Yes, but it slopes slightly upward through the last 3/4 mile and through the time traps, IIRC. There's a small gully and bridge at this point on the BM course.

Lol that first fairing bought "Yellow submarine" by the beatles to mind.

What did you come up with?

Yup - and in addition, they were looking for a place that was at sufficient altitude. There's other possibilities for near-sea-level, but the thinner air is better for high-speed runs.

That's interesting. I saw a little "blip" in the slope but I couldn't be sure about it. I'm using speed and power data from two of his runs but at that point he was doing ~ 30 m/sec so my resolution on the slope would be no better than that. He covered the 200 m speed trap in about 6 seconds but I don't see a positive slope through that, nor through the preceding km.

Well, I don't know the exact air density at Battle Mountain that hour that day (but I have air density from weather stations in Winnemucca and Elko from earlier in the day and later in the evening) so I had to make a guess about that. But given that guess, I got a CdA just a hair under 0.02 m^2.

Holy cow, even with a streamline body that must be a tight fit to get it that small!

Sam's not a large person (5-foot-7, IIRC), and he squeezes into the fairing. I think it's 15 inches at the widest. (My shoulders are 21 inches across- I am not small.)

The view from inside:

Not only is he not large, he's also not claustrophobic.

I didn't think I was either until I saw the video... :D

I'm impressed that Sam could put out that much power scrunched up like that. It looked like his shoulders are hunched forward, hard to breath. It's amazing how much impact a couple of inches narrower makes, more than you'd expect just looking at it casually.

The main effect of my fairing is to keep the rain off me. I only get wet from my chest up. In crosswinds, it seems to act almost like a wing, and I have to lean into the wind. On downhills, I have hit about 45 mph, which I probably could not hit without the fairing.

John
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y76...y/IMG_3975.jpg

I gather that a tailbox increases speed as much as, maybe more than, a fairing.

But does that only apply to super-duper custom aero fin type tail boxes?

I see ready-made luggage-type tail boxes like this:
http://www.angletechcycles.com/asset.../aerotrunk.htm

Has anyone a sense of whether these also provide the tailbox aero benefit?

Thanks!

I take that 2 to 3 mph claim with a grain of salt, and the tailbox will have somewhat less effect than a fairing. Just my opinion fwiw.

Similar, but not identical. A test of the Terracycle tailsocks: http://www.ohpv.org/events/albums/coastdn05/

Ah, interesting. I also hunted around BROL and found a coast down test on a V-Rex.

http://www.bentrideronline.com/messa...own+test+V-Rex

The speed at which you have to be going, to get 1 to 3 mph help from these aero aids, seems to be pretty fast. The various coast down tests I'm finding involve 30-40 mph speeds.

Ah, yes. There's some good information on roll down testing in that thread.