Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => Freewheeling => The Dark Side => Topic started by: Mr Larrington on 17 August, 2018, 11:07:12 am
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It's still a Several of weeks away, but Chairman Al has just posted this in Mr Zuckerberg's Walled Garden:
Is anybody interested in an all-expenses paid trip to Battle Mountain?
All you need to be is roughly the same size as Mike, fast and willing to ride the Soup Dragon...
Mike will be at Darley Moor1/Leicester2if you'd like to have a chat with him about it there.
I have phone numbers if you can't make it in person.
The Automatic Diary should be open for business at BRITONS' breakfast time on Wednesday if the Canuckistanis let me into their lovely country.
1: Tomorrow, off the A515 south of Ashbourne, Derbyshire
2: Sunday, New College Sports Village, Leicester
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Well, I'm interested in an all expenses paid trip to Battle Mountain and have oggins of free time, I'm willing to ride anything and I think I'm probably near enough Mr Burrows size. Where I fail though, is the fast bit. In fact I'd go as far to say I'm slow. Ah well :D
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Sounds like a great outing (even if it is in Trumpland :)) but:
Sadly too large.....
Only 3W/kg too....
Claustrophobic in very confined spaces...
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Alas I'm probably a bit wide and would need a lung transplant and a great many more laps of the M6 before I'd count as 'fast'.
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Alas I'm probably a bit wide and would need a lung transplant and a great many more laps of the M6 before I'd count as 'fast'.
Aren't you a worlds silver medalist? :)
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Alas I'm probably a bit wide and would need a lung transplant and a great many more laps of the M6 before I'd count as 'fast'.
Aren't you a worlds silver medalist? :)
That's because I've spent the last year honing my being female and turning up skills.
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Alas I'm probably a bit wide and would need a lung transplant and a great many more laps of the M6 before I'd count as 'fast'.
Aren't you a worlds silver medalist? :)
That's because I've spent the last year honing my being female and turning up skills.
Those are definitely skills not everyone possesses. I suspect at least one of them is also required for this mission as well. :)
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I don't meet any of the criteria, though I might pop along to Darley Moor tomorrow for a look.
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My Sinister Agents tell me that Russell Bridge has been signed to power the Soup Dragon at Battle Mountain. Hurrah!
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Just arrived in Battle Mountain to the news that the Soup Dragon has been held in in Customs - in Cincinnati of all places - and won't be here until late Tuesday. This in spite of DHL saying it had been delivered to
the motel in BM $HOTEL in Las Vegas prior to being brought up here.
Bah!
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The Graun has an article up. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/09/fastest-bicycle-world-record-nevada
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Possibility that Soup Dragon may arrive late tomorrow in Elko wot is about an hour's drive away if they've finished the roadworks on I-80. Just about everyone else is here and ready to qualify tomorrow morning except IK3 (Universidad de la Salle, Mexico) which still needs some work on the bike and Altair 6 (IUT Annecy, France) which still needs some work on the rider. Fabien Canal is apparently very useful on a mountain bike but hadn't even tried to ride a recumbent of any kind before last night :o
HPT Delft/Amsterdam have two strong female riders and are intending to snatch Barbara Buatois' record, which they narrowly missed on the final night last year. And they actually had their bike finished in plenty of time. With Todd Reichert having shifted the outright record out of sight two years ago, the competition between the Chaps is expected to be between Andrea Gallo in Taurus and last year's fastest rider Calvin Moes in Eta Prime, with a possible dark horse in the form of first-timer (and unfaired hour-record holder) Matthias König who is sharing the VeloX XS with Ellen van Vugt.
Karen Darke is expected to shift the women's arms-only record upwards by a considerable margin; hopes are high for Ken Talbot to break Greg Westlake's men's record and hopefully raise it over 50 mph in the process. They are both riding the ARION 4 from Liverpool Uni.
