Originally Posted by
Maelochs
I have seen a couple different charts showing how much each alteration translates into a time advantage---but those all presuppose a person riding flat-out over a 40-k TT or some such.(I notice they all claim radically different numbers, which makes me totally doubt their accuracy. Science is performing the same experiment and getting approximately the same result. if one gets a number twice what the other got, someone is doing it wrong--maybe both.)
Originally Posted by
asgelle
Ignoring all the other errors in the post, I’ll point out that you misunderstand these results. For the most part they aren’t from direct measurements, rather they come from a model (which has been thoroughly validated so there’s no question as to its validity) applied to different equipment sets. Since different people use different underlying assumptions/conditions, there’s really no contradiction in the results. There’s no one answer to how much time a skin suit saves. It depends on the rider’s power, the other equipment she’s using, and what she was wearing before.
I guess you don’t see that your reply completely validated my post … but thanks. The numbers quoted are not absolutes, as you say … they are specific to a single experiment or set of experiments.
So any one quoting thos e figures and applying them to any other rider in any other situation (“A skin suit will save you X, acas this chart shows”) is wrong. All it show s ihtat there is some saving to be had under certain conditions. And as I pointed out, we don’t even know how they did their experiments---how did they evaluate the benefit of a ‘wind-tunnel-refined aero riding position” which had to have been done with aero bars … and then determine a different value for the riding position and the aero bars? Can’t have one without the other. So … as I stated those are not scientifically derived and verified values …. And in themselves, all they say is that there seems to be some advantage to certain gear and practices. Glad we agree.