It is not a velomobile, but it is certainly a very valid part of a transport portfolio. In the how-stuff-works category is the following, short US produced video, showing the manufacture of an iconic British folding bike, the Brompton.
Now what we need is a video showing a velomobile being made.
But wait we do! Below you can watch an Alleweder A4 build itself – apparently untouched by human hands.
There were rumours that the Dutch specialist cycle, recumbent and HPV event Cyclevision had run out of steam and been cancelled for 2013. However we learn from Ligfiets.net that this is not the case and the dates have been set for June this year.
Cyclevision has also returned to the usual location of FlevOnice near Biddinghuizen on Flevoland. Last year FlevOnice was undergoing financial difficulties which forced a relocation to the Midland Motor Racing Circuit outside Lelystad, on the other side of Flevoland. Now with a new owner those difficulties have been resolved and it is possible to return to the preferred location.
More details will be posted on the usual Cyclevision page in due course and there is also a facebook page and a facebook event page. Links to photos blogs and reports on Cyclevision 2011, the previous time at FlevOnice, are on this page.
The program is still being developed but there will be the usual races, competitions, lectures and recumbent try-out opportunities. New this year will be a dedicated dealer and manufacturer area and trade show.
Since I wrote the previous post, dreaming about a Human Powered Snowmobile, more snow has fallen. Dry stuff this time and the forecasters might be right that there is more to come. So naturally thoughts turn to human powered ways of snow removal – ideally ways that don’t break your back.
Good memories will probably remember the Google sponsored Innovate-or-die competition (c. 2007) and may perhaps remember the following entry by MrPlowKevin Blake:
Kevin’s snowplow design got him a lengthy report in Mother Earth News, in which he explains the design and build method in quite a lot of technical detail, very useful for anyone wishing to make one for themselves.
However Kevin is not alone. Bob Beechy of Ontario, has designed and built a series of HP plows starting with a trike and evolving the design through a number of diverse machines. Here he is explaining the collection before the snow sets in.
He goes on to demonstrate shifting snow in the following two videos, and he has more on YouTube. In the first he gives an overview of the first two machines and then gives the viewer a driver’s eye view
In the second, which is quite lengthy, you get a demo of the quad plowing the driveway clear.
But there are others too.
Trailcart, website now defunct, and production in limbo due to conflicting business priorities, produced a number of these all-terrain HP quads, one of which is shown above, fitted with an impressive snow plow. It would be great to see these back in production!
Finally there is the tow-plow created by Dave Peterson. A design reminiscent of the old horse-drawn plows of the past, it is fitted behind a regular bike like a bike-trailer, and used to maintain a clear path through the snow. There is more about the plow and how it developed over on a wiki site Appropedia.
Above the plow in action. Below the results.
After all the dire media hype about severe winter weather warnings here in the UK, we finally had a fall of wet slushy snow followed by a hard freeze. The white traces that are left are not much to look at, and the ice, while a hazard for some, is not much compared to what was threatened, but there is now a wintery brightness in the crisp air which sets the mind going. Now I know there are plenty of places further North or inland that have more snow than they could wish for, and where weather warnings really do warn about severe weather, but all the talk of snow and ice has set me wondering what options there are for winterised human powered transport.
The last video in the recent post about the Drymer trike and the video above, demonstrate that it is perfectly possible to take a human-powered, or even an eAssist trike out in the snow; and it is obvious that a velomobile body goes quite a way toward keeping the rider warm. But what about something beyond this? Going beyond the environmental rows over motorised snowmobile use in Yellowstone park, what about a human-powered snow-mobile?
Minds have already been exercised about this, and a mixture of concepts and products exist which tackle various aspects of the problem.
This concept for a track driven pedal-powered vehicle in skis by Michelle Marin, an industrial designer from Venice, Italy, did the rounds of the design blogs a couple of years ago. As with most concepts there are technical niggles but the general idea is sound. A lower seating position would be good and perhaps larger skis to handle soft snow and a better steering mechanism, something more like Akerman than a home made box car racer.
