what date is it today?

On Feb 19, 5:37 pm, Mark Thompson
pleasegivegenerously@warmmail*_turn_up_the_heat_t o_reply*.com wrote:
...Not forgetting the Hyper-bike..http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/bikes/
hyperbike-great-but-were-not-riding-it-230259.php

It occurs to me that air resistance may be less of a problem on
Mars or the moon. However, given the size of the thing, the
weight and the pathetic power output of arms compared to legs, I
think it's a joke.

I suppose an advantage could be a drive system that can be
operated by someone wearing a bulky and restrictive space suit,
but I'm not sure if it has that.

It's hard to ride a conventional bike on the moon because the front
end tends to lift in low gravity conditions. And if NASA insist you
let the air out of your tyres before blast-off that just adds to your
problems. :-)

The two bikes definately fit into the same category - innovative
toys.

The hyperbike is not particularly innovative.

--
Dave...

On 19/02/2007 17:48, Anthony Jones said,

I can do it without falling off, as can everyone else I know who has
tried...

I just tried it, and as I suspected, when I pushed the right side of the
bar, I felt as if I was going to fall to the right. At speed, if I
wanted to turn left, I leant over to the left, with or without hands on
the bars. I couldn't detect any countersteering at all. At slow
speeds, if I wanted to turn left I turned the bars left.

There must be something in this countersteering malarkey as there seem
to be so many learned references to it, but even when consciously
watching for it and consciously steering my bike, I couldn't detect any.

Avoiding dead badgers is a different issue. To continue in a more or
less straight line, I turn the bars sharply in one direction then the
other. Is that countersteering? To me it's just swerving rather than
turning. This assumes of course that the dead badger leapt out in front
of me without warning :-)

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

in message , Paul Boyd
('usenet.dont.work@plusnet') wrote:

Anthony Jones said the following on 19/02/2007 15:34:

You mean countersteering?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countersteering

My first reaction to that is "what a load of crap!". Tonight I'll be
analysing my subconscious steering technique to see if it really is a
load of crap...

I've done it. You certainly /can/ steer in this way. But it isn't normal
for me and I doubt it's normal for most people. The Wikipedia article
indicated is simply wrong, and I have the photos to prove it.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; It appears that /dev/null is a conforming XSL processor.

dkahn400 wrote:

It's hard to ride a conventional bike on the moon because the front
end tends to lift in low gravity conditions.

Try an 8 Freight... on Earth I have to channel my Inner Gorilla to
get the front up a couple of inches!

The hyperbike is not particularly innovative.

Oh, I don't know... It must take *real* thinking effort to create
200lb of assorted pipery that manages to miss /quite/ so many items
of a Bleedin' Obvious nature as that... ;-/

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Mark Thompson wrote:

If you do that, you'll fall off because the bars will turn, but you
won't!

I can do it without falling off, as can everyone else I know who has
tried...

You misunderstand.

I don't think I do.

The countersteer simply initiates the leaning of the
bike/rider combo

Yes. Which is what pushing on one side of the bars when riding no handed
demonstrates. You nudge one side of the bar away from you, bike then leans
over to that side, bike then turns in direction of lean with no further
input.

Anthony

On 19/02/2007 18:54, Anthony Jones said,

Yes. Which is what pushing on one side of the bars when riding no handed
demonstrates. You nudge one side of the bar away from you, bike then leans
over to that side, bike then turns in direction of lean with no further
input.

Or in my case, "bike starts to fall over to that side". Have I been
riding my bike wrong all these years? :-)

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

Paul Boyd wrote:
I can do it without falling off, as can everyone else I know who has
tried...

I just tried it, and as I suspected, when I pushed the right side of the
bar, I felt as if I was going to fall to the right.

Exactly. This is what starts you leaning over when you start a turn.

What I was hoping to demonstrate is that when you push on the right side of
the bar, you *don't* turn perceptibly to the left (as you might expect),
but to correct the resulting lean, you *do* turn perceptibly to the right.

The no-handed bit just makes it entirely unambiguous as to which way you're
turning the bars.

At speed, if I
wanted to turn left, I leant over to the left, with or without hands on
the bars.

Ah, but to start that lean to the left, you actually turn the bars to the
right ever so slightly. Note that riding no-handed *doesn't* stop any
rotation of the bars, since gyroscopic and front-end-geometry effects come
into play.

I think you'll struggle to perceive the initial counter steer on a push
bike -- I've never noticed it while just riding along, but I still believe
it's there. I understand that it's more noticeable on a motorbike, but I've
never ridden one.

Anthony

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 13:29:58 +0000, Peter Clinch wrote:

p.k. wrote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6375259.stm

This has been around for a while now, I first saw it in Velovision many
moons ago.

He's spammed it here at least twice in my recollection.
Now decision time: Google for it or have another pan-galactic gargle
blaster?


Too easy!



Mike (hic)

mb wrote:
The Wikipedia article
indicated is simply wrong, and I have the photos to prove it.

Go on then, how is it wrong and where's the photos to prove it.

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups/se...+counter-steer

I would have kept my mouth shut if I had realised that there had previously
been such heated debate!

Anthony

You nudge one side of the bar away from you

Ah, I had visions of you turning the bars in an avoiding dead badger
stylee, but without the counter steer first. Makes sense now!