My Dad got a three-wheel recument at 85 when he started experiencing balance issues on an upright bike. Took it for a spin and it was an absolute blast - feels like you're going even faster than you are because you're so close to the ground. The funny thing is, other cyclists won't give you the time of day when you're on a recumbent, but people on mobility scooters all wave and smile.
@@d_charles this is a fantastic story. I love this use for recumbents. It’s odd the negative way that some cyclists look at recumbents. You can see it in some of the comments here.
I really enjoy this sort of content! For me, there is an extreme fascination, about seemingly ordinary people, doing extrodinary things. None of this mega budget, factory backed. Real people making real things, just to go fast. Brilliant!
100% agreed. Another video that gave me such vibes is the Veritasium vid about the cart that moves faster than the wind. Just a couple guys who are not professionals, out to prove physicists wrong.
Money CAN buy you speed. Just buying a fast recumbent will get you much closer to 50mph under your own power on flat ground without wind assistance than any diamond frame bike on Earth ever can.
Did a road ride Sunday with my unfaired recumbent and hit 38.6 on a mild downhill without even pedaling. I need bigger gears to go faster. The aerodynamic advantages are amazing!
Yes, more of this, please. And maybe take a look at the recumbent scene in continental Europe, especially in Germany and the Netherlands there are some pretty strong riders with modern velomobiles.
I ve ridden streamliners in races and they are not suitable for everyday use. Go and buy a velomobile. the current models are very fast and you can ride them in bad weather conditions.
That video just makes me want to burn all my cameras, drones and microphones and call it quits🤨 Just so well covered in a professional way. Kudos to Hank and crew. A great fun video that really does justice to what HPV racing and racers are all about. More of this please!
Hey Gary, have you ever tried contacting @GCN for a collab? Could meet when you are on the continent for Spezi, maybe even have them to visit Spezi with you. 😄 Would love to see it on both channels!
@@PsyKeks very kind of you to suggest this. I'm not sure what I can offer GCN by way of collab but certainly want to encourage them to continue this fine coverage of the bent world we all love.
Great video as always. My only tip for learning to ride a recumbent is what I did with mine. By a recumbent with an adjustable seat angle. Start with the seat at a higher angle. The feeling of laying down is so wrong compared to an upright. Do a few rides until you are confident with that angle. Then adjust the seat angle slightly lower. Do another few rides and so on. Lowering the angle of the seat slowly until you can get the seat to as low as it will go. These racing recumbent seat's are the lowest you can get but regular riding recumbents the seats don't go as low. Get your balance and confidence right with the higher seat position then move into the lower one. If you don't you will only do what Hank did and fall off. Good luck everyone.
I love this content. When I see velomobiles, I can’t help but think “What if these were the future of commuter vehicles?” I’d love to see a version that was “super balance-able” and has a light tent-like canopy that easily opens.
@@maxsievers8251three wheels seem like a bad idea to me. First cause I don't like cars I like motorcycles and bikes. Secondly because of corners. I'd rather have assist wheels I can deploy
There is a commercially available model of velomobile that has 4 wheels. It is called the Quatrevelo, and is reported to be remarkably stable and capable of taking turns at a much higher speed and handling poor road conditions far better than its 3 wheel brethren. Even with the extra weight it is silly how much faster it is than upright bicycles.
you'll be surprised how quick a 3 wheel velomobile will corner ;-) There's many variations in production or development. Each have their own benefits and disadvantages. Ps mine is an 18 mile commuter (DFXL)
More recumbents, please! There's a lot to be learned from the forefront of speed and imagination. For too long the UCI have been imposing all sorts of constraints on the development of bikes. Let's move forward.
I own a Lightning F40 fully faired 2-wheeler, that I restored with help. Tim Brummer designed the F40 to be a fast *practical* streamliner. Its tradeoffs affect CdA so that it’s not so fast as THESE lovely beasties, yet it’s still quite fast for a given wattage. The design includes a fiberglass nose cone & Spandex fuselage over an aluminum frame. This structure breathes enough that crosswinds can be managed unless they’re extremely strong. And if they ever are-I can take off the fabric & roll it up in my lap. Lightnings have an upright seating position and handlebars at shoulder level. This increases frontal area over a laid-back machine yet this is a better position from which to generate power, and I’ve never crashed. Stability is superb at all speeds. Would love to cruise at 35mph in an extreme machine but my current 21-25mph in a practical machine depending on grade variations is gobsmacking enough for me!
@@johannesobernoeder1156 My CdA on the Cruzbike V20 you see in my profile pic is about 0.200, which isn't quite TT bike territory (0.170) because I have wide shoulders that creates a lot of drag. On a good, windless day 210 watts gives me 40.6 kph average speeds, but some of the smaller riders with a 0.150 CdA on V20s like mine only need about 180-190 watts to get 40kph. I am in the process of building my own streamliner and while I can't say what the CdA of these 3 are, I can imagine they are way lower. UA-cam "Russell Bridge Snoopy" for his channel and you can see his uploads of racing snoopy against Steve (Slash) in Beano and Liam in Notso. While my 'bent is a high racer and quite efficient, they would absolutely slaughter me in a race, lapping me numerous times.
I would love to see more Recumbent reporting - this was great fun! The world of two wheeled recumbents is Vast in design and Capability. It would be nice to see some of the more mainstream🦘 bikes we mere mortals can ride to keep up with our younger brethren
I love the recumbent content. It would be great to see Hank do some serious training on a fast recumbent and then make an all out run for the fastest speed in the UK.
Oh Hank, yes yes yes yes more more more pleaseeee. Yes recumbents are an aquired skill. Incidentally, just to be a boring pedant, CDA is the product of CD (Coeficient of drag) and A (frontal area). Great video, well done.
For streamlined vehicles, A is a combination of frontal and surface area. Since it's hard to determine the difference, it's best to leave Cd and A combined.
