-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Weaver
Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 1999 11:10 PM
To: Pioneer Productions
Subject: RE: Extreme machines - MILE A MINUTE

<lines deleted>

p.s. One sidenote - I was perusing an interesting book about bicycles and
bicycling today. Lots of forgotten historical stuff. You'd get a kick out
of some of the quotes in it! I'll write some of it down for you. Share it
with your writers - the book is loaded. I had no idea!

Title: Hearts of Lions - The Story of American Bicycle Racing, Peter Nye,
1988, W.W. Norton&Co. New York, London.

Back Cover: "Bike racers were the media darlings of America less than a
century ago -- dashing, eccentric (and very rich) daredevils. Until the
1920s, bike races outdrew all other American sports events, including major
league basebase games. This colorful, exciting period of sports history,
forgotten until now, has been vividly recreated by Peter Nye, a
prize-winning racer and sports journalist. Hearts of Lions is the true
story of courage, daring, and occasional lunacy he found."

Forward (Eric Heiden, Olympic Gold Medalist, skater...): "...You see,
bicycle racers - men and women - love living on the edge. They need to know
the extremes of their physical limitations and often enjoy living beyond
them."

"In 1920, eleven football teams that would eventually form the National
Football League went on sale for $100 each. One could have bought the
entire NFL for $1,100. The better bicycle racers made almost that much -
$700 to $1000 - in a good week." (page 102)

"Some of the best mechanical minds were drawn to making bicycles. Charles
and Frank Duryea, who built the first gas-powered car in America, built
bicycles first. So did Alexander Winton, builder of the first
eight-cylinder engine in the country; Orville and Wilbur Wright, the fathers
of aviation; and Glenn Curtiss, inventor of the seaplane. Henry Ford was
interested in bicycle racing and got his hands dirty repairing racing
bicycles before he built Model Ts. If these men shared any traits beyond
simple mechanical talent, it might be that working with bicycles early in
their careers taught them how to build light and rigid frames, and...."
(page 103)

(page 30) June 1899 - First bicycle - "Mile a Minute Murphy" - 1 mile in
57-4/5th seconds, behind a train. "The New York Times proclaimed that
Murphy 'drove a bicycle a mile faster than any human being ever drove any
kind of machine and proved that human muscle can, for a short distance at
least, excel the best power of steam and steel and iron.'" (page 32). A bit
of stretch, and actually no bicycle has even done even 60 mph for 1/2 of a
mile to this date. Maybe its about time it really is achieved! It took the
automobile a few years to get to 60 MPH for a mile, "In 1903 Ford formed the
Ford Motor Company.... The fledgling company got off to a fast start when
Oldfield set the world speed record. On June 15, 1903, he was at the
Indianapolis Fair Grounds where he revved up the engine of Model 999,
hunched over the car's handlebars, and roared into automobile history when
he zoomed past the mile marker in 59.6 secords." (page 39). The first
race-car drivers were professional cyclists like... Barney Oldfield!

<snip>

-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Weaver
Sent: Friday, October 01, 1999 12:09 AM
To: Pioneer Productions
Subject: RE: Extreme MAchines

<lines deleted>

There is a sort of mystique or something very primal about the idea of being
able to far exceed the established speed limits of the land on pure muscle
power. No gas, no electricity, no gravity, no wind, no sun. No arbitrary
specification on horsepower or design. A pure, fundamental contest. Just
one's own body with its muscle's power and mind's innovation -- meeting the
elements in pure movement, speed, and efficiency going from A to B -- the
very stuff so central to our existence and so pervasive in our daily lives.
The bicycle is like the winged shoes of Mercury which when put on you can
fly. From my experience racing the Cutting Edge, it feels like you
transform into Superman as your muscles exert and the speedometer punches
right past 50 mph and still climbs into speeds you don't conceive your body
capable of. The intensifying dynamics and visual experience, not to mention
blowing by top Olympic cyclists let you know it really is so. You fly
through the turns - thinking only of banking angle as you apply control
stick pressure to the steering. It is like flying a fighter aircraft as low
as a pilot can possibly dare go.

