Harper would you blueshift a Coker?

Unicycles and Equipment
1

My golly! Could you venture a guess as to the speed of something like that? :astonished:

2

Dang! He’s fast enough already without the larger wheel! When Harper came by me in the marathon, after the turn-around in the NAUCC, the wind almost knocked me over. T-max, don’t encourage him!

Tommy

3

Although I’ve never ridden a the Big One, I imagine a blue shifted Coker would be nearly impossible to get started in 1:5 mode. My mind pictures some poor quivering heavily armored fellow, wearing a NASA style space helmet being pulled behind a car or motorcycle in glide mode in order to get that big boy started. Maybe you could mount it and get it rolling on a really steep hill? (he he) :wink:

Cheers,
Jason

4

A test project of a Coker wheel with a uni.5 hub has been in progress for some time. I think it will be easier to ride than I had imagined after first trying a geared 24" which is pretty non-intuitive. This comes from my experience with the larger 29" wheel with a fat tire that gives some additional stability from rotational inertia. I am not the owner of this project, though. The lazy slug who is working on it should give you an update if he wants. He probably thinks he’s busy with other important stuff.

5

Very cool! Can I come up there and ride it?
-Mark

6

I’ve ridden my geared giraffe (24") up to 48" effective diameter, and it’s fine once you get going. The first 20m or so until you get up to speed is very surreal, but once cruising it’s just like riding normally. The extra inertia in the wheel feels like riding a heavier wheel at normal speed. The main downside is that as it’s 4 and a half feet tall, when you do come off at speed, you bounce more than once. I’m not gearing it up any more until I have a full set of body armour, as it’s a world of pain waiting to happen.

Couldn’t tell you about freemounting, as I can’t freemount it in 1:1 mode yet!

A geared Coker should be more forgiving, as the balance envelope on a bigger wheel is wider, and of course it’s less suceptible to bumps. Being that bit closer to the floor may make it more practical.

Now if some bright spark can work out simple shifting from 1:1 to 1.5:1, by an adaptation of this:

http://www.kinetics.org.uk/html/mountain_drive.shtml

which is closely related to a blueshift hub, we’re getting somewhere…