I'm assisting in timing for at least the first part of the week as regular 2IC at the timing desk Danny Guthrie is currently sidelined by a wildfire threatening his father's house in northern California :( For speedy access to the results, either come to the Civic Center in Battle Mountain or keep an eye on Jun Nogami's blog at https://jnyyz.wordpress.com/category/hpv/ (https://jnyyz.wordpress.com/category/hpv/).
I'm going to bed now.
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With our very own Kim being absent from the proceedings I reckon the ladies will have an easy time of it. ;D ;D
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Results now up from Monday morning qualifiers; Andrea Gallo in Taurus set the pace with 69.77 mph; the second fastest run ever over the short course. Karen Darke would have smashed the women's handcycle record with her 39.11 mph but the wind was too strong for it to count :( Jennifer Breet, Lieke de Cock (both in VeloX 8) and Matthias König (VeloX XS) also over 60 mph. Calvin Moes had issues with the brakes on Eta Prime working when they weren't supposed to and vice-versa - now sorted. Sole Junior rider Ishtey Amminger dropped the chain in Garrie Hill's trike CO2 (a replica of the former trike record holder Completely Overzealous) and a couple of people when down at the start but got going at the second attempt. All went pretty smoothly, which is probably a first for the opening day of the event.
DHL say the Soup Dragon may reach Reno tomorrow; since they can't actually state with any certainty whether it's in Cincinnati or Las Vegas we are taking this with a large dose of NaCl. Russell is going to have a run in Greg Cantori's Milan SL velomobile over the short course tomorrow morning just to keep his legs in.
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Executive summary of Monday night and Tuesday morning: wind. And p*nct*r*s. No wind-legal runs in either session.
Things ended up running very late last night because People and She Who Must Not Be Named. She attacked Eta Prime, VeloX XS (Matthias riding) and ARION 4 (Ken riding), so the teams of the two-wheelers have a fair bit of sanding to do today. Eta Prime was particularly scary as it looked like it was never going to stop spinning. "I was starting to get bored" said a remarkably sanguine Calvin Moes afterwards. Taurus was fastest with 78.something in spite of a close call with a couple of deer running across the road in front of the bike. Both VeloX 8 riders were also over 70 mph.
This morning it was Taurus' turn for a Visitation, three miles from the traps. I'm not sure whether they managed to retrieve the bike mid-course before it fell over and they're planning to run tonight. When the wind forecast is also Teh Suxx0r. Best runs over the full course this morning were again the two VeloX 8 riders; 67.6 for Lieke and 66.2 for Jennifer. Ken in ARION4 is closing in on record pace with a 45.2 mph pass in a crosswind well over twice the legal maximum.
Latest on the Soup Dragon Saga is, after threats of exposure on CNN*, that it's promised in Reno for 9 am tomorrow. Russell Bridge had a run on the short course in Greg Cantori's Milan SL and clocked 55.6. Greg is having to fly back east to rescue his boat from incoming hurricanes but the Milan is staying here for now and Russ will ride it again tomorrow morning.
At the moment I am taking advantage of everyone being over at the Civic Center encouraging the Smalls to poke their bikes with little jammy fingers so as to upload photos and have a snooze.
* who do actually have a crew filming us.
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Windier than previously thought possible for the first part of Tuesday evening's session with only a handful of riders electing to run. Fabien Canal in Altaïr 6 the quickest at a fraction under 100 km/h.
Wind dropped to "legal" for all machines in the third heat. Andrea Gallo's 82.80 mph puts him fourth on the all-time list behind Todd Reichert, Sebastiaan Bowier and (just) Sam Whittingham and makes him the seventh rider to crack 80. And it's Tuesday. Lieke de Cock's 74.21 is still a little way off the women's record, but the Delft/Amsterdam team are getting closer. Ellen van Vugt's 70.64 wasn't quite a personal best, but Ishtey Amminger's 60.94 in CO2 is a new world record for Junior Men's Multitrack. Calvin Moes let the side down with only 75.32 in Eta Prime.
This is more like it.