@@larrylem3582 Well that rather depends whether you're measuring it or calculating it. If you're calculating it there are many contributions. Form drag, which depends on the shape and skin friction drag which depends on many factors like surface roughness, area and so on. Each component has its own coefficient so that CDA becomes the sum of CDAs for each component. If your measuring it then its rather easier being the product of drag force divided by the dynamic head (half rho v squared). Conventionally the area taken is the cross sectional area regardless of the shape. But anyway my original point was that Hank described CDA as the coeficient of drag, forgetting the area part of it.
@@emmabird9745 That was a much better answer than just saying frontal area. I am talking about calculating things after measuring power and speed. My recommendation is not to bother calculating, just leave it as CdA in m2.
Maybe Hank should be riding a bit more with a low racer or a normal recumbent. I'm really happy to see such videos about recumbents, velomobiles & streamliners on this channel. Keep going on! 😃
They could also let someone learn from the beginning with a beginner friendly bike (or trike), do some touring and commuting and progress to more speed focused bikes and velomobiles only when they are ready. Maybe Kilian, who is not as much dialed in to upright bikes would find it more easy to transition and find the speed advantage useful to keep up in group rides with the presenters (as long as it's not going uphill, but maybe put in some e-assist as well for the maximum in equalizer bikes)
Great to see the boys out in the streamliners. Look forward to the world champs in august 2024 in Kent to try and keep up. Perhaps a GCN rider there too?
I followed the emerging HPV scene in the `80’s, and in 1990 I bought a racing recumbent tricycle that had rear wheels steering, front wheel drive, and an incredibly steep learning curve to learn how to ride it. With my head being lower than the top of the wheels, it was unwise to ride it on open roads. A blast once mastered, surprisingly maneuverable but quite heavy, once up to speed it was quick, but not fast. It taught me that aero is about leaving less turbulence behind, not merely how smoothly you may push air aside.
The title, "Is This The FASTEST Bike You Can Buy?" may be a bit misleading because I don't think you can just buy one of these custom made machines. However you can buy velomobiles like the one Manon rode (Milan SL). In my DF XL velomobile, I can cruise at 25mph all day long on the flats with no headwind (averaging roughly 150 watts). Some race optimized velomobiles with light riders have been shown to do 30mph with as little as 100 watts. Plus they're way more stable at low speeds having 3 or more wheels to balance! I think for the everyday person a velomobile is more practical and road worthy.
Im glad you guys have covered recumbents as much as you have. I ride one occasionally, alongside conventional bikes. I'm not going to claim the recumbent is the bike of the future, but we probably shouldn't laugh at them, just accept them as another way to enjoy cycling. Save the hate for ebikes instead. 😁
Just if someone in the team personally got into recumbents, it would be such an opportunity to show the actual recumbent experience, not just plonking an upright rider into some of the hardest to ride bikes* on the planet. *) actually used bikes. Of course there are some strange novelty bikes that are harder to ride on purpose.
There is a really good reason that in the Aussie HPV racing gloves and helmets are mandatory. The trikes raced over here are often averaging around 55kmh (34mph) for 24hrs. The Aussie racing trikes like Trump Trikes and Trisled are a fair bit lower which is beneficial to getting the frontal area down which is important for drag. They are in the 750-850mm height range compared to these which I don't think would give you much change out of 950mm.
I've been fortunate to have both raced these trikes and travelled to the World Human Powered Speed Challenge (WHPSC) as a member of a team aiming for the land speed records. Both are quite fun and push boundaries in their own ways, although there are a few differences between vehicle types. The land speed record bikes are usually designed for two things - to go fast in a straight line and to protect the rider in the event of an incident / crash. As a result, CDA is everything and centre of mass and thus height is less important. Endurance racing trikes on the other hand usually need to be able to navigate sharp corners at high speeds, hence the lower centre of mass. Trikes also don't require the same level of balance and training to be able to successfully ride them without crashing, so there is a significantly lower barrier to entry in that regard. Another difference is visibility. There are often well over 100 trikes on the track during endurance races, so the rider needs to be able to see somewhat well to navigate the track without crashing into people. Vehicles on land speed record runs are usually separated by 2 or more minutes at launch, so don't have the same traffic concerns. This means that many HPVs designed for these competitions don't have any windows at all. Cameras are used instead to show video on displays in front of the rider. There are usually at least two camera systems for redundancy as it would be safe to say that a single camera or display failing at 140km/h is not ideal :).
That was a fun video! I'll ask again for a comparison of modern production recumbents vs fast upright bikes. There has to be someone in the UK who has a Cruzbike V20 that they would bring out for you to have a look at.
if you google Dave McCraw, a very competitive Scottish amateur rider on both upright and recumbents, he has done a lot of detailed comparison of his relative performance using power meters etc. My main takeaway was recumbents slowing going uphill but use less energy which on a long enough ride/ race (rather than a sprint up the hill and stop at the cafe) means able to go faster on the flat in the later miles of the race to compensate.
For fastest speed in a production lowracer, go with VeloKraft NoComp (carbon) or Challenge Jester or Taifun - the jester set the record several years ago.
you should a deep dive into the building of one of these speed machines. One off build as it looks and handmade by the owners, no off the shelf bits there except some of the drivetrain parts.
Would like to see more of the more accessible daily use and traveling side of recumbents and velomobiles. Maybe things like the record for crossing Germany south to north by Holger Seidel or my buddy Ruben Schütze with the 24h human powered world record that are done in much more managable threewheeled and road going velomibiles. But really what recumbents are for me is accessibility and comfortable leisure with good speed. You often do videos about iconic, scenic rides. Recumbents are great for those. (Just choose the right one for the route. Don't take a track recumbent on a gravel ride.) Maybe visit Spezialradmesse "Spezi" (translate: special bikes fair) in Germany or collab more with other channels from all over Europe (or meet the Americans at Spezi).
