ok, hands up

"Ryan Cousineau" wrote in message
...
In article ,

Where you do see bent riders is out on long, flat rides. Which is great.
That's where adding a couple pounds of fairing looks like a great
compromise. But the Earth is not flat, and when the ground turns
upwards, bents become tiresome.

Especially when you think about the headwinds typical in flat areas, faired
bents look good, especially if there are no structures chopping up the
inevitable crosswinds, but how many of us ride in those conditions?

Bill Bushnell wrote:

[ ]

Jobst Brandt writes:
Why are recumbents so rare in contrast to standard bicycles? [...]
The reasons have been presented often and just as often have been
rejected by recumbent advocates who say they are invalid.

The logic I hear often is that one doesn't see recumbents on the
road (rare as hen's teeth), therefore people must not be buying them
(little or no market), therefore they're no good for general bicycling.

Lots of stuff here!

My two bits a on century rides and in enthusiast clubs in moderate terrain
one is seeing a BIG JUMP in bents. There are actually a lot of them out there
being ridden tons of miles.

I'm a member of one of the biggest clubs in the US, with sometimes a dozen
daily rides going in our area. In the ride near me the fastest riders are
unfaired benters and there are often 3 or 4 bents, 10 uprights and 3 or 4
tandems.

Our big state rides almost always emphasize images of bents on their big
fliers and posters these days. They didn't do this 10 years ago.

In Michigan they are definitely included in the club/century scene as a very
viable bike type, that's maybe more popular than tandems now.

More two bits: I still think the uphilling aspect of bents is UNKNOWN. It
sure seems like they stall out for me, too, but my bents are all over 30 lbs.
What would happen with a 20 lb bent? Also how do the various
angle/seatheights affect uphilling? I'm not convinced either way yet. I do
know that it took me about 2 years to adapt from uprighting to benting at the
same level. I would have to put 2 years into uphilling to really know. I'd be
game to do though! But I live in Michigan instead of my old Colorado.

Final two bits: most riding is done in moderate terrain. I bet 80%. In very
hilly areas, cycling drops way off, going to a near-total ultra-enthusiast
sector.

--

Jeff Potter
****
*Out Your Backdoor * http://www.outyourbackdoor.com
for modern folkways and culture revival...
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On Thu, 11 Sep 2003 16:45:37 -0400, Jeff Potter
wrote:

Bill Bushnell wrote:

[ ]

Jobst Brandt writes:
Why are recumbents so rare in contrast to standard bicycles? [...]
The reasons have been presented often and just as often have been
rejected by recumbent advocates who say they are invalid.

The logic I hear often is that one doesn't see recumbents on the
road (rare as hen's teeth), therefore people must not be buying them
(little or no market), therefore they're no good for general bicycling.

Lots of stuff here!

My two bits a on century rides and in enthusiast clubs in moderate terrain
one is seeing a BIG JUMP in bents. There are actually a lot of them out there
being ridden tons of miles.

I'm a member of one of the biggest clubs in the US, with sometimes a dozen
daily rides going in our area. In the ride near me the fastest riders are
unfaired benters and there are often 3 or 4 bents, 10 uprights and 3 or 4
tandems.

Our big state rides almost always emphasize images of bents on their big
fliers and posters these days. They didn't do this 10 years ago.

In Michigan they are definitely included in the club/century scene as a very
viable bike type, that's maybe more popular than tandems now.

More two bits: I still think the uphilling aspect of bents is UNKNOWN. It
sure seems like they stall out for me, too, but my bents are all over 30 lbs.
What would happen with a 20 lb bent? Also how do the various
angle/seatheights affect uphilling? I'm not convinced either way yet. I do
know that it took me about 2 years to adapt from uprighting to benting at the
same level. I would have to put 2 years into uphilling to really know. I'd be
game to do though! But I live in Michigan instead of my old Colorado.

Final two bits: most riding is done in moderate terrain. I bet 80%. In very
hilly areas, cycling drops way off, going to a near-total ultra-enthusiast
sector.

My faired recumbent seems faster on level ground and down hills. But
sooner or later you have to go uphill and there's no way to beat
gravity.

Best way to decide is let them in races. They were originally banned
because they were faster than uprights. If they are faster people
will switch. Slower and they go the way of Biopace chainrings.

Jim

Jim Cronin writes:

My faired recumbent seems faster on level ground and down hills.
But sooner or later you have to go uphill and there's no way to beat
gravity.

Best way to decide is let them in races. They were originally
banned because they were faster than uprights. If they are faster
people will switch. Slower and they go the way of BioPace
chainrings.

Oh no. The best way is to do as with the MTB, that the UCI ignored
until NORBA had more members than the UCI, in the USA and elsewhere.
If they were allowed in races, a flat TT would require that every
rider also have a special TT recumbent. HPVA has shown that for flat
record attempts, recumbents are superior.

We don need no steenkin UCI to discover the strengths of recumbents.

Jobst Brandt

"Jim, N2VX" wrote:

My faired recumbent seems faster on level ground and down hills. But
sooner or later you have to go uphill and there's no way to beat
gravity.

I suspect it goes slowly uphill mostly due to weight. There are a couple 30lb
fullfair carbon lowracers out there these days that I suspect would do great in
very rolling terrain. My 60lb fullfair lowracer does great in modest rolling
terrain---I mean 30-40mph average, what lovely momentum it has. Bring such a bike
down to 30 lbs (as several do) and you really can increase the hilliness I
suspect. But for steep climbing a 20 lb unfaired bent would be good to test for a
couple years in each of a variety of geometry configs. Who knows. I just haven't
seen enough data yet. I do recall some folks mentioning the need for big
heatsinks for disk brakes for faired bikes in the mts. (Is that correct? Would
disks need big heatsinks for controlling 80mph descending?)

