Here’s that reverse one 😯

Queally had a go, about 10 years ago?, in Blue Yonder, but it was simply too big, and he didn’t get anywhere near the record. Have a look at the photos of current record holder Whittingham, and his Varna. You’ll wonder how he fits inside, let alone pedals at 80mph.

Queally had a go, about 10 years ago?, in Blue Yonder, but it was simply too big, and he didn’t get anywhere near the record.

It was quite silly really – made you wonder if they didn’t have a single person who understood aero on the team. Was pretty obvious to anybody with even a basic understanding that they weren’t going to break the record with a machine which had twice the frontal area of the others, no matter how good the engine was. I’m not just talking with hindsight here either – I remember thinking when I first saw it that it was rather big. They appear to have started from a position Queally was comfortable riding in and made that as aero as possible, rather than start with making something as aero as possible with a human body in and then work out how to pedal it, which is what the top guys do.

Problem was, they had all F1 designers on the team – with cars, if you need more power you just tweak the engine – can’t do that with bikes.

It was funny the way they blew £250,000 on it, then got beaten by a 16-year-old girl on the Varna team 😉

“I don’t fear death. I once rode at 76mph down Scafell Pike in the Lake District on racing tyres, wearing only a skin suit and no helmet.”

😯 Nutter.

Obree is a **** legend. A man Lance Armstrong could never be.

Anybody find an update?
Can’t see anything, but his morning run should be done now.

Blueyonder was HUGE!

That VeloX3 team have already got Sebastiaan Bowier going quick at 78mph 😯

Some new pics
http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest/540337/graeme-obree-makes-last-minute-tweaks-ahead-of-hpv-speed-attempt.html

Small wheels, and big tyres too….

Tweet after yesterday morning’s run was:
“5 mile course this morning, wind non legal, mechanical fault and shipped chain but into speed traps over 50mph now more work on #Beastie”

Some insight here:
http://www.humansinvent.com/#!/13470/i-need-to-focus-on-my-eyeballs-not-coming-out-of-my-head/
Looks like every wiggle is resulting in side load and therefore increasing his frontal area. Hence the stabilising weights.

I can’t see anything about an evening run. Anyone else?

I do wish that this is a success for him but it just feels as if there’s too little time available for him to get rid of all the problems that the slightly, errm, ad-hoc design and build is throwing up as he starts to go faster.

He probably spent a long time on cycle tracks getting his previous bikes ‘right’ for the speed he’d be doing before attempting any records.

I think following it works better if you just see the ‘record attempt’ as part of the spin, and just think of it as a guy having a slightly different idea to everyone else and having the guts and determination to give it a good crack.

I think there was probably a time when Graeme did think that the other competitors were being a bit ‘conservative’ and he could beat them, but it wont be this time. He already sounds like he’ll be back again next year.
I just hope he can find somewhere to test more usefully/frequently, instead of relying on theory and Battle Mountain itself.

yes, it’s not like track bikes where everyone was using one design – there was far more scope for innovation for him there.

Obree managed 50.97 mph.

Yesterday’s results:

From Jun Nogami http://jnyyz.wordpress.com/, via Dave Larrington of the BHPC

It does sound like he’s (and me!) just realised how much of a specific challenge this is – I reckon we’ll see him back next year with a much improved design.

Looks like the weather is a bit rubbish for today

If he is having stability problems I wonder if something could be added to create stability aerodynamically? Some kind of fin or aerofoil perhaps.

Or maybe a flywheel/gyroscope of some kind.. doens’t need to accelerate fast, after all. And why isn’t that front wheel a disc wheel?

doens’t need to accelerate fast

I’ve just been reading about that.
According to the rules, the pushers/launchers have to let go before 15 metres.
So he has to be able to get the 300″ (fixed) gear going in only 15metres!

(obviously he’s held upright during that time, but it still sounds like a pretty big obstacle).

