It's been a frantic ten days at Blunsdon - two Saturday's, the midweek track staff meeting and a full Thursday session. The weather has been reasonably kind to us - no heavy rain to speak of - but the frosts have proved to be a problem out on the track.

When we get a heavy frost the track becomes too hard to work on and even if we can start some blading the shale breaks into uneven lumps. Even though we have been applying the blade and a lot of new shale to the surface the fact is that the Abbey Stadium is built on good old Wiltshire clay and that does mean that a section that was beautifully flat last week is now gently undulating this week.

Last Saturday we spent our time getting the 4th bend air panels in place. As can be seen, the air passes from one bag to the next via two sections of piping. The bags are then attached to each other with a series of clips and then the panels are clipped to the safety fence. In time I will be replacing the metal clips at the bottom of the bags with cable ties - when we come to change a panel, and there is little doubt that with the team of riders that Swindon have this season, someone is going to become intimately acquainted with the air fence - the clips can be very difficult to remove. If we are going to be able to change an air bag in less than 5 minutes we want to be able to get the punctured bag out of the way as quickly as possible. With cable ties we will have a combination of strength (to keep the panel secure to the safety fence) and ease of removal (with a big pair of pliers).

Regular readers will know how pleased we all were to witness the photograph above right - it features Dave Whiting and Alan Tarrant, known to all and sundry as the Da Vinci boys. Alan has been really ill recently and it's a joy just to be able to see him back with us. It's going to be a long, hard road for Alan but we're all there for him - he's a member of our team.

As we work away under brilliant blue skies the peace and quite is shattered by a primordial roar - Bob Crowther has just turned up to see us aboard his beautiful vintage motor bike. Bob's been working on getting us some new air pumps and regularly checks up on the pumps to make sure that they are still working.

Out on the track Gerald has tried to do some work with the blade but, even though the sun has risen and the frost is beginning to clear, the track is still too hard to work on. The blade rumbles back to the pits for another week.

On Wednesday night we had our annual pre season track staff meeting at The Paddock Bar at the stadium. It was a really good turn out and we managed to get the briefing in, fill in all the relevant Health and Safety forms, contact details and get the pass photographs taken. By the end of the evening we felt like a real team. As Gerald put it, "There's a team of riders who depend upon a team of track staff and we need to be as much, if not more of a team than them if we are to provide good quality speedway at Blunsdon."

The good news theme was continued when we heard that the stadium plans had been approved and that the future of speedway has been assured on the Swindon site for the foreseeable future (well, the next 5 years or so). Seriously, it looks as if we might have two more seasons at the old place before the new stadium is ready for racing.

While Punch and Gerald worked away on the track and the manufacture of an evil looking ripper, Roy and I spent our time working on the air fence. With Mick Richards coming to start the pre season deep clean of the fences on 1 and 2 we had to inflate and then hook up those air panels. It soon became abundantly clear that we had found a damaged air panel when the fence on turn 1 refused to inflate properly. Nevertheless, with Roy and Mick pressure washing both front and back of the air panels, I set about trying to repair our damaged air panels, sorting out those that could be repaired from those that will have to be sent back to Air Tek.

With the coverage that we have at present we have 7 spare air panels. One, the panel we used to cover the pits gate, damaged way beyond our repair capabilities, I had to see what could be done with the other 6.

With the washing complete, Roy and I pulled each panel into the pits area, inflated it and then checked it thoroughly for holes and broken seams. The former can be relatively easy to repair - the latter very difficult.

Traditionally we have used Super Glue to attach the patches. The advantages include speed of drying (important if a patch is needed during a meeting) and strength. The disadvantages are significant though: experience shows that the glue sticks the user to the fence more efficiently than it does the patch - this is both painful and embarrassing - and the glue is very rigid so the patch is put under pressure when the panel is deflated and the inflated during the course of the season.

Roy Hicks was a technology teacher in his prime and came up with a solution for between meetings repairs - Evostick Contact Glue. This takes between 5 and 10 minutes to dry off before the patch can be applied but is flexible and very effective, especially with large patches. One of the panels had series of burn holes across its top - presumably a bike had ridden up against it and the exhaust had melted the fabric. Using contact glue while the bag is inflated enabled us to get a really good patch in place and another air bag to add to our collection.

By the end of Thursday we had 5 repaired bags and only two that would need to go back to Air Tek - Good job.

Aware that I would be the extra cook to spoil the proceedings, I stayed out of the way and contented myself with the manufacturer of end pieces for the air pipes and the repair of the flexible pipes that attach to the air pumps.

If we can get out on the track on Thursday Roy and I will get the damaged panel in from turn 1, replacing it with a repaired panel from the pits, and see if a repair can be made. The season is creeping up and there's still plenty to do.