I have been round Castle Coombe way faster than that (250bhp Volvo), but nowhere near as impressive as those things. The whole HPV thing is fascinating. I think it’s the shed built tinkerer meets athlete that makes it so interesting. Great vid guys, thanks and more please.
Excellent video thanks! I want more recumbents, more about those super fast machines, more about this leading edge technology on 2 wheels and....more and more SPEED!
When one descends a hill on a recumbent it keeps on carrying the speed once it levels out. It's such a neat experience, and of course it's really noticeable if you're riding with someone on a conventional bike.
I want to see more , I have 2 trikes and a velomobile I'm restoring . It's definitely niche but it's very interesting, I actually love a head wind it hits roadies a lot harder , I've often heard people can't get a draft off of me and sat it's actually harder to ride behind me . I have spoke covers up front and a carbon trispoke in back .
Drafting is much reduced I think. The slick aerodynamics of the first rider does produce less of a wake and the slick aerodynamics of the second one gives less opportunity to reduce drag. But yeah, it is still a thing and used in the real world at least with unfaired twowheelers. With faired streamliners and velomobiles maybe it's not worth it anymore, unless in a large group or a very tight race.
I’m a retired race car driver who knows next to nothing about bicycles (especially recumbent bikes) but watching this I’m wondering why I don’t see streamlined recumbent bikes racing in big events. In motorsport we have lots of sanctioning bodies and even more rules, so that, for example, Formula One and NASCAR aren’t allowed to race together, but both exist with huge audiences. NASCAR remains popular despite being much slower and cruder than F1, but F1 none the less eclipses NASCAR, especially on the global stage. Given that streamlined recumbent bikes would seem to be the Formula One of bike racing, why are they not seen as the pinnacle of human powered racing? Is this a marketing problem, or are there more fundamental problems?
Love my recumbent (Bacchetta Giro 26) add a windsock, fairing and a tailbox and I was covering 160 miles plus a day( and that's while traveling on regular undulating roads and carrying touring gear).
great stuff here. love the canoe/rocket shape of the bikes. simply beautiful. thank you. real people, real garbage tech. no company hype. pure competition of style / design.
50 yrs ago, I would find the steepest road hills to ride down. Macclesfield forest was the steepest, going at insane speeds, too fast to pedal; it was like a ski run.
See the French 'Velo Altair' youtube channel for Francois Pervis (7x world track champion) piloting UIT's 'Altair' streamliner to 86mph at Battle Mountain this year. He was aiming for the world record set by Todd Reichart of 89mph, but the weather conditions didn't fall right for him, and the road surface had deteriorated since the record was set in 2016.
Yeah, finally a video about these epic guys. Slash is an absolute legend! Nice to see new faces joining and following in his footsteps. So Hank, learn how to drive that thing, have one built for yourself and show us more insights into that racing culture.
Awesome video team, I really enjoy this kind of content. I imagine that reverse fork makes this particularly hard to ride because the bike will want to steer into the lean. There is definitely a good reason that conventional bikes have the fork angling the other way!
I ve ridden such streamliners in races and balance is the critical point. It needs about 500km to get used balancing on an unfaired recumbent. But to get used to an open streamliner,like Hank rode, is even harder. At about 20mph selfbalancing is good an easy rideable without assistance wheels. With head enclosed ist the hardest to balance. You cant move your body so you cant compensate some imbalance, you just fell. So it was most likely that Hank fell. I would give my streamliner only an experienced recumbent rider.
Are these bikes intrinsically stable or do they rely on rider inputs to remain so? If you gave one a push down the road without a rider, would it crash immediately or roll until running out of energy?
@@AndyRRR0791 They are build in the same way as normal bikes, so they are stable. (Riding instable bikes are dangerous/insidious eg rearwheel-steering on a 2wheeler). But it needs more speed to ride stable. You canˋt move with your body to compensate some imbalance.
@@RazzFazz-Race You can make stable rear-wheel steering bikes. I was just wondering how much engineering has gone into developing the stability and whether they could be made much easier to ride.
I started cycling in 1980's, then started riding recumbents since 2003. Nowadays, I wouldn't ride my road bike for any distance over 35 miles, or if I have to log more than 3 hours in the saddle. Recumbents are just far more comfortable and allow me to function much better after I finish the ride.
Here in the Netherlands they're often called bananas because of the tubular shape and the yellow color they often come with. They are significantly faster than recumbent bikes without a shell, that's for sure. And yes even these are used for daily commute by some. Though require high visibility and a flag because they are so low many motorists might otherwise look straight ovet it.
That's just not true. There is no requirement for a flag or any additional visibility aid as compared to any other vehicle here in the Netherlands. Motorists just don't see at all and that has nothing to do with how the other looks. Other road users will just have to adjust to that.
I've seen 'Flash' in videos for the Human Powered Vehicle races that are held throughout Britain and he is a fast rider on those courses. I found this to be a fun informative video.
Sympathies, Hank. But at least you were on a nice quiet circuit: first time I tried a recumbent was in the middle of town on a Saturday. Hairy, that was.
Absolutely stellar content again gcn and Hank (&Manon)!! More recumbent videos! Loved that Russ entrusted his 'baby ' to Hank, and he crashed it, not once, not twice, but thrice! He's like the effervescent Springer Spaniel, so game but cheerfully wreaking havoc simultaneously everywhere at once! These recumbents look devilishly tricky to handle and are wicked fast! Next time, (I hope that there is one), can we please have a camera inside with a track view? And can we send Hank to Recumbent School so he can focus his seemingly boundless energy on achieving his goal?
There are some small, light electronic gyros for stabilizing RC airplanes, helicopters and drones. I would be relatively trivial to create an automatic stabiliser with a single axis gyro, servo, battery and control board. Tying it into the steering wouldn't be difficult either. A rudder style control surface at the top rear of that Snoopy streamliner would be fairly easy to implement. I wonder if getting rid of the weave (and adding some crosswind compensation) would gain any efficiency, or if the added drag of a moving control surface would reduce it?