Following on from this concept, there already exists a commercial kit to convert a standard mountain bike to snowmobile mode. The K-trak is a Canadian developed system where you swap out the front and rear wheels for a ski and tracked wheel assembly which fit directly into the respective fork drop-outs. Thus allowing you to ride your bike through the snow much as you would in normal weather. Regrettably the manufacturers site and online shop has gone offline but the following US promotional video gives a good idea
US adventurer Greg Kolodziejzyk has a review of the K-Track. While his first impressions were positive he is much more cool about the K-Trak’s performance overall. He sumarises the K-Trak system as being a very fun way to go down hill.
However Swis Catrike dealer Bike to the Future has fitted a Catrike with both skis and the K-Trak system and reports better success. The secret it seems is achieving floatation in the snow, something that the MTB mounted K-Trak can only do at speed, i.e. downhill.
Greg’s original purpose for the K-Trak was to enable him to maintain an all-year cycle training program to support his other pedal powered projects, but perhaps another motivation was to test the design for suitability for his plan to pedal across the Greenland Icecap. As he notes on the initial concept page, there are no developed plans as yet, but one of the concepts is a track driven velomobile on skis.
Large skis and a larger track system should help with the floatation but one does wonder how the head-in configuration would perform when it comes to window fog. Unless a successful anti-fog coating or system be applied to the canopy, it is likely that a head-out configuration would be more successful.
While drag reduction due to vehicle speed would be a none issue; reduction of drag due to opposing wind, such as one would expect to meet with on the ice-cap, would still be a very good idea. Also a fairing or enclosure, covering the feet and legs at least, would also be very valuable; as David Gordon Wilson suggests in an editorial in Issue 28, and further hints regarding an observation by Philip Thiel in Issue 29 of Human Power; this would prevent heat loss due to pedalling motion.
Greenspeed, Australian recumbent trike builder, has experimented with the Snow-Trike concept and successfully built the following tracked trike using off-the-shelf components for a motorised vehicle. Please excuse the background noise music, not my choice.
Another home builder has fitted both skis track to his recumbent only in the opposite configuration with the track up-front.
A Finnish HPV enthusiast, inspired by an 1885 Ice-Velocipede, has been experimenting with a Cycle-Ski, but apart from a single page outlining the project and the following short video there is nothing more.
Searches for for more information turned up: a patent for a HP Snowmobile; a project to develop a human-pedal-powered caterpillar-drive; and some information about ski-bikes.
Ski-bikes are purely downhill machines, and currently exist to serve a niche sport. A history of Ski-Bikes is given on the following pages. and kits such as this one from Alpine Ski Bikes can be used to convert a typical MTB but there is absolutely no drive mechanism, just gravity.
I was unable to find much else. I would be interested to know what work, if any, has been done by others; and also to hear any further thoughts or comments. So please add your thoughts via the comment form below.
A couple of news items from Holland.
According to Ligtfiets.net Sinner is to stop producing the Demon and Spirit recumbent bikes, instead concentrating their efforts on the Comfort delta trike and the Mango velomobile. A quick review of the Sinner website turned up no information but Ligtfiets advise that existing stock of the Spirit and Demon will continue to be sold.
Alligt have a photo of the new Sunrider body with the different elements highlighted in one of the three standard body colours. There is a caveat that the actual shade of yellow will be slightly different from that shown, but it gives a nice idea of how the finished machine is assembled. The most obvious changes are the the rear of the body with a squarer ending reminiscent of the Versatile/Orca but there are quite a number of other more subtle changes to the body which should improve water-tightness and sound.
What is not visible here are the substantial sub-frame and numerous standard Alligt components that have been incorporated into the design.
The particularly interesting news is that the Sunrider will be available as a self build kit along side the A4, A6, A7 and A8. Not too surprisingly the kit will be sold as the A9.