Adding the video visual system introduces a whole new element to the
experience. I've found my mind has a hard time comprehending that what is
on the screen is in fact reality. In an early experience I nearly crashed
as I began to climb out of the bicycle before realizing I forgot to bring
the bicycle to a stop. Quite unexpected. Like a game yet I seldom play
video games. We joke of calling it Reality Virtual or Actual Virtual
Reality (AVR) since it feels like virtual but is in fact actual. Part of it
all may lie in the very dynamic interaction the mind has with the video
itself in truly balancing on two wheels. Seemingly a simulator yet it in
fact is.

Cheap thrills, one might argue, and certainly a sport, but there really is
far more to it. Beyond the computer chips, internet, and biotechnology, the
coming years beyond 2000 will be particularly marked by fundamental and
dramatic refinements in areas of energy and efficiency. Energy literally
makes the world go round. Wars are fought over it. Without it our cars
grind to a halt, our houses grow unbearably cold, production stops, even
agriculture stops. Our very lives, let alone the opportunity and freedom to
fully pursue our many talents and potentials fundamentally depends on it.
On earth a select few have enjoyed intense use of energy and have done
amazing things because of it, but we are on the verge of far larger numbers
of persons now knowing and desiring to do the same.

It is possible and necessary to do far more with the same energy we possess.
The very subtle yet dramatic details and innovations embodied extensively
into this bicycle - which give it the potential to leap past many years of
prior designs and efforts are of the same sort that will be transforming
many aspects of our daily lives in years soon to come beyond 2000. It's not
that we will drive around in such things, rather it's that remarkable
possibilities are hidden in details. It's a little like the difference
between making glass or making computer chips from sand. From the cities we
live in to the vehicles that transport us, and even how we obtain and
transport energy - there will be dramatic and unexpected improvements much
like those witnessed in the bicycle. The challenge is of the same sort - of
efficiency and power and energy in this sea of air in which we live. Quite
literally the changes and subtle details that will enable it all to happen
will be very much akin to those found integrated into the seemingly simple
bicycle unbounded as it leaps closer to its potential.

The hour time trial is a very definitive test of human performance. The
standard or UCI bicycle hour record has reached a phenomenal level starting
in 1993 with some amazing efforts by Graeme Obree which triggered an intense
series of remarkable performances leading to the current record held by
Chris Boardman. It was a little like the days when the four-minute mile was
first broken. Taking a look at unlimited bicycles, on perfectly level
ground a human being with muscle power alone has never managed to cover even
1/2 mile at a speed as high as 60 MPH. In the last 10 years, the world
unlimited human-powered hour record has inched from 45 to 50 miles. To step
up the 6 MPH to achieve the 56 MPH speed of the Dempsey-MacCready
Human-Powered Hour Prize requires over 40% more muscle power - an unheard-of
improvement for an already top athlete. Therefore, any significant gains
require dramatic improvements in efficiency.

The bicycle I'll soon be racing is designed to go in excess of 70 MPH for an
entire hour. Admittedly absurd sounding given what is generally known.
That's in part why I've actually said very little unless asked and until I
recently decided to race. 70 MPH is faster than the peak sprint speeds ever
achieved on special fast high-altitude sites, and represents a performance
improvement of hundreds of percent over the prior art. To actually do so
would represent a remarkable leap in performance - a bit like an Olympic
sprinter setting a new 100 meter sprint record and then continuing at the
same pace for over 100 laps to set a phenomenal marathon record under 1
hour! Certainly this challenge is as much of mind as of muscle, but it's an
exciting prospect that awaits. We shall soon see. And it's not just about
the doing of it - it really is foremost in imagining it possible and then
setting out to find a way. Few in the know believe such is ever possible.
Granted I will not start at a 70 mph pace due to the inherit challenge of
handling such a speed for an entire hour without crashing, but I know it
will be reached soon enough.

In fact I know even higher speeds and much better vehicles are realistically
possible and will surely be built in time. This is in contrast with the
words of many in the "HPV" community who generally say that they don't think
they'll see a person go 75 MPH in their lifetime. That is reasonable to
feel knowing of the forces and powers involved. In a special CNN report I
think on November 2, 1992 following the Cheetah 68.73MPH run, I remember
vividly one of the Cheetah Team members stating, "You put all that
technology and a world-class cyclist together and the envelope of speed for
mankind has come to a close. Its/we've reached the limit." It was nice to
hear the reporter close with "records were made to be broken." Or maybe it
should be, "envelopes were meant to be opened." It's not so difficult with
a sharp tool.