I primarily ride upright but I do have a HPvelo Grasshopper in my collection that is delightful to ride around on :) Imagine if UCI had not banned recumbents way back when (at the behest of upright manufacturers)... Would love to try a Cruzbike!
I have hight racer recumbent bike and it will sound odd but sitting higher help a lot fot keeping ballance. Reason is simple this low racer bike have center of ballance very low and every little move in bike will immiditely throw it out of ballance, while on hight racer same small movement have much smaller impact on ballance.
Its so nice to see you more and more interested in recumbents. It would be nice to do a video about light bikepacking in one of these, or maybe on a 3 wheeler velomobile.
If the speed device was more in line with the "bike" travel path, the recorded speed would be a bit higher, maybe 49 or 50 mph depending on the degree offset from the bike path.
Back in the 80s & 90s I rode several recumbants and I like them - but NEVER a streamliner like that, they are really twitchy and a rather wierd experience. I think your bold to even try one.
@@ecosseman I posted a quick comment on a UA-cam video and it had a spelling error, I didn't realise there were people out there that would waste time to pick me up on it. You know the funny thing is that I thought it was km but I knew James had posted a picture of his Guinness World Record certificate and I wanted to put the time down so I actually checked the photo and it said Km so I went against what I thought. I really don't need you to tell me what I should do but thanks anyway. Please don't feel the need to do so again. Merry Christmas.
More extreme speed machines, please! And maybe even a look into the cycling land-speed record, in which competitors slipstream behind a racing truck, and ride custom-built bikes with ridiculously high gearing . . .?
I think everyone enjoys enclosed bikes because they keep you dry in the rain and they're faster than regular bikes. If they had three wheels more people would probably have one because they'd be easier to balance.
Good news! Not only are there several commercially available models of 3 wheeled velomobiles, one company has produced a 4 wheel model that can take corners at higher speed and better handle poor road conditions.
I was considering to build something like this as a recumbent e-bike that could fit some gear (camera equipment or skis etc.). But currently just still somewhere in my mind to do that. Nothing concrete...
Would you ever try riding a recumbent? 🚲
Yes, I was at Battle Mountain, Nevada when the Deci-mach was first broken by Sam Whittingham in 2009
My Dad got a three-wheel recument at 85 when he started experiencing balance issues on an upright bike. Took it for a spin and it was an absolute blast - feels like you're going even faster than you are because you're so close to the ground. The funny thing is, other cyclists won't give you the time of day when you're on a recumbent, but people on mobility scooters all wave and smile.
@@d_charles this is a fantastic story. I love this use for recumbents. It’s odd the negative way that some cyclists look at recumbents. You can see it in some of the comments here.
I own a Bacchetta Giro 20 recumbent
Yes, I like mine.
I really enjoy this sort of content! For me, there is an extreme fascination, about seemingly ordinary people, doing extrodinary things. None of this mega budget, factory backed. Real people making real things, just to go fast. Brilliant!
Absolutely. I love it. 🙂
I agree. The made in a shed type vibe is so good
100% agreed. Another video that gave me such vibes is the Veritasium vid about the cart that moves faster than the wind. Just a couple guys who are not professionals, out to prove physicists wrong.
０．０
If I could go 48mph under my own power at 60yrs I'd be thoroughly satisfied with my life
Wouldn't we all 🚴♂️💨
Actually rather economical with his age.
And on the flat too. Incredible machines.
Money CAN buy you speed. Just buying a fast recumbent will get you much closer to 50mph under your own power on flat ground without wind assistance than any diamond frame bike on Earth ever can.
Did a road ride Sunday with my unfaired recumbent and hit 38.6 on a mild downhill without even pedaling. I need bigger gears to go faster. The aerodynamic advantages are amazing!
Yes, more of this, please. And maybe take a look at the recumbent scene in continental Europe, especially in Germany and the Netherlands there are some pretty strong riders with modern velomobiles.
Need one of these for my commute
There are Velomobiles on the Market that are also very fast. Like Snoek, Milan or W9 and many more.
I ve ridden streamliners in races and they are not suitable for everyday use. Go and buy a velomobile. the current models are very fast and you can ride them in bad weather conditions.
Another human mistaking need for want
and the Bülk Velomobile!@@pw9349
What are the ideal features you'd want? I would want air con for summer
I would love to see more Recumbent reporting - this was great fun!
"He's going to crash straightaway"
Hank: crashes straightaway
As long as water is wet, Hank will crash.
That video just makes me want to burn all my cameras, drones and microphones and call it quits🤨 Just so well covered in a professional way. Kudos to Hank and crew. A great fun video that really does justice to what HPV racing and racers are all about. More of this please!
It looks like Hank is going to be doing more HPV videos in the future if we get our way! 😂
Hey Gary, have you ever tried contacting @GCN for a collab? Could meet when you are on the continent for Spezi, maybe even have them to visit Spezi with you. 😄 Would love to see it on both channels!
@@PsyKeks very kind of you to suggest this. I'm not sure what I can offer GCN by way of collab but certainly want to encourage them to continue this fine coverage of the bent world we all love.
Great video as always.
My only tip for learning to ride a recumbent is what I did with mine.
By a recumbent with an adjustable seat angle.
Start with the seat at a higher angle.
The feeling of laying down is so wrong compared to an upright.
Do a few rides until you are confident with that angle.
Then adjust the seat angle slightly lower.
Do another few rides and so on.
Lowering the angle of the seat slowly until you can get the seat to as low as it will go.
These racing recumbent seat's are the lowest you can get but regular riding recumbents the seats don't go as low.
Get your balance and confidence right with the higher seat position then move into the lower one.
If you don't you will only do what Hank did and fall off.
