2014 OzHpv Challenge Day 2

Sunday morning at the start line

Akis bike and Graham at the start

Lloyd (Blurry) a bit in front of me and Andrew (Blurry) a lot in front of me, on the way back to the start line

Graham (Foreground), Lloyd (Background)

Lloyd at the turnaround.  It was getting warm, and race or no race, some of the 5 or so layers have to come off.

At the end

Aki, last in but well supported.

Hi

Here is the final report on the ozhpv Challenge for 2014.  Yesterday with Christine I drove 440ks home from Corryong and had packing and unpacking to do as well as ride in a 20k road race so was too tired to blog when we got home.

There were 2 races on the final day, and they were a 20k road race with a timed "special stage" which was a couple of hundred metre downhill stretch.  There was very little equipment involved (2 stop watches).

We all started the longer race at the same time and George drove ahead to marshall at the turnaround point.  Lloyd, Graham and Andrew were ahead of me and Damian and Aki a bit behind.  Aki was last over the line but it was a very good effort for him, he had never ridden over 20k on the bike before.  Everything was over by about 11am including the presentations.  Now (drum roll please) for the results.  There should be more details available soon on the OzHpv site.

So, um, all for this year.  I'm hanging up my hat as organiser of the Challenge after 3 years and doing the extra work of moving the event to Corryong from Wodonga this year .  Everybody who came enjoyed themselves, with good company, good weather and spectacular scenery all helping. Long may the Challenge grow and prosper!

Regards

Steve Nurse

2014 OzHpv Challenge Day 1

Day 1 results summary

Christine's Trivia Quiz, L to R, Christine, Graham, Damian, George, Lloyd, Aki.

At the Corryong Hotel-Motel

Andrew in the Slalom

Aki Kubota, with a bike I had sold him on ebay.

Damian Harkin

Damian and Andrew

Corryong Football Pavillion, a sister to the Race Pavillion at Towong but (sadly) condemmed.

Damian Harkin and one of the world's most obscure signs.

The Gang

Lloyd and Aki, Shopping Race. Note Holographic sticky tape on Aki's wheels!

Hi, A great day's racing at Corryong Airfield today.  Andrew Stewart is leading the field from Graham Signiorini.  I managed to win the shopping race.  There was a pitch invasion (Echidna) during the 200m sprint.

More Photos and results tommorrow as they come in.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Challenge Prelude

Magnificent Towong Racetrack Pavillion, George's Cruzbike Sigma in front.

One of the Upper Murray lookouts.  George (seated), and I chatted to this guy for 1/2 hour or so.  He is a service mechanic on his way to fix some refrigeration machinery in Khankoban.

Picturesque Garage Sale in Corryong

Not all bicycling, although I wish it were.  Carrying my bike and a supporting plastic table, near Lake Hume and Bellbridge.

Cattle being herded on the way to Walwa.

Most times, the road from Bellbridge to Towong provides a view like this, of Lake Hume or the Upper Murray.

Hitchhiker

3 Op shops and a bookshop, all close to each other in Benella.

Hi

Here are some photos taken in the days leading up to the 2014 OzHpv Challenge.  Christine and I are settled in to Corryong for a few nights, having driven up form Benella yeasterday.  Today George Durbridge and I rode to check out the course for the time trial to be held on Sunday, and took in some of the local sights.  Damian Harkin and Graham Signiorini arrived and had dinner with Chistine and me.  Competition starts tomorrow!

Regards

Steve Nurse

Benella to Millawa

Tried to photograph some birds while riding, but this is the best I got.

And tried to photograph Kangaroos as well.  Despite attempting to take photos of roos today (saw 2 mobs while riding) they bounded away.  1 group was next to the hume highway and while immune to truck noise, felt threatened by a yellow-jacketed cyclist wielding a camera.  This photo of roos is a "here's one I've prepared earlier" one, take near Castlemaine of slightly more docile animals.

This is the delta trike I took on the ride, approaching Millawa.  Its my ride for the OzHpv Challenge as well.

My wife Christine and friend Deb Callister at our lunch destination, Millawa Cheese Factory

Road in to Millawa

Hi

My wife Christine and I are travelling at the moment, on our way up to Corryong and the ozhpv challenge.  Last night and tonight we are staying with a friend in Benella, and today I rode out to Millawa, where I met the others for lunch.  Chose a fairly direct route there, but the maps forgot to tell me they were bumpy dirt roads, so the trip there was a bit longer than anticipated.  Never mind!

Lunch was excellent and I chose to go back by the similarly direct and much less bumpy and much busier and much quicker and much more populated by service stations where you can buy Coca Cola  Hume Highway.  Knackered when I got back though.

Will report more on the Challenge and the lead up to it shortly.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Preparing for OzHpv Challenge

Hi

Its about a week out from the OzHpv Challenge in Corryong  which I've been busy organising for a few months now.  Entries are trickling in and it was great to talk and ride with to Graham Signiorini who is coming up and also to help organise things for Aki Kubota to travel up there.  Aki will get a train to Albury, stay overnight with Lloyd on Friday and come to the Challenge Saturday.  He has 3 recumbents, one of mine, a vintage Roulandt and a home made trike, all purchased at no great expense.  I wish I could bottle his enthusiasm and spread it around!

I went on a "Be Spon" ride and then travelled home on the "unlikely trike", stopping at a few op shops and Aldi on the way home.  The afternoon was spent very pleasantly - my neighbour Stu had given me a fixie bike from the dumpster down the road, and I spent some time fixing it, finding more bits for it down the dumpster and lastly finding some nice bike wheels for Stu for one of his bike projects.  All sorts of things get picked up and dropped off at the dumpster and on Sunday this included a dead cat!