I wonder if something could be added to create stability aerodynamically? Some kind of fin or aerofoil perhaps.

Anything aero is going to create drag. If it’s correcting a significant stability problem it will create significant drag. It’s no accident that the really fast machines don’t have anything like that.

According to the rules, the pushers/launchers have to let go before 15 metres.
So he has to be able to get the 300″ (fixed) gear going in only 15metres!
(obviously he’s held upright during that time, but it still sounds like a pretty big obstacle).

Some competitors have cradles that hold the HPV upright but drop away at speed, others use helpers on roller blades to do the same thing – don’t know if Obree does the same, but it means they only have to concentrate on building up speed, not steering.

But if you can’t keep it stable then you have to do something…

Yes – you have to do something which doesn’t involve creating extra drag – pointless having a nice stable bike with too much drag. The drag required to break the record is so small that the margins you have to play with are tiny.

A creative solution to gearing perhaps, to get sufficient range…

Wonder why he doesn’t have 2 gears, a “take off” gear and a “cruising” gear?

Just to absolutely minimise, I guess. Says on CW he’s added weights to the front wheel and it felt a lot more stable. Such an interesting event – they’re all prototypes, so I guess there’s a whole bunch of on-the-fly problem-solving going on.

I bet the people with £1/4m budgets have had more development time though!

so I guess there’s a whole bunch of on-the-fly problem-solving going on.

You would think most of the key problems could have been sorted out before the event,and it would just be tweaking things.

I bet the people with £1/4m budgets have had more development time though!

Like Blueyonder you mean? 😆

fasthaggis – where do you reckon you go to test an unstable bike which is theoretically capable of 80mph?

Cheats! Not that many people seem to be riding the segment… 🙂
http://www.strava.com/segments/2352028

fasthaggis – where do you reckon you go to test an unstable bike which is theoretically capable of 80mph?

Surely he can knock a treadmill together?

Surely he can knock a treadmill together?

It would take off though.

where do you reckon you go to test an unstable bike which is theoretically capable of 80mph?

Well he hadn’t even got close to 80mph before noticing the stability problem.
I can’t believe that there is nowhere in the UK with a flat bit of road for a few miles ,where it couldn’t have been wound up to test how it was going to fly.

Don’t get me wrong,I really want to see him to succeed ,but the likes of the VeloX team look as if they have done more than just theoretical and aero tests,before turning up at the event.

Can we enter a STW team next year?

What wheel size?

I’ve got an idea or two…

We need to club together and make sure he has enough funds to do it properly next year. Kickstarter?

Looks like he’s got a record. World Record for Two-Wheel Prone Recumbent, although I can’t tell if the headwind was too much for it to stand.

Another update here:
http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest/540361/beastie-blog-5-graeme-obree-sets-new-prone-position-hpv-world-record.html

Sounds like a great event. There’s something appealing about the daftness of it all.
This is a quote from Dave Larrington about yesterday:

In the third heat Aurélien Bonneteau did nearly 69 mph in a crosswind more than three times the legal maximum; Todd Reichert was slow but steady in Bluenose and as usual Phil Plath and Randy Gillett were giving it some welly. They overtook Bluenose’s chase car before the timing traps, nearly overtook Bluenose and then lost it just before the bridge.

Which they hit with considerable force. The top came off the fairing, the nose is bent to buggery and there are wood splinters (from the boards we zip-tie to the armco to stop bikes from going under the rails) punched through the fairing. Phil has a few minor cuts; Randy is, as far as I know, completely unscathed. “I felt it go over and wondered what we were gonna hit” he said afterwards. :thumbsup: to the Toronto PSOs for stopping to help even though their bike was still on its way down to catch.

Hoping for better weather in the morning…

There’s something appealing about the daftness of it all.

Yes, recumbent racing is so much more fun than the po-faced seriousness of conventional road racing 😉

New record for the prone position 56.62mph – legal launch and legal wind.