Good luck everyone.
Great tips! Do you think we should send Hank to do more in the HPV world?!
Hank raced a NoCom before, which is quite a tricky unfaired. The problem may be watching teh fairing rather than looking up the road.
I love this content. When I see velomobiles, I can’t help but think “What if these were the future of commuter vehicles?” I’d love to see a version that was “super balance-able” and has a light tent-like canopy that easily opens.
There are velomobils with three wheels. And the hood is hinged.
@@maxsievers8251three wheels seem like a bad idea to me. First cause I don't like cars I like motorcycles and bikes. Secondly because of corners. I'd rather have assist wheels I can deploy
There is a commercially available model of velomobile that has 4 wheels. It is called the Quatrevelo, and is reported to be remarkably stable and capable of taking turns at a much higher speed and handling poor road conditions far better than its 3 wheel brethren. Even with the extra weight it is silly how much faster it is than upright bicycles.
Self balancing aid and power assist might help future commuters
you'll be surprised how quick a 3 wheel velomobile will corner ;-)
There's many variations in production or development. Each have their own benefits and disadvantages.
Ps mine is an 18 mile commuter (DFXL)
More recumbents, please!
There's a lot to be learned from the forefront of speed and imagination. For too long the UCI have been imposing all sorts of constraints on the development of bikes. Let's move forward.
Brave and generous of Hank to put it all out there for our consumption!
This is what distinguishes a superior yt channel from the rest!
I own a Lightning F40 fully faired 2-wheeler, that I restored with help.
Tim Brummer designed the F40 to be a fast *practical* streamliner. Its tradeoffs affect CdA so that it’s not so fast as THESE lovely beasties, yet it’s still quite fast for a given wattage.
The design includes a fiberglass nose cone & Spandex fuselage over an aluminum frame. This structure breathes enough that crosswinds can be managed unless they’re extremely strong. And if they ever are-I can take off the fabric & roll it up in my lap.
Lightnings have an upright seating position and handlebars at shoulder level. This increases frontal area over a laid-back machine yet this is a better position from which to generate power, and I’ve never crashed. Stability is superb at all speeds.
Would love to cruise at 35mph in an extreme machine but my current 21-25mph in a practical machine depending on grade variations is gobsmacking enough for me!
My dream recumbent, the F40. Hats off to you, Sir.
I just love GCN vids like this...... What about a GCN Builds series...... GCN attempts UK speed record building a streamliner 💪🚀
GCN should build the trandem streamliner! 🙂
I think that is a brilliant idea - a build series would help get us inspired to give this a try!
These things look incredible. Kudos to these guys for designing and building such amazing machines (as well as being able to ride them so well!)
It would be interesting to see/hear some details about the construction, power output and efficiency (cdA).
And you let Hank ride one?!
@@johannesobernoeder1156 My CdA on the Cruzbike V20 you see in my profile pic is about 0.200, which isn't quite TT bike territory (0.170) because I have wide shoulders that creates a lot of drag. On a good, windless day 210 watts gives me 40.6 kph average speeds, but some of the smaller riders with a 0.150 CdA on V20s like mine only need about 180-190 watts to get 40kph. I am in the process of building my own streamliner and while I can't say what the CdA of these 3 are, I can imagine they are way lower. UA-cam "Russell Bridge Snoopy" for his channel and you can see his uploads of racing snoopy against Steve (Slash) in Beano and Liam in Notso. While my 'bent is a high racer and quite efficient, they would absolutely slaughter me in a race, lapping me numerous times.
Recumbent bike content is always appreciated. So much speed unlockable just by changing ones perspective. Literally
I would love to see more Recumbent reporting - this was great fun! The world of two wheeled recumbents is Vast in design and Capability. It would be nice to see some of the more mainstream🦘 bikes we mere mortals can ride to keep up with our younger brethren
I love the recumbent content. It would be great to see Hank do some serious training on a fast recumbent and then make an all out run for the fastest speed in the UK.
Yeah Hank - show us how it's done! 🙂
Loving the recumbent content GCN, well done and thanks.
Oh Hank, yes yes yes yes more more more pleaseeee.
Yes recumbents are an aquired skill.
Incidentally, just to be a boring pedant, CDA is the product of CD (Coeficient of drag) and A (frontal area).
Great video, well done.
For streamlined vehicles, A is a combination of frontal and surface area. Since it's hard to determine the difference, it's best to leave Cd and A combined.
@@larrylem3582 Well that rather depends whether you're measuring it or calculating it.
If you're calculating it there are many contributions. Form drag, which depends on the shape and skin friction drag which depends on many factors like surface roughness, area and so on. Each component has its own coefficient so that CDA becomes the sum of CDAs for each component.
If your measuring it then its rather easier being the product of drag force divided by the dynamic head (half rho v squared). Conventionally the area taken is the cross sectional area regardless of the shape.
But anyway my original point was that Hank described CDA as the coeficient of drag, forgetting the area part of it.
@@emmabird9745 That was a much better answer than just saying frontal area. I am talking about calculating things after measuring power and speed. My recommendation is not to bother calculating, just leave it as CdA in m2.
Yes, more recumbent content, please. Great, fun video.
Maybe Hank should be riding a bit more with a low racer or a normal recumbent.
I'm really happy to see such videos about recumbents, velomobiles & streamliners on this channel. Keep going on! 😃
Agreed. If not on a regular basis, it would have been good for Hank to warm up for a half hour on a lowracer before jumping into the bottom of Snoopy.
They could also let someone learn from the beginning with a beginner friendly bike (or trike), do some touring and commuting and progress to more speed focused bikes and velomobiles only when they are ready. Maybe Kilian, who is not as much dialed in to upright bikes would find it more easy to transition and find the speed advantage useful to keep up in group rides with the presenters (as long as it's not going uphill, but maybe put in some e-assist as well for the maximum in equalizer bikes)
Great to see the boys out in the streamliners. Look forward to the world champs in august 2024 in Kent to try and keep up.
