The Arcata-Ferndale Kinetic Scupture Race is held each year on the Memorial day weekend. The race starts in Arcata California, passes through Eureka, and finishes in Ferndale.
Each year, this race is the earliest in the year. That makes it a challenge to be ready. This year was no exception.
Rex became TimeRex, a time machine. To that end we installed some equipment that fit with the Theory of Time Travel that I sketched out. A small inertial confinement fusion power generator is mounted behind the pilots' heads. Its power is fed to the Graversion Containment Unit. This latter unit is what drives TimeRex thru time. All of this is explained in somewhat sketchy detail in the Theory paper (available upon request).
Julianna made the pilot helmets. You have to see them to appreciate how well they work with the Time Travel theme. She also put together some bribes for the judges. These were watch faces with pins attached to the back.
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Margeaux prepares bribes for the Arcata-Ferndale race. |
In addition to the special Time Travel equipment, several improvements had been made to the basic wheeled vehicle Rex. The first (in both time and importance) was to replace those old band brakes with disk brakes. This turned out to be a much larger task than I would have guessed. I ended up designing and building three new brake handle systems before I got one that performed well. This design is easy to adjust and stronger than an ox. It now drives heavy duty brake cables from a motorcycle shop. The new handle system wants to brake straight. But when intended, it is not difficult to brake directionally.
I added a dashboard to Rex. On it are mounted a compass, thermometer, and transciever.
I made a rudder, hinged to the rear (steered) wheel. When we entered the water, the rudder was to drop in. The normal steering mechanism would control it.
The other major improvement was to add a water drive. After promises from two people to make the water drive fell thru, I finally found the time to do it myself. Unfortunately I only had three days. But since I was taking time off from work, these were full time days. It was a tight schedule and I really didn't think it would be enough. But it was, just barely. I was only able to get the drive connected to one side. And I was doing final assembly on the day Rex was loaded onto its trailer for the trip south. Of course there was not time to test it.
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The Kinetic Labs. The labs were active, but considerably less active and crowded than in the previous three years. |
This year the Arcata California area had excellent weather, at least for the first two days of the race. The first day was from the arcata town square to the fairgrounds in Eureka. It covers a number of miles of city streets. During that time we noticed that Rex had picked up a shimmy. Above about 6MPH, Rex shook too much to be safe. It seemed to be related to a bend in the right axle and a looseness in the steering bearing. There wasn't much we could do about it at this point, so we just kept our speed down.
This first day includes about 10 miles of beach. This isn't too difficult since you can pick a parallel to the breakers as wet as you want the sand to be. But getting to and from the beach involves climbing hills in some very soft sand. This really slows the pace of the race since we have to go single file on these paths. A number of vehicles quickly dropped out of the running for Ace when they had to be pushed.
Dead Man's Drop is an aptly named sand hill. It appears to be a 45 degree grade down lumpy sand. A vehicle needs good brakes. Rex has that. Unfortunately Rex's weight is forward and high. To counter this last year we shifted the pontoons back on the luggage rack and secured them with duct tape. The new attachments for the pontoons are not so flexible. We also hung bags of sand from the rear of the frame. And most important of all, my copilot Rod, rode from the rear of the vehicle in a decidedly unconventional location. Taking all three of those actions was more than adequate to deal with the hill. So I decided to be less aggressive this year. We would dispense with everything but the copilot on the rear. This year that copilot was Philip, who is significantly larger than Rod was.
The directional brakes of Rex worked well. However I let Rex get to a speed higher than was comfortable. When I then slowed it down, the rear wheel lifted off the ground momentarily. The best I can reconstruct the events, Philip then jumped off. Naturally Rex, now totally front heavy, endo-ed. I ended up standing on the ground, having been gently dumped out of my seat when Rex's rear wheel went vertically into the air. Fortunately the decorative tubing prevented Rex from tumbling the rest of the way over. That would have caused me considerable pain. The whole team then brought Rex back to its normal position. Well sort of. It was still pointing down that 45 degree hill. The rest of the descent was uneventful.