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Flat calm for the short course runs this morning; Karen Darke got a legal run in and duly smashed the Women's Arms-Only world record with 41.86 mph. An increase of 17 mph over the previous record :thumbsup:
Wind mostly shit by the time we shifted to the five-mile course. Matthias is now starting to get the hang of it, though, and did 73.28 when the wind temporarily dropped, the jammy git. From the second heat, Eta Prime and Altaïr 6 both pulled up on the course before being blow over; Ken Talbot in ARION 4 was having to steer into the wind so much that he blew his front tyre from it rubbing on edge of the wheel cutout. Heat 3 was cancelled.
Soup Dragon update: collected - with some pretty ugly heavy damage - from Reno this morning and currently on its way up I-80. Master fettlers Steve Nash and George Leone have been roped in to help fix it and Russ hopes to qualify it tomorrow morning.
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More teh suxx0r weather for Wednesday evening. It's turned cloudy and cooled off from 90 F to about 75, but the wind still refuses to cooperate. Only two riders were mad enough to try starting in either of the first two heats and only Jennifer made it to the other end. Calvin fell at the start and loosened Eta Prime's stem, unless it was the other way round.
All change for heat three. Andrea scratched which allowed Calvin another run. Lieke is tantalisingly close to the record with a 74.3, Ishtey's 60.85 was a fraction slower than his world record from last night, Calvin did a 76.78 which we think is his best so far this week. And Ken Talbot in ARION 4 smashed it with 51.58 for the Liverpool team's second arm-powered world record of the day :thumbsup: Big ups to Karen, Ken and the whole Liverpool squad and to Soup Dragoneer Russell Bridge, who qualified faster in Greg Cantori's Milan SL but declined to ride on the long course tonight in favour of Ken.
ETA Soup Dragon update: It's here and undergoing major fettling. Russ has tested the chassis out on Poo Road and all seems to work provided he doesn't attempt any violent manoeuvres. A crack team of fettlers is working on the body, led by George Leone (surfboard maker, recently retired from running the workshops at Cal Poly, HPV designer and builder of a Several of decades lying down). We're running the five miles heats tomorrow before the qualifiers so if all goes well Russ can qualify tomorrow and ride in earnest Friday morning. If all goes very well he could ride tomorrow night.
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So United breaks guitars but DHL damages Dragons?
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All v entertaining M Le Maire, but what of stroopwafels? There is no mention this year as far as I can see.
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Probably banned under some Trumpistani decree.
Withdrawal. The horror, the HORROR!
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Arms only, I wonder if anyone has talked to the wierwolf, or is he too busy contemplating Tokyo?
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Courtesy of Marieke and Arnold Ligtvoet I have an as-yet unopened packet of stroopwafels sitting on the shelf behind me. I do not know how long this state of affairs will persist.
Cloudy overnight meant higher than usual temperatures for the morning and the wind was mostly benign. But it failed to warm up properly and as I had a sedentary job back in timing it was almost cold. Fastest time of the morning went to Fabien Canal in Altaïr 6, at 76.99 mph, just ahead of Matthias König's 76.44 in VeloX XS. I think we can expect Matthias back next year for a serious effort :D Karen Darke ran for the first time on the long course and added more than 5 mph to yesterday's world record. Her new mark of 46.05 is higher than Greg Westlake's arms-only outright record that existed until last night. Mike Sova, co-designer/builder of Greg's machine, is going to e-mail him this afternoon to take the piss.
Soup Dragon update: after some heroic overnight work Russ qualified the Soup Dragon at 53.81 mph on the short course, describing it as "far and away the most terrifying thing I've ever done". It seems that the steering needs improvement redesigning from scratch. And the whole thing is somewhat flimsy. Other people, Russ says, build crash structures and put drive trains inside them; Mr Burrows has built a track bike and put a plastic bag round it. The landing gear worked well though.
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No wind-legal runs Thursday evening chiz. Double chiz, in fact, as Fabien Canal has gone from total recumbent n00b to 80.83 mph in less than a week.