Perhaps a GCN rider there too?
I followed the emerging HPV scene in the `80’s, and in 1990 I bought a racing recumbent tricycle that had rear wheels steering, front wheel drive, and an incredibly steep learning curve to learn how to ride it. With my head being lower than the top of the wheels, it was unwise to ride it on open roads. A blast once mastered, surprisingly maneuverable but quite heavy, once up to speed it was quick, but not fast. It taught me that aero is about leaving less turbulence behind, not merely how smoothly you may push air aside.
The title, "Is This The FASTEST Bike You Can Buy?" may be a bit misleading because I don't think you can just buy one of these custom made machines. However you can buy velomobiles like the one Manon rode (Milan SL). In my DF XL velomobile, I can cruise at 25mph all day long on the flats with no headwind (averaging roughly 150 watts). Some race optimized velomobiles with light riders have been shown to do 30mph with as little as 100 watts. Plus they're way more stable at low speeds having 3 or more wheels to balance! I think for the everyday person a velomobile is more practical and road worthy.
LOL ... Sure you can! Just throw down half a $Mil and stand back 🙂
As a recumbent racer that has gone 42 mph on a non faired recumbent, I love this content!
That's pretty impressive!
Im glad you guys have covered recumbents as much as you have. I ride one occasionally, alongside conventional bikes. I'm not going to claim the recumbent is the bike of the future, but we probably shouldn't laugh at them, just accept them as another way to enjoy cycling. Save the hate for ebikes instead. 😁
Hope Hank keeps trying, would like to see how fast he could go!
The problem is he gets too carried away... And we know what happens next, he crashes 😂
I think GCN should go to an event at Battle Mountain. If Russel is going to the next event there, they could go along to cover the event.
And/or sponsor him.
GCN could purchase Russell's 77 streamliner. Hank and Manon could learn to ride and then race at Battle Mountain.
@@larrylem3582 now then Mr Lem, that is a very good idea :)
Rumour has it Ollie Bridgewood was going to go there and discover time travel 👀
Better yet - get Ollie to enter - he's short and powerful - he could to well!
More recumbent content please. Maybe you could cover Battle Mountain in Nevada or Pedal Prix in Australia?
Always love watching recumbent content. More please! My dream would be a GCN channel dedicated to recumbents and velomobiles ....
My mate Ethan would love it too! Recumbents are so much fun
Just if someone in the team personally got into recumbents, it would be such an opportunity to show the actual recumbent experience, not just plonking an upright rider into some of the hardest to ride bikes* on the planet.
*) actually used bikes. Of course there are some strange novelty bikes that are harder to ride on purpose.
There is a really good reason that in the Aussie HPV racing gloves and helmets are mandatory. The trikes raced over here are often averaging around 55kmh (34mph) for 24hrs. The Aussie racing trikes like Trump Trikes and Trisled are a fair bit lower which is beneficial to getting the frontal area down which is important for drag. They are in the 750-850mm height range compared to these which I don't think would give you much change out of 950mm.
I've been fortunate to have both raced these trikes and travelled to the World Human Powered Speed Challenge (WHPSC) as a member of a team aiming for the land speed records. Both are quite fun and push boundaries in their own ways, although there are a few differences between vehicle types.
The land speed record bikes are usually designed for two things - to go fast in a straight line and to protect the rider in the event of an incident / crash. As a result, CDA is everything and centre of mass and thus height is less important. Endurance racing trikes on the other hand usually need to be able to navigate sharp corners at high speeds, hence the lower centre of mass. Trikes also don't require the same level of balance and training to be able to successfully ride them without crashing, so there is a significantly lower barrier to entry in that regard.
Another difference is visibility. There are often well over 100 trikes on the track during endurance races, so the rider needs to be able to see somewhat well to navigate the track without crashing into people. Vehicles on land speed record runs are usually separated by 2 or more minutes at launch, so don't have the same traffic concerns. This means that many HPVs designed for these competitions don't have any windows at all. Cameras are used instead to show video on displays in front of the rider. There are usually at least two camera systems for redundancy as it would be safe to say that a single camera or display failing at 140km/h is not ideal :).
That was a fun video!
I'll ask again for a comparison of modern production recumbents vs fast upright bikes. There has to be someone in the UK who has a Cruzbike V20 that they would bring out for you to have a look at.
if you google Dave McCraw, a very competitive Scottish amateur rider on both upright and recumbents, he has done a lot of detailed comparison of his relative performance using power meters etc. My main takeaway was recumbents slowing going uphill but use less energy which on a long enough ride/ race (rather than a sprint up the hill and stop at the cafe) means able to go faster on the flat in the later miles of the race to compensate.
For fastest speed in a production lowracer, go with VeloKraft NoComp (carbon) or Challenge Jester or Taifun - the jester set the record several years ago.
you should a deep dive into the building of one of these speed machines. One off build as it looks and handmade by the owners, no off the shelf bits there except some of the drivetrain parts.
A mate of mine built a wooden one, it was like an old ship! Incredible
Would like to see more of the more accessible daily use and traveling side of recumbents and velomobiles. Maybe things like the record for crossing Germany south to north by Holger Seidel or my buddy Ruben Schütze with the 24h human powered world record that are done in much more managable threewheeled and road going velomibiles.
But really what recumbents are for me is accessibility and comfortable leisure with good speed. You often do videos about iconic, scenic rides. Recumbents are great for those. (Just choose the right one for the route. Don't take a track recumbent on a gravel ride.)
Maybe visit Spezialradmesse "Spezi" (translate: special bikes fair) in Germany or collab more with other channels from all over Europe (or meet the Americans at Spezi).
I have pics from the late 80’s building vehicles like this when hubby and I were in college.