This reminds me, in the beginning I was told that low bikes were
uncontrollable, but looked to find otherwise and built the Cutting Edge.
Even with the vehicle in hand, I was told the same until the day it finally
raced. Soon there followed a whole new generation of bicycles that are now
generally referred to as "low racers." That's been really neat to see. I
wrote in 1991 in the Cycling Science Journal that sprint speeds in excess of
75 mph were currently possible. Now I'd say hour speeds, even 24-hour
speeds. I may be content with what I know and continue to strive further in
my understanding, but officially doing things appears most effective in
really fostering thought in others. It will always take imagination to do,
but sometimes it takes doing to trigger more imagination. Little do we know
of all that is to come. I have just a glimpse of certain things, and I find
it all very exciting and remarkable!

<snip>

Matt Weaver

-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Weaver
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 1999 4:05 PM
To: Alan Thwaits
Cc: Dr John Weaver
Subject: Notes on the Virtual Edge

Dear Alan,

I have a hard time being brief and feeling like I actually explained
anything. I think I feared a little that this would get long when I finally
got to this. I blasted this out and have not even read it through, but it
covers the nature of the Virtual Edge and a bit of the Cutting Edge
reasonably well. I hope this is useful to you!

-Matt

The Virtual Edge

The "Virtual Edge" is an experiment in realizing several aerodynamic "fine
points" in a land vehicle with the goal of achieving the highest
occupancy*speed^3/power ratio (a measure of vehicle "efficiency"). With
aerodynamics - there are several levels of detail. When trying to achieve
very low drag or high efficiencies, attention shifts beyond just "teardrop
shape" to many "fine points" of the implementation. Most of these points
have never been applied to any land vehicle I know of. Since you asked,
I'll first discuss some of the my history with the first bicycles I built
and then discuss some of the attributes of the Virtual Edge.

Brief History of Design efforts - Cutting Edge and Beyond

Brief History of Myself

I grew up near the coastal community of Santa Cruz, California, west of the
silicon valley. I was a Soap-Box Derby builder and racer as a kid and soon
grew too big to fit in my derbies. I talked of putting pedals on a derby
with my friends to race around the neighborhood but never got around to
doing it. I was soon startled and inspired by a cover article in Scientific
American as well as a little handout from the IHVPA. Learning of the
organization and the DuPont Prize stimulated my mind and my father's. But
the prize was gone before I had any bicycle built.

I graduated from high school and was admitted to MIT and Berkeley and
others. I decided to enter the engineering school at UC Berkeley. I was a
Drake Scholar and graduated in Mechanical Engineering. I started with plans
to complete both the computer science and electrical engineering programs,
but was not quite able to complete both as my focus ultimately shifted to
control systems in mechanical engineering with the plan to return and
complete graduate work in controls and computational fluid dynamics. After
careful consideration of my plans, I ultimately started my own business
involving engineering design and computational analysis and have several
major projects that are still in process. I have continued my studies on
the side and receive "regular" job offers from time to time that I have
turned down much to my mother's dismay.

The Cutting Edge

My first streamlined bike, the Cutting Edge, was built in my freshman year
of college. It was an experiment in a new frame geometry and minimal
frontal area. I was told that such a low machine would not be very ridable.
I figured if it could be done then a much smaller "package" could be created
and I was intent that I could find a way. The need for a front wheel
between the legs of all places became evident, and it turned out more than
fortuitous upon examining sidewind influence and finding that not only would
the bike be very ridable but also handle well in sidewinds!

I presented the design to the UC Berkeley college team as a freshman but
they declined interest and I completed the bike on my own.

The fairing was completed in 1988 prior the Visalia event, but the frame was
not complete. The Cutting Edge fairing was designed for a linear drive
mechanism that I decided to drop due to time constraints and instead employ
a conventional crankset. The leg motion of the conventional crankset didn't
fit within the Cutting Edge fairing - and thus the painfully-cut holes and
flexing latex and nylon liners and so on!