The photo down the bottom shows some witches hats to be used for the Challenge.  Ok, they are flower containers.  Ok, they will need rock in them.  But they should work!

A fixie bike repaired at the weekend.  A broken chain and crank were the only real problems.

Part of the ozhpv timing gear, went through and replaced batteries, checked connections etc. on it.  Its working well now and I even know how to use it!

Start of the B-Spon ride.  Quite a gathering.

Graham Signiorini and some public bike tools in the City of Maribyrnong.  We went past this place a bit further down the track, it warrants further investigation

Graham and his electric Chopper bike.  Only one speed but he's quite quick on the damn thing.  He only used electric on the hills...

A gizmo I made for mounting bikes on the roof of our car.  Didn't work too well with this bike, but it may work a bit better with others.  Probably won't use it this weekend.

Witches Hats to be used in the Challenge as traffic management.  Ok, they are plastic Flower Pots.  Most came from the tip shop, 10 or 20c each.

Small at the back!

Evelyn Hamilton on an early recumbent.  The brown rear box has storage.  The image is from a 1939 set of cigarette cards from Player's.  More details about Ms. Hamilton is here.

A modern small wheel recumbent moulton conversion from about 1996.  Don Thomas organised and competed in the Canberra HPV races, and this image is from an exhaustive catalogue of bikes sold when the Canberra Bike Museum closed in 2008.

One of Ian Humphries' bikes from about 1997.  Ian went on to found Flying Furniture cycles. Photo fom Huff magazine available here

Myself and Lloyd Charter, also from 1997

Flying Furniture Tour, a modern commercial recumbent with a small wheel at the back.  The corflute tailbox works as storage and an aerodynamic aid. Link

My 22" wheel model recumbent  circa 1999. (Canberra Ozhpv challenge)

Newly minted / unpainted Zeica on a Melbourne bike path

Zeica underseat steering / small at the back bike at Mordialloc Beach Road Cafe.  The fairing is a bit of a hotch potch and made from recycled corflute.

 

A 2014 wooden bike with Lloyd and Lauren at Corryong Airport

Wheel come full Circle: Michel Kater's converted Moulton.  Where's the tailbox Michel?

Seat is very appropriately made from an old bike sign.

 Hi

This post is about how part of my bike design came along.   My bikes are simple and I like to carry things on them in an efficient way.  Included in my designs is an aerodynamic box above a small wheel on the back of the bike.  This idea is absolutely not mine!

The top picture and link shows that the principal of the thing was well understood in 1939.  Unfortunately I wasn't aware of 1939 recumbents between 1987 and 1997 when I first started tinkering with recumbents,  so I had to work it out for myself.

My first recumbents were not fast, long distance machines and it took from 1986 (when I made my first unrideable machine) till 1997 for me to have bikes good enough to compete with or ride 200k's on.  I was privileged enough to visit Canberra OzHpv races in the  late 1990's and saw a wide range of human powered vehicles there. Amongst them were ones by Ian Humphries, Don Thomas and Wayne Kotzur which had small wheels.  Ian Humphries was beginning to put tailboxes on the back of his small wheel machines and within a few years, he was making and selling bikes like this commercially, amongst them the "Tour" and "PBP Special".

My own bikes of the time still had big back wheels but were slowly evolving.  I attempted to build fully enclosed tailboxes for bikes with the  large rear wheels and failed miserably.  My building skills were not great and from memory I was using bike spokes and recycled black corflute material to make the 'boxes.  I hated making the cutout which is necessary to clear the back wheel.  The cutout was hard to build, and it intruded and ruined the beer carrying capacity of a perfectly good storage area. By about 1999 I had a bike with smallish (22") wheels and a "complete" tailbox, perfect for the OzHpv Challenge which included a shopping race.  I came 12th overall in a field of 40 or so, quite encouraging.

So what are tailboxes all about? Here is a little bit of recumbent bike theory, and I'll start with a bit about recumbent bike drag.

Recumbent bikes have wind drag which is a function of CdA, where "A" is the area of the bike as seen from the front, and Cd is the drag coefficient.  Lower either of them and you have a bike which is automatically faster on the flat and downhill.  Some tactics for lowering CdA are:

1.  Keep the bike low.  If bikes are very low, the wheels merge in with the body when seen from the front and area is reduced.
2.  Minimise messy exposed cabling: the cabling dramatically increases the drag coefficient, Cd.
3.  Lean the seat back.  A bluff torso measures about 30cm x 66cm, but by leaning back the area facing forward can easily be reduced by a factor of 2/3 to 30cm x 44cm, and leaning even further back is possible.
4.  If you don't have a front fairing, arrange the steering so the arms are tucked in to your body and not seen from the front or thrust straight forward so only the shoulder areas add to the front profile.
5.  Add aerodynamic front and or rear fairings to minimise the drag coefficient.
6.  Cover the front and rear wheels or minimise the spoke count and profile to minimise wheel drag.
7.  Etc. etc. etc. the list goes on.

While all of these things improve drag, there are some drawbacks to implementing them, for example very low bikes are hard to get in and out of and can be hard to see in traffic, leaning way back can be uncomfortable, fairings add weight, and front wheel discs can adversely affect steering.

We're actually only concerned with #'s 3 and 5 here. The aerodynamics of an upright or moderately leaned back back bike can be dramatically improved by a tapering tailbox.  The tailbox changes the seat and rider from a high drag coefficient bluff body shape to a low drag coefficient "ice cream cone" shape.  The tailbox can double as a storage area and help the bike to be seen.

Have a look at this link, where Pete Heal's round Australia, tailbox equipped rocket machine is shown in wonderful detail: it shows that having a small wheel at the back is by no means a prerequisite for having a good tailbox on a recumbent bike. But for a home bike builder like me it makes building a good one with lots of load space much easier!

Regards

Steve Nurse