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The lovely Philippa at Ralph Lauren was so pleased with the Dreher Sweeps display in their Fulham Road Shop that she's got us some goodies to give away to the Rowperfect blog readers.

Here's what we've got on offer

• Polo Ralph Lauren long sleeve polo shirt - small in royal blue worth £75
• Polo Ralph Lauren long sleeve polo shirt -  Large in dark blue worth £75
• 30% discount voucher for Factory Outlet shops across Europe 

If you would like to win either shirt or the vouchers send an email to us with your postal address and your preferred prize and the first lucky 3 names selected at random  on Friday 12th June will be the winners.  This is a free to enter competition and no purchase is necessary.

Good luck!

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Indoor Sculler photos  Click link to open new page with images.

When availability and pricing is formalised by
Mark, we'll let you know. 

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We got an enquiry from Simon Janes at Oxford about trying out the Coxmate HC.  He wanted to test it on his NK wiring loom that is already in his boat.

I've tried the HC unit with my NK speedcoach mount- it fits fine but
the readings don't seem towork, the rate says "99" during the drive
& a more accurate number during the recovery, also the speed
reading says I'm doing 5 or 6 minutes per 500 (I hope it is the machine
and not me!)
I noticed on the back of the HC there are 6 pins but the NK holder only
has receptors for 4 pins- my NK unit works with speed coah.gold.XL
series, so have i done something wrong with the set up?
Cheers
Simon

This is a really iimportant question for us to answer in full.  The Coxmate HC is designed to work on the NK wiring loom. Interchangeability is really important and so we thought we'd publish the full answer we gave Simon.

About the speed measurement. 

The HC is designed to be used with the Coxmate micro-impeller.  This spins much faster than your NK impeller and so when used with the NK impeller it gives very far out readings.  You need to calibrate the HC against the NK impeller - you can set the HC unit up for "NK impeller" and use your Speedcoach K value.  Do you have a marked distance you can scull and get a reading off?  Then adjust the calibration as indicated in the manual.

About the number of connection pins.

The number of pins (6) on the HC is for the HC wiring loom which has a start / stop switch.  This is in addition to the four on your NK loom.  These four record and measure the same things on Coxmate as HC.  Nothing wrong with your set-up.

About the rating. It suggests you are not getting a connection on seat sensor. Make sure HC is fully seated in mount. The seat sensor is the first and second pins from right - as you look down on mount.

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Jochen Kuhner and his brother, Martin, have been selected by the German rowing federation to go to the first FISA world cup in Banyoles as the L2-.

Jochen blogged for Rowperfect during the Beijing Olympics.

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Recently following a thread on RSR I did some research into the three major oar manufacturers and what they say about how their oars and sculls perform in a deflection test.  when a 10kg weight is hung from the neck of the blade.  This gives a comparison of the relative stiffness of each design.

 
Image from C2

Sources: Concept 2 and Dreher. Croker came from their NZ distributer.  I couldn't find deflection data anywhere else.

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Just read an interesting message on Twitter from Adrian (he works for Coxmate in Australia).

Since we get enquiries from traditional boats (Seine boats, Cornish Gig boats, canoes, Ocean Racing boats) about rating and speed measurement this will be great.

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Our final group of the Twitterati are the companies that supply our sport.  There's a good strong group here represented .

Concept2 USA (@concept2) was one of the first online and they have two profiles @Concept2_rowing for the water-training group - their UK arm is Oarpsport (@oarsport).

Neilsen-Kellerman are represented by @coxboxdude because @nk is a 'wealth consultant' - showing the advantage of claiming your name early! Coxmate got there in time with the handle @coxmateand Dreher are @dreheroarscull and have only just got started.

The Down and Direty Coxswains Guide author, George Kirshbaum is @jorgegortex not sure where he chose the name from but maybe a private joke with his crews.

Clothing is led by Rock the Boat

rowbits
/ RocktheBoat Clothing whose owner, Di Binley has been online a while and recently added all her friends and contacts to Twitter - you're a great recruiter, Di!

I had a quick search for boat manufacturers and although there are people with similar names none appear to be rowing related.

In case you missed it -

Day 1 Rowers on Twitter Article 

Day 2 Rowing News Publishers on Twitter

Day 3 Clubs and Regattas on Twitter

Day 4 International Rowers on Twitter

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We've been following some of the developments as Twitter gains traction in the rowing world. 

Learning more about the top end of the sport by reading what international athletes are writing can give great insight into their training regimes.  It can also tell you about their 'normal' life activities which is interesting because it's the stuff that never gets written up in print magazines. 