Best way to decide is let them in races.

Maybe it's more like Jobst said, with a twist. You don't even really have to have
their group get huge for them to be considered impt. Is there a huge tandem
racing association? Yet there's a chance bents could be quite a bit bigger of a
sector than tandeming. Without a big race group for them. They could just get
bigger and bigger in terms of clubs and centuries. Probably quite a few
innovations have caught on and spread in these places without them having races
built around them. But of course the race angle could grow, too. (Tandem racing
has grown some it seems, but tandem club riding has probably grown lots more.)

--

Jeff Potter
****
*Out Your Backdoor * http://www.outyourbackdoor.com
for modern folkways and culture revival...
...offering "small world" views on bikes, bows, books, movies...
...new books featuring: XC ski culture, a Gulf Coast thriller
folding bicycles ... with radical novels coming up!
...original downloadable music ... and articles galore!
plus national "Off the Beaten Path" travel forums! HOLY SMOKES!

wrote:
: Risto Varanka writes:

: Maybe recumbents aren't too well researched yet - we lack the solid
: empirical data to base discussions on. Or then it's the complexity
: of the issue, one study can't cover all the aspects. Or then,
: scientific research is not very helpful when deciding whether to
: ride recumbents. (How do you research whether riding trikes is fun,
: for example?)

: Maybe, maybe, but lets get back to a more basic question. Why are
: recumbents so rare in contrast to standard bicycles? The research has
: been made by many bicyclists who discovered they preferred not to ride
: or buy a recumbent. The reasons have been presented often and just as
: often have been rejected by recumbent advocates who say they are
: invalid.

I'm not sure if such large research has been done, and also which
the results have been. I think one should ride a recumbent
(preferably multiple, different, famous models) for weeks (or
months or years?) to get a good impression on various issues. I
think people who do that kind of research have already decided on
buying a recumbent, so the sample would be distorted...

Many people could be interested, but they are delaying their
purchase because of the high price. One might want to make some
preselection in order to obtain a fair and representative sample
of the "cyclists who have done research". If you only included
people with a bike of over $1000, from recumbent-dense areas, you
could come up with over 10% of recumbent riders (and growing),
even if you count also those people who have done no research at
all on recumbents.

--
Risto Varanka | http://www.helsinki.fi/~rvaranka/hpv/hpv.html
varis at no spam please iki fi

Bill Bushnell wrote:

: Many new recumbent cyclists don't make it past the initial learning curve:
: training the muscles to work differently and learning to balance and steer
: with confidence.

So this leads to faulty research, ie. rejecting the platform for
the wrong reasons?

: don't know where to find one to test ride or to purchase. How many bike
: stores that sell high-end road bikes also sell high-end recumbents? For
: most customers the choice is made before they even see a recumbent.
: There is no convenient point of purchase and no local support
: infrastructure. Mail order is a possibility, but then the customer is on
: his own or must prevail upon the local bike shop for servicing.

: But, I believe most of the reasons people stop riding recumbent or not
: start in the first place are social. The recumbent looks different, a
: black sheep in the fold. Some people just don't like the look of 'em, or
: they feel uncomfortable sticking out in public, bystanders staring with
: mouths agape, the questions, the occasional mockery, and that's reason
: enough.

Are those valid reasons for not riding one - or not recommending
one? Some people *insist* on being pioneers! (I guess some of them
end up riding bents In the end it might not depend on just
one's riding context, but also obviously also on the long-term
goals as a cyclist and even one's personality structure, whether a
recommendation is valid or not.

--
Risto Varanka | http://www.helsinki.fi/~rvaranka/hpv/hpv.html
varis at no spam please iki fi

In article ,
(Chalo) wrote:

wrote:

If they were allowed in races, a flat TT would require that every
rider also have a special TT recumbent. HPVA has shown that for
flat record attempts, recumbents are superior.

Because of the HPV community's attachment to fairings of various
sorts, I have been unable to determine that unfaired 'bents really
are any faster than normal bikes.

I started with the assumption that 'bents must be faster, but their
boosters' refusal to compare apples to apples got me wondering
whether that was really the case. Now I just don't know, not
having seen any good numbers for known unfaired bents in TT events.

Well, the death-knell for recumbents in road racing as sounded by the
UCI which thought the unfaired Velocar recumbent had a unfair
advantage over riders on conventional bikes. Of course, that was
decades ago and there was no quantification or actual analysis done.

It would be possible to build a 'bent that would be legal in USCF
races, both mass-start and TT. It would be an interesting experiment.

Chalo wrote:

: Because of the HPV community's attachment to fairings of various
: sorts, I have been unable to determine that unfaired 'bents really are
: any faster than normal bikes.

IHPVA seems less interested in nonfaired records. In places like
Lelystad, the vast majority competes with lowracers, though maybe
most of those folks have a tailbox. A tailbox doesn't have very
many practical disadvantages though, and it could make a useful
cargo space...

About aero eq... bents and DFs both can have wheeldisks, for the
rest I guess it's up to you what you consider a fair comparison...

: I am especially skeptical about whether racers who mostly rode normal
: DF bikes would be any faster aboard 'bents. At that level of
: performace, training for one type might well diminish performance with
: the other.

If you want to be fast on a DF bike you train on a DF bike. If you
want to be fast on a bent you train on a bent. On flats, I believe
people who train on bents are significantly faster.

--
Risto Varanka | http://www.helsinki.fi/~rvaranka/hpv/hpv.html
varis at no spam please iki fi