More recumbent please
I have been round Castle Coombe way faster than that (250bhp Volvo), but nowhere near as impressive as those things. The whole HPV thing is fascinating. I think it’s the shed built tinkerer meets athlete that makes it so interesting. Great vid guys, thanks and more please.
Great GCN work. I would love to see Hank going on a good road/ track at full power in Snoopy.
Excellent video thanks! I want more recumbents, more about those super fast machines, more about this leading edge technology on 2 wheels and....more and more SPEED!
I can imagine a utopia with dedicated roads to recumbent bikes.
When one descends a hill on a recumbent it keeps on carrying the speed once it levels out. It's such a neat experience, and of course it's really noticeable if you're riding with someone on a conventional bike.
I want to see more , I have 2 trikes and a velomobile I'm restoring . It's definitely niche but it's very interesting, I actually love a head wind it hits roadies a lot harder , I've often heard people can't get a draft off of me and sat it's actually harder to ride behind me . I have spoke covers up front and a carbon trispoke in back .
Really enjoyed this! More recumbents! Racing maybe. What must recumbent drafting be like....
Drafting is much reduced I think. The slick aerodynamics of the first rider does produce less of a wake and the slick aerodynamics of the second one gives less opportunity to reduce drag. But yeah, it is still a thing and used in the real world at least with unfaired twowheelers. With faired streamliners and velomobiles maybe it's not worth it anymore, unless in a large group or a very tight race.
I’m a retired race car driver who knows next to nothing about bicycles (especially recumbent bikes) but watching this I’m wondering why I don’t see streamlined recumbent bikes racing in big events. In motorsport we have lots of sanctioning bodies and even more rules, so that, for example, Formula One and NASCAR aren’t allowed to race together, but both exist with huge audiences. NASCAR remains popular despite being much slower and cruder than F1, but F1 none the less eclipses NASCAR, especially on the global stage. Given that streamlined recumbent bikes would seem to be the Formula One of bike racing, why are they not seen as the pinnacle of human powered racing? Is this a marketing problem, or are there more fundamental problems?
More recumbent content please. what can you ride on the road. where to but one
Love my recumbent (Bacchetta Giro 26) add a windsock, fairing and a tailbox and I was covering 160 miles plus a day( and that's while traveling on regular undulating roads and carrying touring gear).
great stuff here. love the canoe/rocket shape of the bikes. simply beautiful. thank you. real people, real garbage tech. no company hype. pure competition of style / design.
We need a new Channel! GRN (Global Recumbent Network)
TheVelomobile channel is a good one as well.
@thevelomobilechannel is a good one. One reason, I opted for a recumbent 😂.
YEA !!
50 yrs ago, I would find the steepest road hills to ride down. Macclesfield forest was the steepest, going at insane speeds, too fast to pedal; it was like a ski run.
Please profile ICE tadpole recumbent trikes and also profile a variety of customers and how and why they ride them.
There's several of these here. Surprised Hank didn't see a few of them. On rides in traffic at speed.
You have GOT to go to Battle Mountain!!!
Great to see HPV content, big thanks to Hank and GCN for this video!
Thanks for watching!
Need to see a track sprinter piloting one of these.
ua-cam.com/video/rLVAZZ2Qxyc/v-deo.html
See the French 'Velo Altair' youtube channel for Francois Pervis (7x world track champion) piloting UIT's 'Altair' streamliner to 86mph at Battle Mountain this year. He was aiming for the world record set by Todd Reichart of 89mph, but the weather conditions didn't fall right for him, and the road surface had deteriorated since the record was set in 2016.
Those Hank crashes were way funnier than they should have been.
Terrible that the bike got scraped up, but brilliant comedic content 😆😆😆
Yeah, as long as Hank doesn't get hurt, we don't mind
Great video! Kudos for being willing to experience this fascinating part of the cycling world!
Yeah, finally a video about these epic guys. Slash is an absolute legend! Nice to see new faces joining and following in his footsteps. So Hank, learn how to drive that thing, have one built for yourself and show us more insights into that racing culture.
It would be nice to indicate speeds in km/h when you give a speed in a unit (at 8:19 and 8:47) that is not used outside the UK and USA. Thank you!
Awesome video team, I really enjoy this kind of content. I imagine that reverse fork makes this particularly hard to ride because the bike will want to steer into the lean. There is definitely a good reason that conventional bikes have the fork angling the other way!
On my video player, as soon as Hank said it’s about time we see this topless.. a commercial started!
ps: I’ve raced my streamliner up to 60 mph at battle mountain and met Russell Bridge there!
At that moment my partner ran over to see what I was watching 😂
I ve ridden such streamliners in races and balance is the critical point. It needs about 500km to get used balancing on an unfaired recumbent. But to get used to an open streamliner,like Hank rode, is even harder. At about 20mph selfbalancing is good an easy rideable without assistance wheels. With head enclosed ist the hardest to balance. You cant move your body so you cant compensate some imbalance, you just fell. So it was most likely that Hank fell. I would give my streamliner only an experienced recumbent rider.
Are these bikes intrinsically stable or do they rely on rider inputs to remain so? If you gave one a push down the road without a rider, would it crash immediately or roll until running out of energy?
@@AndyRRR0791 They are build in the same way as normal bikes, so they are stable. (Riding instable bikes are dangerous/insidious eg rearwheel-steering on a 2wheeler). But it needs more speed to ride stable. You canˋt move with your body to compensate some imbalance.
@@RazzFazz-Race You can make stable rear-wheel steering bikes. I was just wondering how much engineering has gone into developing the stability and whether they could be made much easier to ride.
Just build one to proof all wrong. And then Go round a corner at 30 mph...
@@RazzFazz-Race ua-cam.com/video/VbqnSTa-gQY/v-deo.html
I started cycling in 1980's, then started riding recumbents since 2003.
Nowadays, I wouldn't ride my road bike for any distance over 35 miles, or if I have to log more than 3 hours in the saddle.