The First Ride on the Cutting Edge

Upon completion of the frame of the Cutting Edge, I immediately raced off it
it to my delight and my father's! It was a big unknown other than the
calculations until that point! I should note that my father and I have
enjoyed working closely over the years as he enjoys the design and building
of such vehicles too! There was a little learning as to effectively "lean
steering" a low bike as I had always ridden upright bikes prior. We had a
trip planned in Lake Tahoe, CA, only days after completing the frame. I was
so excited I brought the bike along. In the wide parking lot at the base of
Heavenly Valley I discovered a key skill. As soon as I treated the steering
like a lean (or roll) "control stick" on a airplane "flying low," I found I
could handle turns very precisely and confidently like I do bounding down a
single-track in a mountain bike!

New Designs following the Cutting

Upon completing the Cutting Edge in 1989, my father and I began
experimenting with a number of new design questions. First we experimented
with two front-wheel drive concepts to reduce the long chain run. One used
a bent muffler tube frame and the other bonded aluminum tubes and two 17"
Moulton wheels. One with a twisting chain and the other with a pivot joint
for large low-speed steering angles. Both worked beautifully! The fairing
was underway but not quite ready for Portland in 1990. Ultimately we deemed
this new bike a danger on any road with cars or trees and have never raced
it. Speeds are simply too high. Small downhills are terrifying, and though
the rider could hop in and out of it without a crew it remained rather
"impractical" since I wouldn't dare ride it and didn't like the thought of
others getting hurt in it.

The Cutting Edge at Michigan

The Cutting Edge was brought to the IHPSC in 1989 at Michigan, but we were
not quite able to race due to damage to the fairing and missing the schedule
changes in race times due to all the rain. It was a big disappointment to
not race. I had trained hard for the hour run and had hopes of doing very
well in it on such a beautiful track. I did manage to get a number of runs
in on the frame unfaired, and was reaching 41-MPH. When I finally got to
run through the traps, my first run actually went so fast that I caught up
to the previous streamliner passing through and entered the traps before he
exited, so no official time was obtained. My second and final run was in
pouring rain splashing through puddles, and some distance prior to the trap
I accidentally threw the bike into its highest gear and was unable to reach
the level to shift down and my speed was a modest 37-something MPH.

The Cutting Edge at Portland

Portland Sprints

In 1990 I raced the Cutting Edge on the Portland International Raceway. I
had problems with the sprints due to the course. At the end of the
200-meter trap each racer could go straight off a runoff or else make the
sharpest turn on the track and return to the starting point. I had no crew
to assist, so I made the crazy turn. My first "warm-up" run was my fastest,
but I smoked the brakes and choked and then carved to the inside of the turn
and literally bounced the side of the fairing against the sloped inside
curb. The Cutting Edge veered to the outside of edge of the turn and I
almost went off the track into the grass. That was unnerving, and I did
another run with even more brake smoke while still in to 200-meter trap. I
left it at that and figured I'll focus on the road race. My first sprint
was good enough for second place until the next day after many repeated
tries the UC Berkeley collegiate team achieved a faster run.

Portland Road Race

The road race was intense for me. After a leisure first lap with the pack,
Freddy Markham took to the lead in the Gold Rush. I followed, figuring I
would learn his "line" around the turns as I had never been in any bike race
nor did much road cycling. He was very impressive moving around the course!
He accelerated hard and hit the turns hard. At the end of the second lap I
was a bit scared of the speed going into the turn, and was distracted by
some potholes before I realized Freddy had continued to slow down more than
I anticipated as we entered the final turn. I realized I might slide out if
I braked much harder, and I didn't want to dare to the inside of the Gold
Rush, so I took the outside three feet or so of track left around the Gold
Rush and found myself leading the race at the start of the third lap!

