Throwing this in here while its fresh on my mind. This weekend I got to attend Bill Dragoo's ADV training class on my DCT Africa Twin. Here were my thoughts on it:
I know I'm a broken record on it, but this class really proved DCT technology to me. I know its considered a pavement convenience by many, but I really think its most impressive application is riding off road. Just talking to people, I think that I was the most newbie rider there and I didn't fall all weekend. In my mind, the only reason I didn't was due to DCT. I feel confident had I had to operate a manual shift lever through all of that madness, I would have gone down 20 times or more probably. Several times it felt like I was cheating at how easy some of the drills were using DCT. The Honda engineers really thought that system through well and I'm really glad I had it this weekend as it once again saved my butt.
One of the drills was a hill start exercise after stalling a manual bike. As I pulled up to the instructor on the hill at the start of the exercise, he said, "This one is cheating for you. I didn't call you out when I was explaining the drill to the group." I laughed and said, "I appreciate that..." and easily motored on up the hill. He had seen the DCT tech in action in classes before and said he was impressed with it.
DCT, its not just for pavement