound the same when plucked.

Got some footage at Golspie myself at the end of last week:
Top section:

Most of the rest is in my channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/robinclaidlaw?feature=watch
First trip there so I was a little cautious on the blind jumps, but what a place, superb fun, highly recommended.
Unfortunately ended up binning it on an easy bit near the bottom and hurting my ribs but still, superb trails.

I’ve got one. It replaced a Giro Xen. The Urge fits me really well and is the comfiest helmet I’ve had. It might be a tiny bit hotter when you are moving really slowly, i.e if you need to push or carry at any point, but once you are moving at all it ventilates amazingly well and is just as cool as the Giro.

For anyone that is (probably justifiably) nervous about using a lemonade bottle, you can do the same trick using either a spare car tyre or a wheel off another bike. I use a spare bike wheel with a nice high volume tyre and just blow that up to 80 or 90psi, which it is quite safely rated for, so not too scary. Then you need to arrange a hose with a valve adapter on both ends, plug it onto the tyre to be inflated first, then onto your pumped up spare tyre and there you go, job done, and relatively safely. ONce you are done, remember to take the hose off your newly inflated tyre first otherwise you’ll let it back down again.
It seems to work better using a bike tyre at 90 psi than a car tyre at 40 psi. The car tyre holds more air but it comes out of the bike tyre much faster which is the important thing to get a tubeless tyre seated for the first time. Blowing a car tyre up to 90 psi seems a little chancy and an enormous amount of work on a track pump.

Rubber Queen 2.2 Black Chilli front and 2.25 Nobby Nic rear for most of the time. 2.3 Black Chilli Baron in the thick mud. About to try Hans Dampf 2.35s Trailstar front Pacestar rear.

The Barons are a little smaller than the Rubber Queens. Width across the knobs is similar but the casing itself is a little smaller and they aren’t so tall.

Another +1 for Nikwax downwash and the tennis ball tumble dry. The tumble dry perks them right back up if they get soaked in the rain too.

Hora,
I used the plastic off a lid of a spindle pack of blank CDs. It’s a little thin as measured with a vernier so I made the shim slightly wider to give the same volume.
I’m about 170lbs and ride quite hard (ex DH racer) with it set this way and rarely blow the travel marker ring off.

EDIT: possibly worth mentioning that I set my sag on both ends standing with all my weight on the pedals as a half way house between XC style setting it while seated and DH style setting it standing in an “attack position” crouch. I would not expect to take a big hit while seated without bottoming the shock but it’s fine when standing. This also will be making my headangle slacker than standard when I am riding.

I’ve got a 2010 large and love it to bits.
I’m running 150mm Revs on it and the handling feels great albeit quite sharp. I came from an SX trail running 36s (and DH bikes before that) and prefer the 5 Spot, it doesn’t need so much body english to pull the bike around but is still stable. Also, it will still steer properly when climbing slowly, which very slack bike rarely will.
I run the rear shock with about 19mm sag (17mm recommended by Turner) and the spacer trick linked to on MTBR above. As far as the high front end is concerned, I run a 70mm zero rise stem with no spacers and after trying completely flat wide bars am now on a set of low rise Easton Havocs which feel ideal.
The shock and bushings take a few weeks to bed in but they do and it feels even better once it has.
Also worth mentioning that it is one of the stiffest frames I’ve ever ridden laterally, which has to help tracking through rough sections.

For those with RP23s on a DW 5 Spots that haven’t already tried it the MTBR shock spacer trick is excellent, you can run the shock softer and lower which helps the feel of the bike without it bottoming any more easily.

One with a small rise, about 6 deg or so, run upside down?

Turners do have long headtubes, you might need flat bars or a negative rise stem to get your bars where you are used to on the larger sizes.

Could you run flatter bars?

Yeah, turns out I don’t really like gardening very much :-)

Try running about 2 or 3mm more (at the shock obviously) sag on the rear than the instuctions suggest and make sure your forks are either damped to stay up in their travel, or set with a little less sag than usual. Also bear in mind that it’ll take a good half dozen rides to bed in the bushings and get it feeling really nice on small stuff.

5Spots seem to have quite a fine line set-up wise between feeling a little to much like you weight is on the bars and feeling nice and agile but it can be done, don’t worry.

Here’s mine (same colour):