The Racing Pigeon Enthusiast
~ Newsletter ~
Table of Contents:

About this newsletter   by John Vance, editor

Welcome to the seventh issue of the Racing Pigeon Enthusiast, This newsletter is sponsored by RacingPigeonMall.com and it is hoped that many more issues will follow.

This newsletter, is shorter than usual but I wanted to release information about the Jos van Limpt Auction, which will be of particular interest for North American flyers since Chic Brooks of Hapyco Lofts in California, managed to walk away from this auction with the "cream" of De Klak's breeding loft. You can read more about this in the article that follows.

If you have articles that you would like published in the newsletter please feel free to e-mail them to me. This newsletter goes out to about 660 subscribers. The number of subscribers changes with every issue as some new subscribers sign up and others are dropped because they have changed their e-mail address and have not updated their information in our database.


Van Limpt ~ De KLAK Legendary Auction;   by John Vance

On March 5th, 2004 the legendary flyer Jos Van Limpt, fondly known as "De Klak", died at the age of 80 years old. Five weeks later, on April 12th, nearly 1000 people attended his record-breaking final auction. The 66 birds offered, sold for $517,375 USD. The average price was $7,839 with the highest priced bird, a half brother of the legendary ‘613’, being sold to Chic Brooks from Hapyco Lofts of California. In fact, Chic Brooks walked away with 11 of the 66 birds and Chic purchased "nothing but the cream" of the De Klak final sale - including a son and daughter of the ‘613’.

I won't go into detail about Jos Van Limpt and his racing accomplishments, as others knew him better and will relate his story more fully at a later time. I will say, that no one including the Janssen Brothers themselves ever raced and bred the Janssen strain with more success. Only death itself could stop De Klak from dominating the race scene.

Even in 2002, at age 78, he was Champion of his combine though sickness and hospital stays prevented him from entering his loft except one time during the year. Instead he depended on his loft manager to prepare the birds according to his instructions.

On many occasions over the past four years, Ad Schaerlaeckens has clocked De Klak’s birds for him. Ad mentions how this relationship only solidified his belief that De Klak was one of the great....

To read the complete article go to:
http://www.racingpigeonmall.com/loft/articles/Van-Limpt-Auction.html


Sunspot Activities  

We hear a lot of talk about k factor and losses during the race season. I am reminded of information shared by Otto Meyer in 1980, when he discussed research conducted by the US Army Signal Corps some thirty years earlier. A short summary of Otto's comments is that sun spot activity in and of itself was not the major concern. Rather, it was jumps or dips in activity that seemed to adversely affect our bird's navigational capabilities.

In other words, Mr. Meyer stated that the birds were not hampered by high or low sun spot activity, nor were they hampered by rising or lowering activity if the "rate" of increase or decrease were fairly constant. If plotted these would product a constant slope line up or a constant slope down the graph. However, the birds were adversely affected when the change in activity level non-linear. Such a graph produces a curved line. This information might be of some use to those of you who are attempting to correlate sun spot activity with our race losses.

This seems to be a reasonable supposition backed by military testing in the late 1940's. It suggest that our birds are not adversely affected by high sun spot activity or low sun spot activity or even a changing level of activity as long as the "rate of change" is fairly steady, but their navigational abilities are affected when the "rate of change" in sun spot activity is increasing or decreasing (does not plot as a straight line but a curved graph).

Granted, we have far superior equipment by which to gather information and the ability to read many other factors that were not available to the government in the 1940's, so a better explanation might now exist, I only share Mr. Meyer's report as a starting point for discussion on this subject in future issues of the newsletter.

What this suggest to me is that our birds are able to adapt to changes in sun spot activity and make adjustments to how they read electromagnetic fields, even during periods of high activity. But they have difficulty when the magnitude of these electromagnetic changes exceeds the bird's (internal gyroscope) ability to compensate for those changes.

Please feel free to comment on this article via e-mail and I will post responses in the next newsletter published


What's Happening at RacingPigeonMall?

A note of interest from my friend in Europe from whom I have imported several race winners. He says that a fancier there now has heart problems and is selling his birds. He has one exceptional 1999 cock of the Desmet-Matthys strain that is a race winner against 8,000 birds at a distance of over 600 km. He has also been told that the same cock is 3rd against 7,000 birds at 600 km, and 5th against 5,000 birds at 500 km.

When we have verified the race results, I will be offering this fantastic record cock on behalf of the seller. If you are interested, please contact me.

Also available is a 1999 hen called "Super Mariah", She won in 2002:

1st Overall Champion hen in the Union with 13 prizes/13 races, flew over 5,000 km (about 75 lofts)

1st ACE Hen in the union

1st overall Champion Hen in the big combine (about 500 lofts)

7th Regional ACE Hen against about 1500 lofts

The Champion bird award is considered superior to the Ace Pigeon award because the bird must perform the best for all races of the season. It is like an Iron Man award. This hen received a prize in thirteen of thirteen races entered and never was out of the prizes. This is considered better than Ace Hen which is based on points awarded but may be based on several top performances over the season. However, in this case at the union level (75 lofts) she was both the Champion Hen and the Ace Hen. At the combine level (500 lofts) she was the Champion hen, and at the Regional level (1500 lofts) she was the 7th Ace Hen.

To find a hen that scores at the top both as the Champion hen and the Ace hen is extremely rare.

If you are interested in purchasing either of these two birds, e-mail me at: loftmaster@racingpigeonmall.com

Thanks to all who have ordered the Super Creatine, Oxy-toner and Liquid Vitamins offered on the website. About 1/2 of our orders come from those who already successfully use creatine on their race teams, but felt the added benefits of using Super Creatine warranted changing to our product.

Last week we received an order for our Futurity Drops from Taiwan. We are currently out of the drops but will have more available in about a week.


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