yes 2-3x is substantial, but not at the cost of safety and not compared to the 5-10x the gas bike were getting, but you are right Cd is not everything so just changing Cd in an equation might not produce real useful predictions
and as someone pointed out low drag is only important at high speeds and under ideal conditions. until we can make ebikes go over 100 miles on a charge [yes we can now, but most of use can't afford the batteries] then focusing on improvements in long duration, high speed travel is not a major concern to me right now. i would like to learn more about how to reduce drag though, for example i've been toying with the idea of studying effects of tassels on the rear of a bike. i would like to know if having a series of tassels on the rear would break up the air and thus reduce drag? since i'm more of a chopper fellow wearing a leather jacket with tassels and a seat and saddle bags with tassels would be a simple addition. and is there any data on the effects of wind shields on bikes? angles, sizes? maybe vetter knows? john fisher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: don't know bidwell's calcs. 2-3 X qualifies as "substantial" to me, while 30% does not. Vetter used to be interested in LSR racing. Those designs aren't usable for street or track. CD is not the only factor in aero calcs - its wildly misused all over the internet. In fact most say the tail is more important than the nose. The thing *I* think its important to remember is you can't calculate the actual drag without either 1) a cad model and major-league software on huge hardware, or 2) a wind tunnel that lets you test the bike at lean. You can mount the bike on a trailer and get some idea, but my point is, its really hard to measure aero effects. That said, everybody guesstimates based on previous designs. theres some other good, trustworthy links out there, I'll look tonight. Wikipedia may be pretty good on this by now. dale henderson wrote: > i got my results from the equation found in biddwells [spelling] "EL > CHOPPER". i've found the equation works very well for my current bikes, so i > just tried reducing the Cd, i even tried 0.1, harry Albuquerque, NM http://geocities.com/hendersonmotorcycles/blog.html http://www.austinev.org/evalbum/1179 http://geocities.com/solarcookingman __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