Soup Dragon update: The team has decided not to take any further part in the event as the bike's wheel bearings are shot, making it perilously wobbly to ride. Russ says they need to recruit a rider who is:
- younger, and
- stronger, and
- childless
as well as not making the whole machine out of cheese.
Piss.
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That a dam shame. I've enjoyed following the dragons development and progress.
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I'm curious as to the engine required to propel one to >70mph. Does anyone post their power data anywhere? It would be interesting to see what sort of rider it suits (and whether getting a top flight engine (eg a track pursuiter) would make a difference,or whether the people taking part are already that level for this event).
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A question Mr L, if I may. Are the arms only competitors wheelchair users in normal life, or are they fully mobile without the aid of wheels and the like? I believe in most wheelchair sports, competitors have to be wheelchair users by default.
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The current HPV record holders are high class (national level) but not international level athletes. They've tried loading a world class racer into a HPV (Jason Queally) but he was handicapped by a slow bike. They haven't yet managed the combination of HPV-acclimated world class rider and a world class machine.
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A question Mr L, if I may. Are the arms only competitors wheelchair users in normal life, or are they fully mobile without the aid of wheels and the like? I believe in most wheelchair sports, competitors have to be wheelchair users by default.
Karen Darke is a wheelchair user, and has won Paralympic medals among other things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Darke
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The current HPV record holders are high class (national level) but not international level athletes. They've tried loading a world class racer into a HPV (Jason Queally) but he was handicapped by a slow bike. They haven't yet managed the combination of HPV-acclimated world class rider and a world class machine.
The mad Scotsman - world class rider, but not HPV acclimated. Wonder how he might have done in one of the university designed machines?
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I'm curious as to the engine required to propel one to >70mph.
Not exactly a direct answer to your question, but I love this video of ex-record holder Sam Whittingham (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWaC2-LuoVI).
Make sure you have the sound turned up.
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Much better weather this morning as the wind stayed pretty kind for most of the session. Natch one of the riders who didn't get a legal run was HPT Delft/Amsterdam's Jennifer Breet. We think the wind loves her and wants to be her friend. Andrea in Taurus was over 80 again, closely followed by Fabien in Altaïr 6 at 79.48. And the ever-popular Adam Ince finally got an Official Hat with a 51.42 mph run in Half Fast. I'm on chase vehicle duty again today, so got to ride behind Adam, Andrea, Valina Sintalova in Bluenose and Matthias König in VeloX XS. With his ability to walk unaided and make jokes in English after a run, we think Matthias isn't trying hard enough :demon:
Oh, and two more world records for the Liverpool team Ken and Karen both ran in the 600/200m discipline (i.e. a very short run-up). Ken did 33.81 and Karen 30.30 mph, boosting the prevous marks by more than 5 and 8 mph respectively.
Weather is looking OK for this evening and tomorrow morning but a bit ropy for tomorrow night, so the fast girls and boys are anxious to get a good one in ASAP. Lieke de Cock looks the more likely of the VeloX 8 riders to break the women's record, and bothe Fabien Canal and the luckless Calvin Moes are both looking for 80. Mr World's Fastest Mammal Todd Reichert is now here to Dispense Wisdom in Calvin's direction, because Canada.
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...Natch one of the riders who didn't get a legal run was HPT Delft/Amsterdam's Jennifer Breet. We think the wind loves her and wants to be her friend...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIF5Fgn0CmU
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More rubbish behaviour from the wind this evening. Only two riders with legal wind and neither was Jennifer :'( Valina Sintalova decked Bluenose somewhere on the course, Fabien Canal pulled up Altaïr 6 half a mile down the road because of the wind and toppled over before the team could get out of the van and catch him and, while able to make a wind-legal 78.11 mph run, Calvin Moes decked Eta Prime at catch again. I heard the camera pod b0rked off, so more midnight oil for the Toronto team. It was also Calvin's turn to cook dinner tonight.