Prices in Euros are available via the Alligt website but to summarise, depending on options: the A9 kit will range from 4,195 to 7,395; and a completed Sunrider ranges from 6,595 to 8,895. A “Moped” class Sunrider is also available suitable for type-approval in Germany for 10,595.
It is with sadness that we note the passing of Alex Moulton on the 9th December 2012 at the age of 92. A tribute page has been set up at http://www.alexmoulton.co.uk. A nice potted summary of his life is given on the Moulton Bicyle Company Heritage page.
Best known for developing the suspension system used on the original Mini and then designing the series of revolutionary small wheeled suspended bicycles that bear his name, which are still produced today, he also was active in contributing to the HPV comunity. He presented papers at two of the IHPVA international symposia and added comments in the columns of Human Power. He also authored or contributed to a number of books including a biographical interview with the cycle historian John Pinkerton and an excellent engineering reference book, the Moulton Formulae and Methods. As such his legacy will live on.
Active until the end he was a living demonstration of the benefits of regular cycling both to the individual and to society. The following short interview was taken earlier this year.
The following short “Made in Britain” film gives an overview of his work and the Moulton Bicycle company – a fitting tribute.
POSTSCRIPT:
While writing this post I spent some time looking for what I believe was an Open University lecture about Moulton covering the manufacture and the philosophy behind the design and it’s development. The page where I first saw it on Cozy Beehive points to a non-existent Google video. Does anyone know where to find it now?
A young teenager in a HPV managed to make news in sources as far removed from cycling as RushLane, an automotive news site, ewandoo, a technology blog, and even the Daily Mail, a newspaper not known for it’s pro-cyclist reporting.
Tim Parker the 13 year old son of Chris Parker, of the recumbent trike makers ICE, won the World Championship in the junior class, on a fully faired trike, not surprisingly, made by ICE. His achievement is remarkable in part because he was able to beat competitors with ages up to 16 and, while in no way undermining Tim’s achievement, it serves to illustrate the benefits a fairing confers on a HPV. It no doubt took some athletic ability but also maturity, to successfully manage both the human engine and the machine he was powering, to victory.
The Use of an ICE trike as a platform for a HPV or velomobile is not new, both Ocean Cycle with their Challenger, and Nimbus Kayaks (Velomobiles.CA) in Canada with their Borealis, already do so.
As posted previously we attended the York Cycle Show. The timing of this CTC event seems to suffer regularly from the onset of that lengthy damp period between the Great British Summer and the Great British Autumn. The regularity with which rain puts a damper on the event seems to be telling, as footfall appeared to be markedly lower this year. That being said it was mostly dry on the day.
From a velomobile or human powered vehicle perspective the timing now also clashes with the Dutch HPV event Cycle Vision, and this year the show was preceded in the UK by the Human Powered Vehicle World Championships. This likely went someway to explaining the absence of the BHPC stand from this year’s show.
Despite this disappointment, time was not altogether wasted. Less attendees made for more space for one’s self and gave better opportunity to browse what was on offer at the trade show. As the only major event of it’s kind in this part of the country it is well worth attending as there are prospects for picking up some good show bargains.
While there were no velomobiles, unlike 2011 when Velovision were displaying Trisled’s Rotovelo, Peter Eland had his usual stand where I was able to pick up a discounted copy of David Henshaw’s Electric Bicycles and have a brief chat with Peter.
Of related recumbent interest, Get Cycling were displaying a Sinner Comfort and a Tripod lean steering trike.
As well as general information on Get Cycling’s activities I was also able to buy a discounted copy of Cyclorama, the new coffee table book version of what is available on their Ciyclorama website. With a prominent number 1 on the front cover they make it quite clear that they intend to publish updated versions in a similar manner to the original Encycleopedia from Open Road, the company from which came both Velovision and Get Cycling.
While not what I was originally hoping for the visit was still worthwhile.
