TRUST the British weather to thwart my great ambition to ride a motorcycle at 200mph. No, I wasn't going to ride a dragster bike, and no, I wasn't trying to set some sort of land speed record. I was just testing out the machine that will eventually be the fastest paramedic motorcycle in the world, writes Simon Nix.

And it will be based in Oxfordshire. It is the identical model which you, our readers, are helping to fund through the Oxford Mail Medibike Appeal.

What you are contributing to is a two-wheeled production machine that will be used by the Oxfordshire Ambulance Service. It is the ideal vehicle for a paramedic to carve his or her way through the traffic-clogged roads of the county to get to 999 emergencies faster.

And it will be much faster, as the chosen bike will be the Suzuki Hayabusa, with its claimed top speed of 200mph.

While I have been lucky enough to have ridden this ultimate sports tourer on public roads and experienced its smooth and ultra stable feel at legal speeds, I just had to find out what it was like to ride it flat out. But where?

Then the RAF base at Brize Norton came to my rescue with the offer of their main runway - all 3,010 metres of it. That's more than two miles long, to cope with landing the biggest planes.

On a heavily overcast but dry morning, I arrived on the Hayabusa, which had been checked over by the highly-trained mechanics at TW Motorcyles of Kidlington the previous day.

Clutching my special licence granted by the Defence Estates, and with the kind permission of base commander Gp Capt Peter Ollis, we drove out to see Flt Lt Lynn Hilditch, the duty air control officer.

She took me up the control tower, which looks out through its glass-walled penthouse over the vast airstrip. There she briefed our photoshoot party on weather conditions. There were no aircraft expected to arrive for an hour or so. The moment of truth had arrived.

Back on the bike, I warmed the engine and the tyres as we took a leisurely drive down the length of the runway, checking the honeycombed concrete surface for grip and noting the countdown markers at each end. Then the rain started to fall in a light mist.

I had already prepared myself to face the ten-knot wind sweeping across from a 45 degree angle, but add to that even the most moderate dampness and I knew that breaching the 200mph barrier was a forlorn hope.

Short-shifting through the first two gears, I started to feed in the 160bhp that the 1300cc four-cylinder engine produces at the back wheel. The needle flew through 7,000 revs and then suddenly the back wheel lost grip on a tar strip that joins the massive concrete sections.

Pulling over to the left, off the line of the slippery tyre marks left by landing jets, I got back on to the power with still a mile and a half in front of me. Chin on the tank, bum against the stop and elbows tucked in, the bike seemed desperate to go faster and faster. I let it.

As I passed 150mph, the light, misty drizzle was smashing into the screen and my vision was getting seriously impaired. That didn't worry me too much as the runway was so wide. Drifting ten or 20 feet either way did not matter.

What worried me more was that the wind was forcing me to lean over at more and more of an angle just to keep going in a straight line. Sideways grip was a factor now, and it was wet. At 165mph I opted for discretion and backed off. I had still only travelled three quarters of the way down the runway.

I was expecting to have to hang on for dear life at these super-fast speeds, with the wind trying to tear me off, but provided I tucked my 11-stone frame right down behind the screen, it felt like going out for a Sunday afternoon drive.

Having done my U-turn for the blast back, the one thing I was grateful for was that although the wind was still blowing across the track, it would hit more from behind.

This time I got the bike up to 100mph with no drama, then opened up the throttle over the crest in the middle of the runway. The rain was still a problem, and although I still had to lean against the wind as the speed built up, I flashed past my photographer at 180mph.

At no time on that last run did the throttle touch the stop. I am totally convinced, in the right conditions, this bike could easily break the 200mph barrier. I know I was 20mph away, but there was so much more grunt left from the engine and the bike felt totally stable.

We were joined trackside by RAF pilot Flt Lt Tony Sealey. He usually rides a big Triumph Daytona on the ground. In the air, he takes the left-hand seat of an RAF Vickers VC-10 tanker aircraft. The plane can do 360mph at ground level, rising to 560mph at 30,000ft. A man well used to handling power, he was an obvious candidate try out the Hayabusa.

As Tony hammered past us, the Hayabusa burst into song with the roar of its exhaust - a sound you only hear when the throttle is wide open. Unfortunately the weather conditions were getting worse by the minute and Tony was forced to roll off the power at about 150mph.

He said: "The bike is far more exciting than my VC-10. Of course, you are far closer to the tarmac on the Hayabusa than sitting in the plane's cockpit. By the time the VC-10 hits 140mph, it is taking off."

Gp Capt Ollis, said: "I wish the Oxford Mail every success in the appeal to raise money for a paramedic motorcycle.

"I hope the cash target is reached quickly and the people of Oxfordshire can benefit from this vital service as soon as possible."

Our thanks to Gp Capt Ollis for the use of RAF facilities and to Fl Lt David Rowe for organising the event.

Story date: Wednesday 17 November

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.