From there I was running scared! I had no rear view mirrors, no radio, no
crew signaling to know my position. My biggest concerns were vehicle
failure or crashing or Freddy doing a super acceleration past me at the
finish! I left the bike in one gear for reliability reasons - ranging from
about 34-MPH to 56-MPH, and found I could only pedal significantly on the
straights and coast or brake through the turns. I reached 54-MPH then
55-MPH and finally 56-MPH on the main straight by the final two laps! That
felt great after the disappointing situation with the sprints in the
morning.

I never went around turns in a bicycle so hard in my life either! Observers
after said I was leaning 45 degrees through the turns, and some video I saw
suggests they were right! I learned the feel of that first unexpected turn
when I passed the Gold Rush and kept within the bounds of it! It is a
strange feeling going through such large turns at speeds and leaning so much
and for so long! With the small fairing of the Cutting Edge, my head was
stuck rotating with the bike and my whole world rotated on edge as the g's
rose and I just held on tapping the brakes and fine-tuning the lean as
smooth as I could to get through the turns.

Cutting Edge Performance

In the end, I averaged 42.4-MPH for 20 miles while pedaling about 1/2 the
distance. I averaged just shy of 45-MPH for the eight laps I led and
exceeded 45-MPH average for my final two laps. The Gold Rush was 1/2 mile
(47 seconds) back and had been beaten for the first time ever, and the
entire field had been lapped. I knew at that point that I could set an hour
record with the Cutting Edge on a good track, but for various reasons such
an effort was never arranged. From riding tests it looked like I could
confidently average about 55-MPH for an hour in the Cutting Edge (not quite
enough for the Dempsey Prize!). Regardless, my design efforts had moved
onto to new possibilities in performance that I was intent upon exploring
and proving.

ONTO THE VIRTUAL EDGE

As I increased in understanding, lots of new ideas came to mind. Various
additional experiments were done - such a the "practical" Cutting Edge
previously mentioned. Rather than detailing all these experiments I will
describe the basic attributes of the Virtual Edge. The Virtual Edge design
was conceived around 1992. Exact implementation and most of the
construction was completed in 1995, but the vehicle was put back on the
shelf due to circumstances and priorities.

Extensively Natural Laminar Body

An extensively natural laminar body is a body whose "boundary layer" (BL, or
blanket of air near the surface of the body) is mostly in a "laminar" state
rather than a "turbulent" state. The BL of most bodies starts in a laminar
state, and will irreversibly "trip" at some point to a "turbulent" state and
may even "separate" near the tail if the tail is too blunt. Once the BL
"trips" the "skin friction" or local rubbing action of the air against the
body will increase as much as ten times locally. The "tripping" is a little
like an ocean swell "breaking" into whitewater. Once done, it never is a
swell again. Preserving the BL in laminar state as long as possible can
result in variations of overall drag as much as 300% on identically shaped
and sized bodies.

In order for the BL to maintain a laminar state, many sensitive criteria
must be met. First, only a certain family of shapes yield the pressure
gradient and velocity profiles at the surface of the body that are necessary
to keep the BL "stabilized" (in a laminar state). Second, the curvature of
the actual implemented body must be highly uniform - small wobbles in the
surface that most would think would not be relevant may introduce a local
adverse pressure gradient that will prematurely "trip" to BL to turbulent.
Third, surface smoothness must meet a minimum criteria - this is relatively
easy - very glass-like polished surfaces are not necessary, but the surface
is still smooth. Forth, tiny bumps or protrusions can "trip" the BL - such
as tape, windshield seams, body panel seams, bug-splats, etc... Fifth,
vibrations in certain frequency ranges tend to excite the wavelike state of
laminar BL and cause it to trip prematurely, so vibrations (mainly from the
tires rolling on the road) must be carefully isolated from the body.

There are other ways to maintain a laminar BL on a relatively arbitrary
body - such as "suction" through a porous surface or slots in the body, but
those are sophisticated methods that make an already difficult
implementation even more impractical. But, to say what is "impractical" is
a little like saying jet airplanes are too complex or computers are too
complex, etc.... I find most all these sorts of things very enabling - they
allow me to do more with less and interact effectively with more beings, to
spend my time and energy exploring many potentials - rather than primarily
hunting/fighting or planting/gathering all day long just so my body doesn't
cease functioning. It is only by pushing certain envelopes do things that
seem absolutely incredible become everyday and mundane (yet they are not!).