Liverpool had problems too; the main screen in ARION 4 blanked out just as Karen was taking evasive action to avoid the team recovering Bluenose (she was able to switch to the backup and get down the road OK) while some derangement caused the front tyre to start rubbing the top of the fairing during Ken's run, filling the interior with little chunks of rubber and limiting the speed to a legal 36.73 mph in spite of record-breaking power input from the rider. Fortunately the tyre stayed in one piece as for some unfathomable reason the front is a skinny 650B, which are in short supply in Nevada.
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Executive summary of this morning: at her second attempt of the day, Jennifer Breet finally got a wind-legal run (72.42 mph) in VeloX 8; Calvin Moes in Eta Prime did a wind-legal run over 80 mph; Karen Darke broke the arms-only world record for the third time this week, leaving it at 46.54 mph.
And your correspondent drove That Shitbox Dodge into Danny Guthrie's campervan just now. Piss.
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Bastard Windy at first this evening and only Valina Sintalova made a run in the first heat. She got Bluenose down the course OK but stacked the old warhorse quite hard in the deceleration zone.
Heat 2 failed to attract any riders at all.
Fabien Canal withdrew from heat 3 because it was Bastard Windy*, Calvin Moes actually b0rked one of Eta Prime's chains on starting this time and Andrea Gallo, great slacker that he be, cruised through at sub-50 mph to show off Taurus' tricolore underbody LEDs. Lieke de Cock had one more attempt at the women's record when the wind finally died, but came up a little short, as did Matthias König's quest for 80 mph in the final run of the event.
Andrea may have gone fastest but the big winners were undoubtedly the University of Liverpool team, Karen Darke and Ken Talbot. Hurrah for BRITAIN! Even if Ken is originally from Seattle.
* ETA, and not because Liverpool gave Annecy's chief catcher a BEER shortly before the start of the heat, which disqualified him from doing his job.
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W1nz0rz all:
(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1855/30856272578_8a3b8cd02b_o.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/P1EsPC)
P9160645 (https://flic.kr/p/P1EsPC) by Mr Larrington (https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_larrington/), on Flickr
Standing L-R: Fabien Canal, Lieke de Cock, Jennifer Breet, Ellen van Vugt, Russell Bridge, Greg Cantori
Not Standing L-R: Calvin Moes, Andrea Gallo, Karen Darke, Ken Talbot, Adam Ince
(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1874/43817846445_15ea2802ee_o.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/29L2Va8)
P9150612 (https://flic.kr/p/29L2Va8) by Mr Larrington (https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_larrington/), on Flickr
Forza Italia!
(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1853/29789959627_7b75214369_o.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/Mork8z)
P9150635 (https://flic.kr/p/Mork8z) by Mr Larrington (https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_larrington/), on Flickr
Mike Sova takes over the care and feeding of 2D Thomas from Marieke Ligtvoet. Mikey is returning to his boat tomorrow. In Grenada. The git.
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Should have posted this earlier but failed because idleness and networks. Soup Dragon pilot Russell Bridge's short fillum of the whole sorry saga:
https://youtu.be/0a7usJV_xDo (https://youtu.be/0a7usJV_xDo)
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Should have posted this earlier but failed because idleness and networks. Soup Dragon pilot Russell Bridge's short fillum of the whole sorry saga:
https://youtu.be/0a7usJV_xDo (https://youtu.be/0a7usJV_xDo)
Beautifully done - just a shame about the whole 'gone missing' saga.
The drone shots after 5mins are well cool.
From a technical perspective, I'm a tad perplexed about the idea of using just a single speed in the Soup Dragon. Surely gears are essential as you build momentum? [He says.....just assuming]
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Russ said he was totally happy with the single-speed business, though I'm not sure it's going to set a trend. The landing gear, which impressed everyone, helped in that he didn't have to worry about trying to balance while pushing a very high gear at very low revs. Everyone else has gears, though some had as few as four, and the Italians and Delft/Amsterdam were both using a setup where the cassette moves sideways instead of a conventional derailleur. Nothing new under the sun, though; Miles Kingsbury used the same idea on the Mango in 2002, albeit with only a piece of string to operate it rather than electronic wizardry.
