(Oops, never mind - can't delete a thread I guess)

Ohboy! An empty thread, just waiting for us to fill with inanity!

To the OP: As penance, you should post the links that answered your question so that others can learn...

That would require me to successfully work BF's search tool a second time - it was hard enough the first time.

But to be helpful, this is what I found from previous BF threads on the subject:

A fairing allows a recumbent bicycle to cruise much faster with far less effort, a sustained 25-30 mph becomes quite easy. It will dramatically improve acceleration and hill climbing, especially on steeper grades. Subjectively the difference is reported to be like an extra 100-200 watts, increasing with speed. On group rides, riders on faired recumbents easily outpace even young, strong DF riders, as attractive lady DF riders, quivering with longing, gaze admiringly at the recumbent riders' rippling leg muscles and sleek Aerobellies.

Wait....

A fairing almost never helps on hill climbing, at least not steep hills.

On flats and down hills, at speed, air resistance is the biggest thing slowing you down. Once you are climbing (steep) hills, it's gravity and the (small at low speeds) gain due to less wind resistance is going to be offset by the added weight.

And, of course, in this case, size does matter (the size of the fairing, that is)...

The part about the admiring gazes, that's all true.

No, no - you wait. I am pretty sure there was a lack of sincerity in his post. Not a lack of humor though.

It was so hard to tell though. With the exception of "fairings help you climb," everything else he wrote is true!

Really? I thought several of the points were downplayed. He must have picked up those points from one of our more humble members.

I think fairings do help you climb. With reasonably sloping roads.

Oh yes, faired speeds of 25, 30 or even 35 are very easy but, alas, the US is not on the metric system.

Would you be interested in a certain bridge in Brooklyn I can offer you? Or maybe some Florida real estate?

Most of the things they claim about fairings seem to be true. Yet I have noticed that they are shaped so as to reflect all the road noise right at the rider. Has anyone else noticed this?

My Coroplast ones were never noisy, unless you counted the wind in my ears. I have heard lexan ones described that way, though.

Maybe the thread title was just a rhetorical question.............hmmmm............requiring a rhetorical answer.

Or beer. I like beer.

JYL: we're lucky to have a manufacturer of fairings here in town: https://www.t-cycle.com/Merchant2/mer...egory_Code=WWF , plus a few customizers. Fairings are neat things to play with. I've been building my own for 15 years or so:


And everything stated above is true. Especially about beer.

Nice.

Do you wrap that puppy? How much a difference at your riding speed does the fairing make? With wrap? Do you get a discount on banana splits when you ride that thing?

Cheers,
Charles

That picture is 12 1/2 years old, from the first edition of the Human Power Challenge: https://ohpv.org/HPC/albumshpc/pir2000/results.htm
I don't have that Lightning anymore (I have another that's something of hanger queen). I usually ride my front-faired Gold Rush now.

I rode the bike in a couple different configurations on the same time trial. I didn't do enough to call it scientific, but adding the rear fairing gave me about 5% more speed, while adding the front added about 10%. It was quite significant, and annoyed my wife. I would outrun her while barely pedaling. It was then that I decided that marital harmony trumps aerodynamic efficiency. I never did fill in the sides.

You want bananas? Richard Myers is all over that:

The quest for speed,,,,

No, this is the Quest for speed: https://en.velomobiel.nl/quest/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqv8Gpe_kdw

No, no, no...

If you want fast, get fast:



Two wheeled and topped 80 mph on flat land.

I love the sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMUNOLwW0io

Sam and I are friends. If he's fast, I'm half-fast:

Very nice.

If you're half fast, I'm quarter-fast...

You know that the Battle Mountain course isn't flat, it's has a (nearly) constant down slope?

Less than 0.6% slope the whole way. Where I live, that's flat.

(And, yes, it took them a long time to find a place that had both a small enough slope, but yet had a slope in the right direction. )

Almost all other sanctioning bodies require two-way runs.

It took them a long time not because it had a small enough slope (for example, the courses at Moriarty NM and Sattley CA used for USCF TT races are flatter) but because it had the largest possible slope.

That slope, while small, is what made it possible for me to estimate the CdA of the Varna Diablo.