As a new member of the ISRA, I've been asked to contribute my own slant on things and what I'm up to. My name is Mike Edmondson. I've been into motorcycles for many years, but haven't been on the road for 10-15 years. Like a lot of us, I first got turned on by films like Easy Rider when I was young and impressionable.

I rode Tritons (Norton Frame/Triumph engine) for many years, developed café racers for friends, toured France and Italy for many months and did all sorts of other things which I'll only admit to in moments of extreme inebriation. But after losing the thread for several years, I have really found my enthusiasm again with my 650 Drag Star Classic which I purchased in December 98.

I've become a huge fan of the Star Line of Motorcycles for a number of reasons:

1. It got me back into motorcycling which has given me an enthusiasm I had previously lost.
2. I really love the style of the bike.
3. As a "retro" bike it's really well designed and so well executed technically. (in my opinion it looks better than a Harley and is certainly much better designed and developed.)

With any cruiser, I think that most of us are into personalizing the bike to suit our own idea of a good looking bike, or our own personalities. However, I've looked at most of the so called "goodies" on the market and found them to be poorly designed, very poorly executed and of a very poor fit.

The first thing I wanted for my own bike was a number plate holder to tidy up the shabby way we seem to mount plates in this country. OK, there were lots of things I could buy, but frankly they weren't up to the quality of the bike I had bought. I'm sure many of you have looked at your bikes for a long time now and thought " I wish I hadn't bought that part - it cheapens my bike". I didn't want this to happen to me.

As a trained mechanical engineer with experience in the Automotive and Aerospace CADCAM (Computer aided Design and Manufacture) and CNC (Computer Numerical Control) Machine Tool Industries, I felt that my only option was to make quality parts for myself using the state of the art CADCAM and CNC technology that I have ready access to - much better parts than I could purchase out there in the marketplace.

Like many owners I also wanted the bike to sound more like bikes I had owned in the past and less like a sewing machine. So once again, out I ventured into the world of after market products. What I found was a whole variety of exhaust systems which claimed to sound better (and often sounded shallow and worse), all of which were badly designed and manufactured because they changed colour, rusted easily, and scorched your leathers and skin or melted your waterproofs and ended up looking nasty because of all the things that ended up stuck to them.

I came to the conclusion that the existing stock Yamaha system is excellent in terms of it's design and manufacturing quality. So what I did was to modify the existing system by keeping the external looks untouched. Basically it took ten days and nights to manufacture special complex cutting tools and CNC machine tool programs to enable me to perform special "keyhole surgery" on the system and re route the exhaust gases with no visible external signs. This allows for better breathing which gives slightly more power, a nice low end burble with a mean crack when you blip the throttle open. Drivers hear you on the road more easily, but the sound is not offensive. Recently I've been rubbernecked by so many Harley owners that I ride around grinning all the time. I've now been asked to modify systems for other Drag Star owners and seem to have acquired the nickname of "Drag Star Doctor".

The number plate holder problem was solved by designing a unit using CADCAM and then machining from billet aluminum on a CNC machining centre.

As I mentioned earlier, I really love my Drag Star Classic and I think that over the next ten years the Star Range will eclipse Harley in Europe because of better design and quality of manufacture. My Drag Star Classic is more than a Harley look-alike for me -- I know it's actually a better bike. This is an important mindset to get ahold of, which will I believe take hold in Europe (and possibly the USA) over the next decade. So in the meantime please , please don't sell your machine down by fitting naff parts. Cheap parts can ruin and devalue a good bike.