The drone stuff is courtesy of Nik Vatin, an emigré from $BALTIC_STATE, who used to have a habit of turning up on the doorsteps of HPV enthusiasts across Europe and eating them out of house and home :D
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Thanks, D, a wonderful event and reporting.
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Russ said he was totally happy with the single-speed business, though I'm not sure it's going to set a trend. The landing gear, which impressed everyone, helped in that he didn't have to worry about trying to balance while pushing a very high gear at very low revs.
I can see how useful the Soup Dragon landing gear is when that single speed is probably rotating slower than the London Eye at the beginning of a run!
He did a good job to sell the landing gear in the video, what with footage of everybody else falling over at the beginning of their attempts ;D
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I have had this idea turning in my head whether a hybrid drive using a flywheel to store the power at the beginning of a run and release it to boost rhe end speed could work. Would it be allowed? Would the necessary drive splitting and clutches just take up too much space and weight to be accomodated in the racer hull? Would the gyroscopic forces as the flywheel slowed down after the run chuck the machine on its side before the catchers could catch it? Still just the rider"s muscles doing the work of course. Has anyone else gone through this reflection and abandonned it as unworkable?
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Possible rude/stupid question. So Mike Burrows has been designing bikes for ages, with great, as far as I know, success. How, then, did Soup Dragon end up with such a flexy steering arrangement and play in the wheel bearings?
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A flywheel, or any other kind of energy storage system, is permitted under the rules provided it's completely discharged before the run starts. No-one's tried it in any HPV competition that I'm aware of, though flywheels have, IIRC, been tried as an aid to hillclimbing on ordinary bikes and found wanting. Too much extra mass and complication for too little gain.
Possible rude/stupid question. So Mike Burrows has been designing bikes for ages, with great, as far as I know, success. How, then, did Soup Dragon end up with such a flexy steering arrangement and play in the wheel bearings?
We've got the BHPC AGM in a couple of weeks. I'll ask him :demon:
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We're on the telly! (https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/17/health/fastest-human-powered-bike-fit-nation/index.html) Well, sort of. Not found a link to the actual programme yet.
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We've got the BHPC AGM in a couple of weeks. I'll ask him :demon:
...and whar was the answer?
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We've got the BHPC AGM in a couple of weeks. I'll ask him :demon:
...and whar was the answer?
He may have been preoccupied with setting a new BHPC record for heart rate...
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Attracted the attention of CNN... https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/17/health/fastest-human-powered-bike-fit-nation/index.html
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Rather than start the 2019 thread ridiculously early, I merely note here that the dates for 2019 are September 8-14. An extra day of racing, as if the volunteers weren't already sleep-deprived zombies by Thursday as it is. Tech inspections and introductory briefing on Saturday 7th.
Not booking anything until this Brexit fustercluck is sorted, mind.
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Rather than start the 2019 thread ridiculously early, I merely note here that the dates for 2029 are September 8-14. An extra day of racing, as if the volunteers weren't already sleep-deprived zombies by Thursday as it is. Tech inspections and introductory briefing on Saturday 7th.
Not booking anything until this Brexit fustercluck is sorted, mind.
:o That's planning ahead indeed ;D
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Curse my stubby peasant fingers on this infernal contraption!
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What's Battle Mountain?
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What's Battle Mountain?
It’s the venue of Mr Larrington OTP's annual holibobs finale. Apprntly there’s a long straight flat road there that he likes to charge along at 80mph+ twice a day in a variety of hired vehicles, in pursuit of a variety of penniless students and hired athletes in various human powered vehicles.
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What's Battle Mountain?