Video Visual System

A video system was experimented with - actually first back in 1991 - with
the consideration of achieving better vision that most long sloping
windshields offer. Thin, low-incident windshields are notorious for glare,
distortion, etc.... The video worked, but gave a strange sense of reality -
early on I once almost stepped out of the bicycle forgetting to bring it to
a stop. I don't play video games particularly, yet the mind seems to
associate video with other than real-time reality!

The key use here is several fold: First, it is very difficult to create a
windshield that meets the criteria for a laminar body short of full-size
metal molds and fancy ovens and plastic - so eliminate the windshield.
Second, for the particular body shape in mind, it was more likely to get
better vision with the video than the windshield. Third, the "full body"
kevlar-nomex-kevlar is much safer in the event of serious crash - it is like
having a full-body helmet. Fourth, the video system has two independent
redundant systems - and compared with the likelihood of "fogging up" and
other failures typical of windshields (especially in cold morning
record-attempt times of the day) it is likely to be more reliable.

Wheel Fenders

In addition to "disk wheels" - it was found especially at 60-MPH speeds and
higher that the disks inside a fairing acted very much like "disk
centrifugal pumps" with air sticking to the disk and spraying out the edges
of the wheel with a definite price in power. By enclosing the wheel disk
with an airgap within a certain range, this pumping power dropped out
dramatically, and the fender doubled in function for the next aerodynamic
fine point.

Air-tight "Cabin"

The air pressure on the inside of a body is relatively constant, on the
outside it is not. If there is more than one opening in the body and there
is a pressure difference on the outside between each opening, air will rush
in one opening and out the other. Typically air rushes in the rear wheel
hole, and out the front wheel hole. The air rushing out slams into the
airstream racing by and creates an invisible "bulge" on the side of the body
in addition to significant amounts of power associated with the "capturing"
of fast moving air at the inlet and the backward force its momentum
generates on the body.

The solution is to "seal" the body. The "Virtual Edge" is airtight and its
stiff honeycomb kevlar laminate body and absence of a windshield allows the
cabin to be pressurized to the static pressures of the associated airflow
without distorting or blowing the body apart as forces of several hundred
pounds or more that develop over each half of the body. There are internal
sealed "skirts" around each wheel/body interface, and the seams of all the
body panels are airtight without using any tape.

Managed Ventilation Air

The cooling requirements for an hour record run are not trivial. A rider
producing on the order of 0.5 horsepower or 373 watts will produce well over
one kilowatt of body heat. This heat must be removed. Some might consider
ice (which is actually more effective than liquid nitrogen or dry ice!), but
it is not altogether in the "spirit" of an "HPV" besides roughly 20 pounds
per hour and a fancy heat transfer system would be necessary. It turns out
most of the heat is removed by surface evaporation of sweat, and the main
surfaces of the body with capillary beds are the shoulder and head regions
(thus the temptation to avoid a helmet!). Based on careful study of typical
ambient air conditions (with the "dewpoint" being the most stable and
meaningful factor over a day's time to assess air sweat-absorbing
properties), typically about 450 gallons/minute of air flow are necessary to
cool the rider!

There are many ways to implement this air flow effectively, but many more to
do it at great expense to the rider. The air is effectively "captured" at
full speed and there is a definite rearward force associated with that
momentum change, and ideally the energy is preserved in the form of pressure
and returned by a rearward "jet nozzle" as it exits the body.

For the Virtual Edge, a "nose static scoop" with an associated "diffuser"
was not used for risk of creating a "suction spike" under certain conditions
and tripping the laminar boundary layer right near the nose and possibly
doubling the overall drag of the body. It turned out other potential
locations on the body for an "airscoop" could not effectively fit the
diffuser (which is a sort of enlarging cone that converts the momentum
energy or velocity of the inlet air to pressure).

So, considering the above constraints a more tedious method was employed. A
"boundary layer" airscoop and a repressurizing blower was used instead. The
"dead air" near the side of body near the tail is drawn into the body,
directed over the rider's head and shoulders and returns under the seat to
near the back edge where a custom turbine draws in the air and shoots it out
a nozzle slot in the tail. The turbine is powered by a special direct drive
minimum drag variable-tensioned roller riding on the rear tire at about
9000-RPM.