Recumbents are just far more comfortable and allow me to function much better after I finish the ride.
Love the “he is just going to crash at a higher speed now” comment, then he crashed!
😂😂😂😂
Get Betsy in one, she had insane cadence and endurance, plus as a BMXer absolutely no fear!
Here in the Netherlands they're often called bananas because of the tubular shape and the yellow color they often come with. They are significantly faster than recumbent bikes without a shell, that's for sure.
And yes even these are used for daily commute by some. Though require high visibility and a flag because they are so low many motorists might otherwise look straight ovet it.
That's just not true. There is no requirement for a flag or any additional visibility aid as compared to any other vehicle here in the Netherlands. Motorists just don't see at all and that has nothing to do with how the other looks. Other road users will just have to adjust to that.
I've seen 'Flash' in videos for the Human Powered Vehicle races that are held throughout Britain and he is a fast rider on those courses.
I found this to be a fun informative video.
Great video. More velomobile videos. What's it like to commute in one?
Thank you for being game, takes a bit of practice I see! Wouldbe great to see both Hank and Manon learning to ride these and go FAST!
This is awesome guys wow please do more of these vids 👍🚴🏻Pete
Well done Hank and Manon - great video - I hope Hank will have another attempt and Manon should have a go as well!
Sympathies, Hank. But at least you were on a nice quiet circuit: first time I tried a recumbent was in the middle of town on a Saturday. Hairy, that was.
Not the best place to learn anything!
Oh, we wanted it to be windy for him to learn 😂
Absolutely stellar content again gcn and Hank (&Manon)!! More recumbent videos! Loved that Russ entrusted his 'baby ' to Hank, and he crashed it, not once, not twice, but thrice! He's like the effervescent Springer Spaniel, so game but cheerfully wreaking havoc simultaneously everywhere at once! These recumbents look devilishly tricky to handle and are wicked fast! Next time, (I hope that there is one), can we please have a camera inside with a track view? And can we send Hank to Recumbent School so he can focus his seemingly boundless energy on achieving his goal?
Btw the 1mph difference might be the wheel size. 650 wheels and 700 carry more speed than 20 inch
Okay, who's in favour of the whole bloody world going metric!
I am very curious about what kind of power output is needed with those things in order to maintain such high speeds in comparison to a road & TT bike
There are some small, light electronic gyros for stabilizing RC airplanes, helicopters and drones. I would be relatively trivial to create an automatic stabiliser with a single axis gyro, servo, battery and control board. Tying it into the steering wouldn't be difficult either.
A rudder style control surface at the top rear of that Snoopy streamliner would be fairly easy to implement. I wonder if getting rid of the weave (and adding some crosswind compensation) would gain any efficiency, or if the added drag of a moving control surface would reduce it?
A streamliner is The Bike of My Literal Dreams. I did once reach 40mph on a hybrid bike, but that was coming down Kidd’s Hill.
I primarily ride upright but I do have a HPvelo Grasshopper in my collection that is delightful to ride around on :) Imagine if UCI had not banned recumbents way back when (at the behest of upright manufacturers)... Would love to try a Cruzbike!
more bents please please!!
I bet they use Rim Brakes ❤
I have hight racer recumbent bike and it will sound odd but sitting higher help a lot fot keeping ballance. Reason is simple this low racer bike have center of ballance very low and every little move in bike will immiditely throw it out of ballance, while on hight racer same small movement have much smaller impact on ballance.
I see recumbent content, I click like button
Its so nice to see you more and more interested in recumbents. It would be nice to do a video about light bikepacking in one of these, or maybe on a 3 wheeler velomobile.
Racing machines.
If the speed device was more in line with the "bike" travel path, the recorded speed would be a bit higher, maybe 49 or 50 mph depending on the degree offset from the bike path.
Reminds me of the tippiness of learning surfski. The retractable stabilizers are cool!
I am impressed with what these machines can do. I want one so badly but give me a three-wheeler then for starters
Great video.Enjoyed watching this.
Back in the 80s & 90s I rode several recumbants and I like them - but NEVER a streamliner like that, they are really twitchy and a rather wierd experience. I think your bold to even try one.
Moooree recumbent❤
Need to get James Coxon on a velodrome with his 100Km world record setting (2h 3m 58.4s) non-faired trike.
@@ecosseman My mistake. Maybe you can help me, do you spell it pedant or Pedant?
@@ecosseman I posted a quick comment on a UA-cam video and it had a spelling error, I didn't realise there were people out there that would waste time to pick me up on it. You know the funny thing is that I thought it was km but I knew James had posted a picture of his Guinness World Record certificate and I wanted to put the time down so I actually checked the photo and it said Km so I went against what I thought. I really don't need you to tell me what I should do but thanks anyway. Please don't feel the need to do so again. Merry Christmas.
Please do unfared high racers and such.
More extreme speed machines, please!
And maybe even a look into the cycling land-speed record, in which competitors slipstream behind a racing truck, and ride custom-built bikes with ridiculously high gearing . . .?
Amazing. More please!
You guys should do a long distance ride in one of these, put maybe 200kms in and see how it compares to a regular road bike.
I think Hank wants to see more recumbent videos.
More recumbent videos!
Will there be a review on production recumbents, such as from HP Velotechnik, azub, performer, the likes?
I think everyone enjoys enclosed bikes because they keep you dry in the rain and they're faster than regular bikes. If they had three wheels more people would probably have one because they'd be easier to balance.
Good news! Not only are there several commercially available models of 3 wheeled velomobiles, one company has produced a 4 wheel model that can take corners at higher speed and better handle poor road conditions.
try a regular road bike with a zziffer faring.. They have been around since the 1970's
I was considering to build something like this as a recumbent e-bike that could fit some gear (camera equipment or skis etc.). But currently just still somewhere in my mind to do that. Nothing concrete...