5 Kyles & no Records!
SO, another 3 months gone, and A LOT OF SHED TIME LATER, and what do I have to show for it all?
But the biggest piece of news in this time was seeing my son, 12 yr old Jack, having his first ride in a speed bike, but riding using a PERISCOPE! You can just see his helmet behind the top mirror & below the normal bubble cover. Eyes are well below the top of the fairing, but the mirrors shift the image to that level. This is BIG news for others making speed bikes, as it showas the possibilities of reducing bubble height significantl;y, whilst enabling excellent stereo vision (required for best balance). This was a very exciting development.
This ride was accomplised at the Holden proving grounds, along with 4 other copies of the Kyle speed bike. We were trying to break 2 long standing Australian records, but came up short in both. So they stand: 89.8kmh for a flying 200m, and 58.3 km for 1 hour. Something to aim for next summer!

During this time I also made a trike version of Whoops for a kids Human Powered Vehicle (HPV) endurance event in Wonthaggi, Victoria. A team of 10 riders rode Tri Whoops for 16 hours. Slowly. I added quite a few safety features (rules require them) late in the building of the bike, which relly hurt it's speed. So, in short it was slow as a slug, or, as we ended up calling it, slow as a Carrot on Wheels!
Time for a break now from my shed. I have a wife who needs my attemtion for a while, so my bikes can survive without me for a month or so, and then I'll get into making them fast!

Where did those last 3 months go?

So, Whoops is now being cut up to fit over my new vehicle... a TILTING Trike. You see the prototype here. At rest, the rear wheels are locked in the vertical position. Once moving, you unlock the rear end & ride it like a 2 wheeler. I'm cutting 30cm of the Whoops fairing (race rules) as well as removing the rear wheel cover (no longer required). It's really fun to ride... stable at rest, dynamic at speed. I'll add a 70tooth chainring & realy crank it up. More soon.

3 Kyles & a Gale

SO, whilst reading this, turn on 3 fans really near your face. Then use that wind to imagine what it was like at Casy for the 6hr challenge. WINDY! Cold, but mostly, really WINDY. SO windy, Whoops & her sister, Black Betty, were simply blown over when riding. The wind just lifted the front wheel off the ground & over they went. twice each.

That's Matt racing around, but without the back top... it was too windy to control Whoops fully setup.




And then, to make matters really bad, a rain storm passed trough. SO, before you could say Chester Kyle 10 times fast, the race was abandoned & we all went home!










But, there were 3 copies of the original Kyle Edge racing: my Whoops, Jeff in Black Betty (built by Ben at Trisled, and seen here passing the pits) & Ken in Chain reaction (seen below). Pity the conditions didn't allow us to race at our full potential.
So, hopefully we'll get onto the Holden track soon & with some fine conditions, we'll erally be able to crank these babies up.

Casey 6 hour Challenge preparations

Sunday Sept 24 will see Whoops running in a 6 hour challnge at the new Casey Fields track. We have made a few changes of late to help ride comfortably for that length of time.
1. Ben modified the fork so the crown(top) of the fork is now just above the tyre, with an extension added under the existing steerer tube so the wheel remains in the same position. This will prevent knees knocking the forks, which is very painful.








2. I've made a neoprene cover to fill the gap between the front & rear sections. This will help the airflow significantly, and keep the rider warm. That's Matt in the bike. Matt will be partnering me in the 6hour race. He's even bigger than me, at 194cm tall & 90kg! Never thought I'd need to made Whoops fit someone bigger than me! AS you can see, time for a re-spray.

3. I've installed a landing gear, which allows starting & stopping without the need for putting feet &/or hands on the ground. It works well, though on roads with a severely curved edge, there is a tendency to fall over. When riding, the wheel springs back inside the fairing. When required, I just pull a riope & the wheel pops down. All very simple. Not elegant yet, but simple.

2 World Records Broken

Well, just to keep us honest, 2 of the 3 world records we are going to challenge have been broken:
Greg K from Canada just added 25km to the 24hr record taking it to 1046km, and 49yr old Fred Markham added 1500m to the hour record to take it to just under 86km.

A New Back

AS you can see, I've made a new back top section for Daily Whoops. It's made of polystyrene (insulation) foam & epoxy. If you look closely, you can see the strips of polystyrene, which I hot glued onto a template, and then covered the whole thing, inside & out, with a very light fibreglass cloth & epoxy resin. This part is really light (under 2kg) but really quite stiff. You can also see my foot sticking out of the new neoprene hole covers. The gap between the 2 top pieces will be filled in soon with stretched neoprene covers.



Here is the back section prior to attaching to the lower body. The template was made of 2 pieces of styrene, and then 40 strips of 12mm thick styrene glued over the top. Without the fibreglass, the structure is pretty fragile. I also made the widest point too high, so will attempt to re-shape the mid section, to bring the widest point lower & improve the airflow around my shoulders. Building this whole structure took about 10 hours all up. I've ordered paint to match the rest of Whoops... Can't have her looking drab now, can we!

Full Battle dress!
SO, I've finally managed to get some pics from the Lang Lang ride, with Whoops in full battle mode. That's Jeff over there taping me in prior to the run. The black thing in front of the windscreen is a NACA duct, which directs air into my face, with apprenetly little increase to the aerodynamic drag.







Now, the astute amongst you will notice you can't see my eyes. Which, by reverse, means I couldn't see yours, if you were hypothetically somewhere in front of me whilst riding. Yes, visibility was NOT good. All I could see was the banking up to my right. I had NO idea where the left edge of the track was. SO i wobbled around the track for 30 minutes, rarely moving into the 2nd lane, mostly staying in the 3rd & 4th lanes. BUT, it was fun cruising along at 55kmh or so.
My helmet was hard up against the bubble, and I felt EVERY bump in the road.





You may also notice the bulge in the join between the front & rear top pieces. Big Shoulders! Somehow, the tap stayed on & I was kept dry. I had tried to seal up the front wheel hole somewhat, so despite the rain, I got out of Whoops pretty dry.