If done right, this method has the potential to actually provide all the
ventilation air and reduce the overall drag of the bike rather than increase
it since it utilized air partly "used" in the intrinsic drag of the body.
There is a definite "jet" force associated with the momentum added to the
air shooting out the nozzle in back, and the power necessary to accelerate
it is less than the thrust power associated with the jet force upon its
release. With the implementation in the Virtual Edge, I am at best
"breaking even" or even paying a small price due to nozzle and inlet
inefficiencies given the ad-hoc nature in which it was implemented on the
bike.

Anti-Vibration Suspension

The Virtual Edge does not have a normal large-travel suspension, but it does
have special isolation between the frame and the rider/body combination.
The rider, seat and body shell are one and are isolated from the frame using
rubber isolation pads sized to the system. Big bumps are not a problem
other than the impulse energy spectrum associated with them, but vibrations
centered around one kilohertz are. Other measures are taken at various
points mostly in proximity of the wheels to deal with local vibration and
transfers.

Drivetrain

The drivetrain consists of a single stage chain drive with one "start" gear
and three main "at speed" gears. The gearing is 220 x (38,22,18,15) using a
1/4" pitch chain (necessary to just fit it all it the bike and still have
some teeth left on the driven gears!) The drivetrain is a front wheel
drive, twisted chain similar to the one first experimented with in 1990 with
a "practical" (hop-in/out) variant of the "Cutting Edge" that I built but
never raced in any IHPVA event. The chain passes over a 60-tooth drive-side
idler, and a 60-tooth tensioner idler. There is no conventional derailleur
for efficiency and fit reasons. Instead a custom "shifter gate" similar to
that found on the front chainrings of bicycles is employed.

The chainring is larger than the crankset, and a custom super-narrow
crankset (about 2.6" laterally between outer surfaces of crankarms at the
pedals) with a "two point" mount of the chainring was possible by virtual of
the force loading as the pedal torque goes through the characteristic
roughly "sin squared" profile of a cyclist.

The sprockets where prepared using custom CNC-code generating software that
I wrote for chainrings of arbitrary tooth count and chain size, and machined
from aluminum.

Brakes

Braking consists of a single hydraulic disk brake on the front wheel.
Additional rim brakes could be added, but chance of failure is low and even
so the vehicle is intended only for speed runs on a closed course as the
only vehicle present. There are greater risks to worry about besides
braking, and always the "skid brake" or laying the bike down and grinding to
a miserable stop can be employed if there is brake failure and risk of
crashing into a solid object.

Frame/Seat

The frame is a carbon-fiber tubing, carbon-fiber overlay lugged construction
like the "Cutting Edge." The frame geometry was chosen as a compromise
between "zero-wind" handling and "wind handling." It turned out that for
the extensively laminar body surface pressure distribution in modest
sidewinds it was hard to match both parameters - getting a body that was
less sensitive to sidewinds had a steering geometry that was more sensitive
than desired in a "no wind" state.

The finished complete ridable bicycle minus the body panels weighs 19.0
pounds.

The seat is a 3/8" kevlar-nomex honeycomb-kevlar" contoured laminate, unlike
the "harness" seat of the cutting edge. It was formed by going to the beach
during low tide, digging a hole in wet sand, sitting in the estimated riding
position and packing wet sand around my back. After being lifted out of the
"pocket" in the sand, plaster was prepared using water from a nearby
rivermouth and poured on the surface of the pocket. From the plaster piece
finish molds were prepared The seat is remarkably comfortable and requires
no padding whatsoever.

Landing Gear

The Virtual Edge starts and can stop unassisted. A one-sided lateral
telescopic roller (a large roller-blade wheel) is mounted to the frame and
pops out a trap door in the side of body. Starting consists of riding in a
straight line while supported by the lateral roller, followed by balancing
onto two wheels and releasing the stop that holds the gear down. This was
employed after finding such starts were more reliable than hand-starts, and
would be less stressful on a vibration isolated fairing.

