Well Glyn you write as well as you wrench! I drifted off to Belgium in 1987 reading your adventure. Spa is a place I really want to visit one day. Rumor has it that a TT/F1 Symposium will happen during the vintage event soon! I hope that is true. Lou

That story was a brief version of all the memorable moments from that weekend. The whole story is ridiculous. The belly pan of the fairing blew out of the pickup on my way collect pick Bill from his place only 5 miles away. We carried on and took the top half with us but once there found couldn't fit it without the belly pan. The bike proudly displayed a flat wooden board tied on with fencing wire with the number 171 chalked on it for the first race till we got it sorted out.
I took a call from my mate James Whitham the week we got home. Whilst driving up the valley he had found a fibre glass race belly pan blowing around in the road. Stopped to recover it and thought who could it belong to. I was the only fella that lived up that side who may have had reason to own one. He had rung the same day I lost it but we were already on the boat by then. 1978 -- no mobile phones - remember.
Whilst crossing the French/Belgium border in a very remote area, we had an issue with the border control regarding a travel carnet for the bike which we didn't have. Pre-EU this was always a real mess when crossing any European border. I had been warned so had taken the registration document for my 900ss and its registration plate. I lashed the plate on the back of the race bike's seat hump. This did the trick and we eventually got through in the middle of the night. We made a mistake and should have just driven through when we arrived as we had to wake him up in his kiosk to get his attention. Probably the reason he made a big thing of it.
In our relief to get going, we had forgotten we had left our Passports with mr Sleepy head. It was a miracle we found the same Border post on the way back from Spa. They were still on the desk. !

There is more but hey, maybe another time.
I have only a few pics of the bike sent to me over the years and will post them shortly.

I seem to recall the Swallow bevel being featured in Classic Racer back then. Have to see if I can dig it up.

Sorry for the poor quality. A picture of a photograph, if you get me.

Ahh, wrong picture for the posed Spa shot. Try this one.

Would this be the Velocette? I can see the similarities in the chassis concept with your chassis.

Is there an evolutionary trail between the Scott chassis to the Velo, and ultimately with your Ducati design Glyn?

Here is what the magazine cover looks like.

Yep, That's the famous Swallow Velo. At the time he built it many, thousands of years ago, he cut up a GENUINE Manx frame as a starting point. It used to sport a red fibre glass seat handmade made by the man himself. I remember a magazine article once said about it "It could only have been laminated by someone wearing boxing gloves in a darkened cellar". Brilliant !
Bill re-built (I hasten to say restored), the Velo a few years ago and even uses it occasionally these days.

The Bevel frame replicated as many key points as were practical (We are using a great big bevel engine here). The wheelbase had to be made a couple of inches longer due to the front head poking into the tyre, But seat height, footrest position, steering geometry were damn near the same. It was a small package for a bevel. I put the major connection points and angles of on a massive piece of paper. Then its simply a game of 'Join the dots'. Hey presto -- a frame. It took a mere 5 weeks to build from scratch. The magazine 'Classic Racer headlined it "The five week wonder"

I think I resemble that remark

Hi Glyn, I am just warming up to fit Ignitech to my 900SS TT2 rep at the moment, combined with FCR 39s. Hopefully it will be plug in and play and I can net a nice neat little wiring harness together round it. What did you use for coils?.

I had some from an Aprilia 1000 laying around so used those. They were 4ohm resistance as std Ducati coils but you can use what ever you want with the ignitech. There are settings available in the software for dwell etc, forget all that, just tick auto configure box and it sorts it all out itself from the incoming signals. It even works out which way the pickup(s) are wired and sets itself for the polarity.
I cannot recommend this TCIP4 unit enough. It is so clever I am convinced there must be a little man inside it.-- laughing at me.