Alan Campbell (@tidewaysculler) GBR 1x

Nathan Twaddle (@nathantwaddle) NZ2-

Mary Whipple   USA W8+cox (@9thseat) announces she's going to trials again.  Bet that isn't in the print press yet!

And Peter Cipollone USA8+ cox (@petercipollone) confirms that he isn't trialling again.

 Adam Kreek CA8+ (@adamkreek) is touring the country with the 2010 Olympic Torch

Andy Triggs Hodge (@Triggshod) GBR 4- hasn't written anything yet….. we can hope.  Or maybe it's someone impersonating him called "Peter Hodge".  Brother?

Our favourite tweet so far from the international cropcomes from Alan Campbell and it's a corker!

Tomorrow Rowing Manufacturers and Suppliers on Twitter

In case you missed it -

Day 1 Rowers on Twitter Article 

Day 2 Rowing News Publishers on Twitter

Day 3 Clubs and Regattas on Twitter

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Leading the charge to get online are races hosted in the USA with the Head of the Charles Regatta being first off (@hocr). Predictably the messages are mostly about regatta organisation and links to their website and results.

London's Scullers Head

ScullersHead seems to be the only major UK race around that's live and it had full results from the race last yearand so can really be considered a leading adopter of the genre.  Great photo of the head trophy for their icon.

Head of the Hooch (@headofthehooch) looks like it only just got online this year for its event yet the Cochrane Cup (@cochranecup) has full results details as they happened on May 2nd.

Rowing Clubs are also coming onstream and the first we found was London Rowing Club (@londonrc).  Sadly for British readers, it's London Ontario - guess the Tideway lot will have to find a different online name for themselves when they catch up. Austin Rowing Club in Texas are very active (@austinrowing) Vesper Boat Club (@vesperboatclub) in Philly uses the site to publish navigation advice and promote its beginners courses.

From the UK side

@CSRC_Rowing
Castle Semple Rowing,  Globe RC (@globerc), 

LYRowing London Youth Rowing
and Vesta RC (@vestarowing) in London are pretty organised.  Not only do Vesta have Twitter they organised a club photo on Twitter and also have a Flickr account to show off the club photographs!  

Kingston Royals Dragon Boaters (@kingstonroyals)  are online as is the Open Water Rowing Club (@owsc) in Sausalito.  They scull in San Francisco Bay and I was lucky enough to interview David Low and do some outings with them last summer - truly intrepid folk!

There are a lot of dragon boat clubs @bayareadragons SF Bay Area Dragons @typhoontigers Typhoon Tigers DBC @ryedboat Ryerson Dragon Boat @SCDBC SoCalDragonBoatClub  @DragonBoatWest Dragon Boat West.

Tomorrow - International Rowers on Twitter

In case you missed it -

Day 1 Rowers on Twitter Article 

Day 2 Rowing News Publishers on Twitter

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The journalists and publishers of rowing news and information have been quick to join Twitter.  They understand its potential as an amplification medium for their writing.

If you follow no others, these are the Twitter feeds to check regularly.  You don't need to have a twitter account yourself in order to read them.  Just follow the links and they load like a normal web page.

 First up is Rowing News (@rowingnews) the US print magazine.  They are a really great one to follow because although all they tweet is news (obviously) each one links off to a different website with the detail about the news story.  They aren't pimping their own website.

Rowing Voice (@RowingVoice)- Chris Dodd and Rachel Quarrell's email rowing newspaper is a recent joiner but has garnered hundred or so followers. The minute-by-minute updates from the recent GB rowing trials show the power of the Twitter medium.  Plus there are nice tidbits of news from chats with the athletes "Solesbury also back to sweep now"

Row2k (@row2k) is  the pre-eminent rowing news feed for North America.  There appear to be two online presences, Row2k and Row2feed.  the former is more prolific and so probably the 'real' one. And the UK's Rowing Service 

@rowingservice  RowingService is also online with its newsfeed.

It seems to add bits of opinion "Phila crews conspicuously absent from medals dock"as well as incidents "A pair in lane 1 both m and w races hit boats off port side" to the hard news.  And this is welcome as the Row2k site is normally just a news feed.

The discussion forum websites aren't themselves up yet but some of the people behind the forums are with @rowingwolf7 (Rowing Illustrated ) and @bertcocu and @trooster of (NLRoei) being the first.

Other niche sites include @regattaradio who broadcast during Henley Royal Regatta, the German @ruderspor t and a video site @capturedspeed . The @rowingeducation whosound like an interesting concept with posts like "brainstorming training plans for injured rowers" but then no links to the outputs that we can learn from.  So not yet educative.

Tomorrow - Clubs and Regattas on Twitter

In case you missed it - Day 1 Rowers on Twitter Article

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