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Croft PrtrtWilliam Heaney, Part 1.

My family, and daughter in particular, have been banging on at me for years now, to do what follows. It’s not strictly in chronological order, but is simply my recollections of the many cars and other vehicles that have impacted on and largely defined the most of my life, so far. Not all were owned by me and the family, and most of the photos are just representations.

My hosts here at In2Motorsport have persuaded me that I need to provide a bit of background about myself and I suppose, since most of my current rather large circle of motorsport friends have known me for less than half my life, that’s a reasonable idea. So here goes:-

The Motorsport Bit.
My first ‘job’ in motorsport was as Paddock Marshal at Knockalla Hillclimb(1971). I’ve served on the Committees of five motor clubs and the Donegal International Rally and was on the founding Committee of the Maiden City Motor Club. I’ve officiated at every kind of event at ever level, in some capacity or other, including WRC Rally Ireland, IRC Rally Scotland and both ERC & IRC Rally Ireland. I’ve been an autotest and navigation rally Clerk of Course and Event Secretary for more autotests and hillclimbs than I can remember. I was TSCC CompSec from 1986 to 1992, am currently serving a third stint as TSCC Club Secretary and was honoured to be elected TSCC President three years ago. I’ve been a TSCC Delegate to the ANICC since 1988, served six years on ANICC Council and am just about to complete 20 years as a member of the ANICC Race&Speed Committee. My principal focus these days is co-ordination of the Cultra Hillclimb Event at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.
In 1968 a friend and I joined the new Kart Club that had been launched in Strabane and bought a National 100 Class Invicta kart. Since it was also eligible for the Super 100 Class we were both able to have races at each meeting. We competed for two seasons, mostly on closed public road circuits, without any trophy success but a lot of enjoyment. I navigated on my first car event in 1971, have contested about 50 navigation and stage rallies including Donegal, Galway, the Ulster and Wexford at International level. I have also competed for Category and Class honours on both NI Navigation and Special Stage Championships.
In the seventies, if I wasn’t competing invariably I’d have been servicing, up to as many as four cars on some events. I contested half a dozen rallies as a driver, enough to get my International Licence, have done several seasons autotesting, a couple hillclimbing and a season racing, but oddly have never got round to doing a sprint. Over the turn of the Millenium I was fortunate to have a period navigating on Vintage Rallies and Retros, with some success, and also completed the 2000 Le Jog with a Class award and Silver Medal. My most recent competitive outings were Croft Hillclimb 2009 in a loaned car as a 60th Birthday present from good friends in the TSCC – I wasn’t last and didn’t bend it – and the 2010 UVCC Spring Trial, navigating an Austin Seven.

The Personal Bit.
A lot of you who were at TSCC Cultra 2014 will now know, I was born on 14th June 1949. I arrived early weighing in at a measly 4lb 4oz (that’s about 2Kg for those of you educated in ‘sensible’ instead of ‘ancient’). On arrival in Londonderry City Hospital I was the youngest of the four children of Fred and Frances Heaney. I married Diana in 1978 and we have two children. Richard is a Paramedic based in Ards and Rachel works as an Administrator and Development Officer on education advancement programmes for Edinburgh Napier and Glasgow Caledonian Universities and now also Forth Valley College.
I was educated (The teachers and lecturers did make an effort) at the Academy Boys Primary and the Grammar School in Strabane, Co.Tyrone and completed formal education at Derry Tech’ (now NWRC) with an Engineering OND and Mech. Eng. HNC. I trained as a multi-skill precision machinist and despite three redundancies kept myself in gainful employment for most of 45 years, mainly in engineering management and technical support across a range of industries. I was awarded a Patent for a seat belt mechanism design in 1989. After setting up my own business ( techconsultNI ) in 2001 I went “back to school”, updated my CAD training and got myself a Teaching Certificate. Sort of finally, I was ‘medically retired’ from a Technology Teaching Assistant/Technician post in a Belfast grammar school in 2010, due to the recurrence of an old health problem.

There’s hundreds of anecdotes I could recount from my sixty-plus years of work and play but this is not the place for them now. I suppose I’ll have to consider an actual autobiography to flesh out incidents like:-
“That was a ******* donkey”
Why can I see a statue of the Virgin Mary reversing away from me?
Are we ever gonna land and when we do how much will it hurt?
What use is a pine cone in the middle of a forest stage?
“90,000 Tons, Kuala Lumpur”!

Some of these, and more, will appear in the following recollections of vehicles in my life.

Look out for part 2 same time next week.