Are there any records of faired unicycles ever been built? In this dreary weather I wouldn’t mind riding something like this:
what the heck is the ‘banana’ for?
It’s a fairing. it’s to drop air resistance.
I doubt unicyclists can really go fast enough to warrant having one. There are some bikers who do over 100 mph on faired bikes, but unis really are limited as to speed. there’s not going to be enough air resistance to make the weight of the fairing worth carrying.
ok. I think this thing does not really make sense, unless gears get into a mature state for unis.
I’d like to see somebody doing freestyle-tricks with that things. Hahahah, a uni-spin might get tricky 
wogri
Re: faired uni
I’m not buying it. I can imagine some funny UPD’s - to watch, not to experience. Mounting and dismounting may be more cumbersome. Unicyclists hardly go fast enough to have substantial benefit of a fairing. A unicycle rides like ~~~~ so you would be slinging your banana through the air which might actually increase air resistance. The extra weight wouldn’t be nice for belancing. Finally, a unicycle doesn’t offer ample opportunity to attach a fairing - but that is a technical issue that I imagine can be solved.
Some of these issues might be solved by attaching the fairing to the rider as opposed to to the unicycle.
Klaas Bil
Re: Re: faired uni
How long till that ends up in some ones sig?
Re: Re: Re: faired uni
Originally posted by Klaas Bil
A unicycle rides like ~~~~ so you would be slinging your banana through the air which might actually increase air resistance.
Great! This rendered my biggest laugh on this forum yet.
I understand if no one buys my faired uni, I wouldn’t buy it myself. After all, as UniBrier points out, there already exist such things as unibrellas.
I think the fastest faired bike is “only” 81 mph.
See: IHPVA - International Human Powered Vehicle Association
81 mph sounds like the record for non-paced cycling. I think speeds up to 150+ have been managed with motorpacing. Mile-a-minute Murphy did a one-minute mile about 100 years ago (paced). Surely bikes have gone a lot faster since then?
Why use a fairing? I can think of three major reasons:
-
Improved speed
-
To look cool
-
Possibly to keep the rain off
-
Improving speed only works if you’re going pretty fast in the first place. Before messing around with fairings, a geared recumbent unicycle design should be worked out. Got to get the frontal area down first, before a fairing is going to help at all.
-
Yup, there’s always looking cool. Only if you’re fully enclosed, you’d better have a lot of help starting and stopping! Not to mention riding with any kind of wind. More about this below.
-
The purpose of a fairing, per-se, is not to protect you from the weather. A weather-proof unicycle sounds pretty ridiculous. You can use an umbrella to keep the rain off, but you still need something major to keep the backs of your legs from getting soaked and dirty because of all the water you’re picking up and “wobbling” all over yourself. So I’d recommend a rain suit and goggles.
Fairings make bike handling unwieldly. That’s on a bike. Take away one of the wheels, and a little bit of wind will keep you from being able to ride in the direction of your choosing. Even a large wheel unicycle is susceptable to wind. I remember once riding across a giant parking lot at Jones Beach, Long Island, with Ken Fuchs. We were on 40" and 45" wheels, trying to cross this parking lot with a very strong headwind, hitting us at kind of a 45 degree angle. We literally had to tack, like sailboats, to avoid flailing our arms all over the place!
Correct, and truly amazing, engineering-wise and athletic-wise.
Also true, and plenty crazy, but not as awesome of a record, IMHO.
For bikes wind resistance becomes an important factor even at moderate speed. When going faster it will offer far greater resistance than rolling resistance.
But as you imply, the upright position of the rider makes the fairing quite useless for this purpose.
Perhaps in a downhill race with unis using coaster hubs …
Think of a fairing that looks like the tail of an air plane. The rider is housed in the upright part and the wing with its flaps could be used to balance the unicycle, rather than the pedals. Alowing the rider of a geared uni to really crank with there legs and balance by ajusting the pressure of the air passing over the wing.
I agree. I hit about 40 on hills going home from school on a good day, and the thing that stops me is wind resistance and a crappy bike. Then again I’m in jeans and a t-shirt, so it’s not like I have the most aero clothing.
And when do you expect there to be a DH uni race on coaster hubs? I’m thinking a time scale of 5 years to NEVER.
Re: faired uni
On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 16:14:40 -0600, “Ottawa Dave” wrote:
>Think of a fairing that looks like the tail of an air plane. The rider
>is housed in the upright part and the wing with its flaps could be used
>to balance the unicycle, rather than the pedals. Alowing the rider of a
>geared uni to really crank with there legs and balance by ajusting the
>pressure of the air passing over the wing.
Ha, I wanted to post the picture I once saw (and thought I had saved
but I can’t find it) of a blimp with an undercarriage consisting of a
single wheel and ask “Is this what you mean?”
The T-shirt tomblackwood linked to is NOT the one I mean.
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
It’s impossible to get old when you ride a unicycle - John (what’s in a name) Childs
Thanks all for trashing the idea about a faired unicycle. I have learnt that the fairing would not increase speed, it would make my banana sling and hence cause frequent UPDs. The fairing would not even make a decent rain cover!
So unless you fill the whole thing with tobacco and smoke it, the only meaningful way to use it is to plaster it with stickers. We all know that many companys would sponsor unicyclists if only the machines offered more space for advertising.
Like this perhaps
Now what’s needed here is a clear section to be incorporated in the front of the fairing and for the helmet pictured to be designed so that it sits neatly in the “cockpit” opening so when the rider lowers his/her head it creates a seal, thereby increasing the efficiency of the air resistance 
Re: Re: faired uni
I sometimes ride fast enough to get a benefit from a fairing. Or at least I did today. Straight into a 22mph wind that was gusting up to 38mph. I was having to power hard to ride downhills.
Joe