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...

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

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:
https://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: https://www.ohpv.org/events/albums/coastdn05/

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

https://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.