Wheels

Spoked wheels on custom narrow (about 1.1") hubs with mylar disk covers.
The maximum size that could be effectively fit it this fairing was 20" -
Tradeoffs of wheel size and added fairing were carefully considered and the
smaller wheel was settled on.

Radial Tires

At higher speeds and as aerodynamic drag is reduced, rolling drag becomes
very significant. At this time I am using conventional tires, but I have
learned the methods in order to produce a custom tire. Substantially lower
rolling drag is possible with a properly designed radial tire among other
things. I plan to build such tires and test them in the future.

We have performed precision low-speed rolling tests on the tires we have to
confidently determine the low-speed rolling coefficients. It is suspected
that a slight "velocity" component of the rolling resistance exists, and at
higher speeds the effective rolling coefficient will increase somewhat. Of
course road surface properties are a very significant consideration here
too, but I have limited control over it considering there are only a few
sufficiently large high-speed ovals for record-setting speeds!

Body Design

The body started as a "pressure distribution" for an axisymmetric 3D body
and a shape was mathematically created from that distribution. The pressure
distribution was designed to have a "robust" "favorable" pressure ramp (or
gradually decreasing air pressure along the surface going from nose toward
the tail, and a rather quick (but not too quick!) pressure "recovery"
profile at the tail. The result is a laminar body that may achieve about
75% laminar boundary layer, and is quite robust (maintains laminar) in
sidewinds.

Corrections for the influence of the ground were done with the generous help
of Professor Mark Drela and Harold Youngren of MIT. I presented the initial
body curve to them in a format that computational software they developed
could read and simulate. I inputted their suggested modifications into a
program I wrote that "fitted" critical body points (toe/heel, knee, butt,
shoulder, head) within the body profile constraints and solved the spline
curves meshing the body. From that data new input data was generated for
Mark and Harold and several iterations were performed to get a reasonably
good though not exact correction for the ground effects. I have since
written code that solves an "exact" solution of the body curve such that
streamlines around a body near the ground think they are going around an
axisymmetric body far off the ground.

The end result of that stage of work was a meaningful body profile that had
little excess space to spare - just fitting all interference points in a
very minimal manner while still meeting all the aerodynamic criteria 360
degrees around the 3D body. And - all I had to do was plot out exact
cross-sections of the body on the printer and start building - OR - format
the data for CNC milling a large mold cavity. I did it the hard way and
built a precision hand-made plug and fiberglass molds. In the future, I
will only do direct CNC molds and have a clear efficient and cost-effective
method of doing so. Precision hand molds take nearly 1000 man-hours to
fabricate!

Body Construction

The body was prepared in two symmetric lateral side halves. The halves
where made using 1/2 side bulkheads cut out according to full-size
computer-plotted templates. They were attached to a base plate that rested
on a large flat surface plate. The bulkheads were 1/4" undersize and 1/4"
wood sticks were laid over the bulkheads except for the nose, tail-tip and
wheel fins which are stacked solid bulkheads. The two body halves were
skinned on all surfaces with fiberglass cloth and assembled into one on a
stand with steel rods passing up through the wheel fins. The halves were
perfected in their finish surface uniformity, then split apart again and
placed on the surface plat for lay-up of fiberglass molds. The surface
plate was a 4 by 10 foot sheet of tempered glass resting on about 50
adjustable "bolt" posts (using a "T-nut" glued to a concrete floor and a
standard bolt screwed into it). The bolts were leveled using a simple
triangulation scheme using sewing thread. The entire surface was found to
be flat to within 0.010" over a modest loading range.

The finish body panels were prepared using a vacuum-bagging technique with
epoxy, kevlar, nomex "overexpanded" honeycomb. The flange edges were
directly molded with the kevlar out skin wrapping around the edge and
overlapping the inner skin surface. The panels are composed of two
symmetric lateral halves with a parting surface running vertically on center
from nose to tail. Custom machined locating pins and "no bump" metal
fasteners were embedded and bonded into the flange surface. The body is
strong enough to "stand on," though I don't make a habit of doing that!

The total weight of the entire body is 13.0 pounds, for a complete bicycle
weight of 32.0 lbs. Adding hydration, video and radio circuits add about
four additional pounds to the bike.