Flyinfool

You MPG will be highly dependent on a lot of factors. Total weight rolling down the road, Aerodynamics of your load, Weather, How much steady state speed vs changing speeds, terrain, there are just some of the big things that will influance you MPG change with a trailer. For instance. Me one up and no cargo I get 39 MPG, add the trailer, good weather, fairly flat terrain, and I drop to 35. Add in some crappy weather and getting in a hurry and I was down to as low as 17 MPG average for a full tank of gas. Same roads, same total load, same aerodynamics.

Even though I have been flying these fool things for more than a half a century, It is a real possibility that I will also make a big smoking hole in the ground. This is so new, I have yet to find anyone in the USA that is flying something like this. I have no one to ask questions to. I am inventing everything as I go.

That was drawn using Inventor. I now have it all built, just painted it this morning. Tomorrow I will final assemble it and post a pic. I did come to the realization that it did not need the lightening holes. This is an anchor, weight is not a bad thing. The big holes would look cool but are a lot of extra work to make.

On the bike the start switch provides the ground to engage the solenoid, the solenoid is wired hot. The Ford type is expecting the start switch to provide +12V, that is why the case is grounded. The ford type will work but you have to be careful to wire it correctly and may have to insulate the case from ground, and connect a separate wire to ground, or you could let the magic blue smoke out of something.

It might be a real attention getter to see a bike going down the road with no driver. As long as there is some kind of a locking mechanism to hold the chair and driver from moving, and all of the safety stuff works, I don't see why not.

SSSHHHHHhhhhhhh............ Don't tell @cowpuc all of my secrets........... I had him believing that this was just a really cool toy. This will allow deliveries at 250 MPH.......

You da man Puc, You are always there when needed. But just how dangerous is it to yell FIRE in a crowded room including a VP and a slew of SS????

OK Just how tall is this bike when on the ground? Th HF trailer that has been very popular for converting to MC use has a 40" wide bed and then the wheels stick another 9 inches out each side for a total width of 58 inches. If the bike were laid down on this with the bikes wheels straddling the trailer wheels, how wide are you looking at?

I had to drive a car home that had a broken clutch cable once, that was interesting. There is a company that makes radial engine motorcycles. http://www.jrlcycles.com/home.html

Well the silly Docs interrupted me again. BUT I am now back on track once again. I have not done much to the plane its self, this time. For now I am working on designing and building all of the ground support equipment that I will need to make it run and to get it in the air. This aircraft has no landing gear, that would add extra weight and drag so they are not used. That means it will have to get "launched". Launch will be accomplished with 5 strands of bungee cord that each strand will be 1/2" dia and 30' long. This when stretched out will give a pull of around 150 - 170 lbs! this will be connected to a hook on the bottom of the airplane via around a 30 foot heavy fishing line. This means that since the airplane will weigh about 14-15 lbs, there will be about 10 Gs of acceleration to get it up to flying speed. To hold the airplane in position I have designed and am building a release mechanism with a trigger to let it go. This part has had a lot of welding and machining already, it is made of all steel. Another part that I am working on is the ignition system, I need to be able to fire a spark plug with a continuous spark. To accomplish this I have a small 12V battery, an old fashion ignition coil with built in ballast resistor, a condenser, and a DPDT relay to act as the points. I will wire the coil of the relay in series with the NC contacts of the relay. This way when the coil energizes it will break the connection, and when the connection breaks the coil will let go and the contacts contacts will close again, energizing the coil, and the cycle will continue at around 250 times a second. The other set of contacts will be powering the ignition coil primary side, and there will be a ground wire and a high tension wire going to the spark plug on the engine. This spark is only needed to get the engine started, once running the plug wires are disconnected and the internal heat of the engine will keep it running. Of course there will be proper switches and fuses in there also. The next part is that to initiate the start I need to blow a fuel air mix into the front of the engine. Air will be supplied by a small portable pancake compressor running off of an inverter. The fuel will be propane from a small 1lb cylinder. I will need to have an adjustable regulator on the propane so that I can dial in the correct fuel air mix for combustion. on the blow gun for the air will be a second trigger valve to also turn on and off the propane. For the propane valve I am using a thermocouple switch from a Mr Heater portable heater and just leaving the thermocouple off. These valves have the button to keep the gas flowing while you are waiting for the thermocouple to heat up so it will make a convenient push button propane valve. I guess I will be busy all winter, But at some point once I get enough ground support stuff built, I will mount the engine on a test stand and start learning how to make it run. If handled wrong there is a good chance of blowing fire out the tailpipe. I do not want to burn down the airplane before it even gets a chance to fly.

