One test suggested by an engineer was this: motorpacing. Time how long it takes to get below the target mph when out of the wake of the vehicle whilst coasting. No joke. I won’t name the engineer, but I was going to test his wheels against a few others in my defunct blog. That was the test he had suggested. I was not only going to test times of wheels, but I was also going to test braking surfaces, etc. In the end, I couldn’t line up enough people on one day all together to get this to work.
Myself- I would think that this is a little more duplicatable and even somewhat consistent. But- this is the stuff that could drive you nuts and take away training time. You could potentially be spending days trying to come up with the correct protocol that is duplicatable. You could test helmets, positions, wheels, even cable routing techniques like this, I surmise.
Am I discouraging you? No, not at all. But you could spend your time doing something more productive to getting faster, that’s all. There is a big reason why aero testing is so expensive: it took long periods of time in a very expensive (and controlled) environment getting this art into a science.
Have fun, but realise that you could just be spinning your wheels (pardon the pun). And if you do this, make certain you compensate your partners and take lots and lots of notes noting such things as air temp, tyre pressure, relative humidity, wind conditions, the whole lot. Have a conventional control test subject, as well. It could be very fun. Also- don’t take it personally if your test methods are made fun of. I am certain that the people who were the aero test pioneers were made fun of, as well.
Am I discouraging you? No, not at all. But you could spend your time doing something more productive to getting faster, that’s all. There is a big reason why aero testing is so expensive: it took long periods of time in a very expensive (and controlled) environment getting this art into a science.
It doesn’t have to be expensive, nor be bad training. Testing is training, training is testing.
I tested two aero helmets on one of my clients last week, while he was doing his normal training (2 x 20-min TT efforts).
We now know which helmet to toss in the bin.
It cost him Aussie $10 to ride the velodrome. I suppose he does pay me too but that’s a sunk cost (for him) and I’ve published the analysis sheets for anyone that wants to use them
Maybe we are just lucky. Indoors. Wooden boards. Not another soul around.
This week I am testing front wheel choice. Another A$10. And his training would be there anyway, so it’s not really an additional cost to him.
Thanks for this. I wasn’t planning on testing wheel, and was more interested in position changes, so it’s good to hear about your success in isolating Crr. I don’t know how to do the regression (sigh, I wish I’d learned this stuff in college), but maybe I’ll be able to find someone, or something.
Thanks to all for the information. It’s given me a lot to think about in terms of constructing runs. I think at this point I just need some (careful) data!
Thanks for the encouragement. There’s been a lot of really good info on this forum, and some of it takes a long time for me to decipher.
BTW how comparable do you think the results are given the lower yaws experienced on the boards than outside?