Informal name for the World Human Powered Speed Challenge (http://www.recumbents.com/wisil/whpsc2018/speedchallenge.htm). Battle Mountain itself is a small town in northern Nevada, on Interstate 80 about halfway between Reno and the Utah state line; fifteen-odd miles south of the town is a stretch of State Highway 305 across the shallow valley of the Reese River, which has a ruler-straight section about seven miles long. The first five of which perfectly match Teh Roolz for permitted slope of a sprint course (which were written about twenty-five years before the venue was first used).
We get to close it for up to twenty minutes at a time morning and evening for a week in September; each closure is just about long enough to fire four or five human-powered streamliners down the road to be timed over a flying 200 metres at the other end. Twentieth anniversary next year; before the event was started the world record was 68.73 mph and now it's 89.59.
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Last year I jokingly suggested to the Liverpool team supervisor Steve Bode that ARION 6 should be a tandem. He blanched visibly and started muttering about "transport".
This morning he posted on the WHPSC Farcebok group to the effect that ARION 6 will be...
...
... a tandem ;D
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With but a handful of weeks to go before this year's event, my chum Professor Sir Timelord Admiralissimo Plenipotentiary Nogami draws your attention to this 'ere video by some Québécois TV bods:
Champions du Monde (https://tv5.ca/champions-du-monde?e=zwhjxo3t86e1d).
Concentrates mostly on the University of Toronto team in general and rider Calvin Moes in particular, with contributions from Paolo Baldissera from the Turin Polytechnic University team and the luckless Jennifer Breet from HPT Delft-Amsterdam. No idea why they didn't interview the actual genuine Frenchies from IUT Annecy, unless France and Quebec are separated by a common language.
Caveats:
- It's only available until the end of the week, and
- It's in French
Worth watching for the scenery, IMO.
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I should hope so!
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No idea why they didn't interview the actual genuine Frenchies from IUT Annecy, unless France and Quebec are separated by a common language.
Maybe because they had an uninteresting run, so nothing worthwhile to say about them (compared with the Italian winners, the 80mph Canukistani success story and the tearful Dutch)?
A good watch, thanks. Is Mike going for 100mph this year or in 2020?
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No idea why they didn't interview the actual genuine Frenchies from IUT Annecy, unless France and Quebec are separated by a common language.
Maybe because they had an uninteresting run, so nothing worthwhile to say about them (compared with the Italian winners, the 80mph Canukistani success story and the tearful Dutch)?
Fabien Canal did make an 80 mph run, albeit with a wind speed too high for it to be official. And a story doing the rounds maintained that the first time he'd ridden a recumbent of any kind was when they went out to practice their start routine on Poo Road. The TV crew were pretty low-key though; I only learned of their existence when someone put the link on Farcebok last week. Marked contrast to the Japanese outfit from a few years back, who were a bloody nuisance.
A good watch, thanks. Is Mike going for 100mph this year or in 2020?
If by "Mike" you mean Mr Burrows, then the LSBU team are returning this year with a new! IMPROVED!!1! and – crucially – much more sturdy body (though still from the same moulds). They've been testing it at Elvington recently. I don't think anyone's mentioned 100 mph - the official project name is AIM93, 93 mph being wot aerodynamicist Glen Thompson reckons to be the theoretical maximum speed. I doubt Mike himself will be making the trip, as you need an e-mail address to get into USAnia these days ;D
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This is good news. We established that cheese is no substitute for a chassis that shouldn't flex like barracuda full acceleration.
Has the pilot been given licence to open the taps yet? The video I saw of the last record-breaker looked like an adequate amount of power was deployed.
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The only video I've seen has shewn young Russell doing fairly modest speeds but he hasn't been complaining so I imagine serious welly to be on the cards in a month's time. Hopefully the team will package the thing a bit more securely this time around as we don't want a repeat of last year's dropped-on-its-head-as-a-child nonsense.
My Sinister Agents tell me they want to call this year's bike "Velociraptor". This is:
- a name already used by Steve Copeland's unsuccessful prone of a few years back, and
- naff
In the not-too-distant future I'll start a new thread for the Super-Duper 20th Anniversary Event as I depart these shores three weeks today bound for Ye Wilde West.