Different brands and different models of the same size MC rear tires do have different weight ratings. You need to check out what you have and factor that into your tire choice. Also most tires can only handle that max weight rating when also at max pressure. Max pressure may be a lot more than what you normally run, If you lower the pressure on a given tire you are also lowering its max weight rating. You have to be careful playing with the numbers. You can not just add the weight rating of the 2 tires to get the total weight the tires can handle of 1700 lbs. As you add weight behind the rear wheel the bike acts like a lever and will be trying to raise the front tire, so as you add tongue weight you are taking weight off the front and transferring it to the rear so a 50 lb tongue weight is really more than a 50 lb weight increase on the rear tire. This also applies for anything else that is added behind the rear axle. So for instance, If the distance from the hitch ball to the rear axle is 1/3 of the distance between the front and rear axle, that means that if you had a 30 lb trailer tongue you would be actually putting 40 pounds of weight on the rear tire and the front tire would loose 10 lbs of weight. It is not really that simple as there are a lot of factors involved that will alter the numbers a bit. But this will get you in the ball park. You would have to do the specific math for your setup. As Marcarl mentioned, ideally you want 10-15% of the total trailer weight on the tongue.

When you get more than about 50 lbs on the back end is when you start to notice the steering getting loose. That 50 includes the hitch plus tongue plus contents of the trunk

HEY!! I resemble that comment.........

Did you by chance watch the Badgers game on Saturday? it was 45°F for that little :snow:globe test. We are getting there little by little cowpuc. It is a tall order that you gave me for the 60°F so that we can get you some for the 4th of July. Although Saturday night did kill off my garden. It is now all done for this year. @RDawson, KY is just a chip shot away, I don't even need the long range nozzle for that..........

The whole dielectric grease discussion is like trying to convert the party of a politician. It can be done, but it really aint easy since all the documentation, and logic in the world will not change their beliefs.

I may be getting older but I refuse to grow up. I am always being told to act my age and not my shoe size.

The other popular mod is to put organic brake pads in the rear to reduce the amount of grip that they have on the rotor, and then put HH pads up front to get more grip. At least this is done on the RSVs. Your RSTD has even less weight on the rear tire so the problem may be even worse and may need even more help like the Butler mod.

My last truck battery I caught in the act of dying. I had parked waiting for someone and turned the key to ACC to listen to the radio. 10 minutes later the truck started to complain about low battery and recommending I start the engine. It still spun and started fine, just like normal. I beat feet to the place I bought the battery from and it tested as bad. Had I not parked with the radio on I would have never known it was going till it was gone. Now every fall for cages and every spring for bikes I do a load test of the battery to see if it is weak or not. Many auto parts stores will do this for free.

Around here there are very few gas stations that have generators, so if the power is out they can not pump gas. There are a LOT of power outages along your route. Check here https://poweroutage.us/area/regions Looking at Gasbuddy.com there are a lot of stations that do not have a price listed, which could mean they are not open. A lot can change by Saturday.

Do you know if your dimmer uses PWM or voltage reduction for the dimming?

Most LED headlights / driving lights are not dimable. The Actual LED element runs off of around 3.5 volts. So there is a voltage regulator built into each bulb to take your 12V and drop it down to the 3.5 that the LED needs. If you lower the input voltage from 12V with a dimmer, the regulator will maintain the 3.5 to the LED as long as you have more than about 5 volts input. If you drop to less than the threshold of the regulator, it will most likely just turn off. You need LEDs that are designed to be dimable.

You think so! You never saw on a cactus? Ask your buddies VAZ or KIC if they are truly out of range. Remember that at one point last winter there was on the ground in all 50 states AT THE SAME TIME. AND then there is that new high temp formula that you instructed me to come up with..............

Everyone's most favoritest machine is all cleaned, oiled, greased and even waxed and polished, and the tanks are all full. Getting excited........... We may get our first frost this weekend.

Wait till you see what I have in store for this year.............. So far I am not broken or hobbled, it is easy to get out to THE shed now.

Welcome to the funny farm....... 1. The petcock is near the right passenger foot rest. Most people set it to reserve and forget about it and just use the gas gauge and trip meter. 2. To adjust the handle bars you have to remove them and then side back into the spline in the new position. 3. Let um rip.