Kickstarter "Lunicycle"

[johnfoss]

@"MuniOrBust

But what about the oval wheel? It’s meant to help with the dead spot when the cranks are vertical. Perhaps true, but any opinions on this?

I think everyone that questioned the oval wheel were non-UW riders. The oval would definitely smooth out the learning curve, which is (supposedly) what this invention is about.

@unibokk

But I think an oval shaped wheel would create two high spots on the wheel causing two interruptions per wheel revolution which would lead to a very staggered rolling movement.

But on an Ultimate Wheel, those two spots are already there; caused by the pedals; with all of your weight on them. The oval-ness is there to smooth that out somewhat.

@sacherjj

Are they running a hard rubber wheel or does a wire bead and tread actually handle going into an oval?

I think it’s a regular tire. I don’t think a standard bike tire would suffer much with that slight of an oval.

@Gilby

I do question whether the Lunicycle will make it easier to learn, as I think a seat is important.

I was thinking the same, especially the part about getting tired out fast due to not being able to sit down. But Machon suggests otherwise, which is very interesting.

@onewheeldave

I don’t think any of us here, can necessarily offer much comment about the lunicycle based on our extensive experience on unicycles, simply because the lunicycle probably doesn’t handle anything like a seated unicycle- unless and until we actually try out a lunicycle.

Ultimate Wheel riders can. I’m a terrible UW rider, which might even make me better at identifying what’s hard and what’s easier. UWs are hard to ride.

@mchacon

I started learning the seated version as I was making the first prototypes and it took about 10 times longer to get to the same level.

That’s really interesting, and would be fun to do more experiments to see how people learn compared to doing the “the hard way”.

@Killian

MuniorBust, that’s pretty much exactly the point I was trying to make. If you don’t want to put in the time to learn to ride a real unicycle, you’re probably not cut out for it.

It would be interesting to find out how true that is, if there was a better way to un-steep the learning curve.

I think the Lunicycle is a very clever invention; providing support for UW riding. It still seems like it would wear you out pretty fast because you can’t sit, but if it can teach people how to ride, it could have a big effect on the sport…