That evening Brian shimmed the steering bearing to try to get rid of the shimmy. It helped. We were able to go about 7.5MPH for several miles before Rex wore out the shim. This took us to the marina for the launch across Humbolt Bay.
Last year we were prevented from crossing Humbolt Bay by a small craft warning. This year the weather was darn near perfect. There was no significant wind, altho the wind was projected to become strong later in the day. We decided to go as soon as possible to beat the wind. We weren't sure how well the water drive would work. It still hadn't been tested. We used the oars to move us into deep water. We then dropped the prop and rudder into the water. Philip started pedaling. And Rex moved purposefully thru the water! We crossed the bay in one hour. I am told that is considered good time. By next year, I expect to have the drive powered by both pilots, so we should fly across the water.
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TimeRex approaching Fields Landing to cross Humbolt Bay. |
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TimeRex water conversion process in 1997. |
Exiting the water on the other side was easy. This is a task that Rex was optimized for. However once we were off clock and moving Rex to the campground Rex had some failures. Philips middle sprocket at the downtube folded over. This also denied access to the smallest sprocket. We certainly couldn't tackle the third day with only the largest, fastest front sprocket. Brian saved the day when he thought of breaking the middle sprocket off at the bend. One quick bend did it. Of course we wouldn't be able to use that middle gear range, but we could get by with the high and low ranges.
The other failure was the tube lever that is used to lift and lower the pontoons. It broke on Philip's side. He's a strong guy. We also noticed as we moved Rex to the campground that the ATV wheel on my side was leaking air at the bead. Brian again saved us, this time by driving into town for supplies. He bought some pipe that we used to drive the pontoon lever. And he bought one of those aeresol tire patch kits. Messy, but it worked.
The third day you really want to get started early. There are so many miles to cover. And to Ace you must cross the finish line before 5:00PM. Unfortunately young children are not compatible with early. We got in line near the end of the pack.
After several miles of driving on soft sand, Philip's knees and endurance were being seriously tested. That brought us to the first of two water crossings for the day. By the time we got there the weather had turned nasty. It was raining, bitter cold, and there was a driving wind, against us. It was about 2:00 and the officials wouldn't let us cross. I suppose its just as well. We watched as Hammer Dog gave it her best. Those two ladies were pedaling for all they were worth just to stay in one place. We knew from the bay crossing that we were just slightly slower than Hammer Dog. After a while the judges ruled that there would be no more crossings. To keep our ace we had to pedal back out and around the two water crossings to the base of Slimey Slope, and from there back into Ferndale. All before 5:00. That was clearly impossible for us. Andd there were plenty of other racers stranded with us. Dwayne Flatmo and I argued with the officials that they should just move the effective finish line to where we were all congregated. But they weren't budging. I figured there was no advantage in killing my team to try to meet an impossible goal. We pushed Rex out, thus forfeiting the Ace.
During this trip out I decided to loosen the brakes since we didn't need them while pushing. I then discovered that they had self tightened before the race. All three days, we had been driving with the brakes partially applied! I guess these brakes need to be adjusted a lot.
When we finally got back to the Campground we were told that the judges had changed their mind and decided to implement Dwayne's and my idea. We Aced after all! That made the rest of the trip back into town much easier.
We packed Rex onto the trailer and drove it to the outskirts of Ferndale. Then, as requested by the officials, we mounted Rex and drove it down main street to the regular Finish Line, greeted by cheering people.
So even tho it looked like we had lost the Ace for a second year, the gods were kinder to us this year. We are now Aces of the championship Kinetic Sculpture Race of Arcata to Ferndale.
When we got back to Corvallis I discovered that I had left our road wheels back on that cold, windy beach. So now I had a new top priority: make a new set of road wheels before the Corvallis race. But that is another story...
Top winners:
I really didn't expect us to do all that well in the Art judging, but we came in eleventh place. And in Engineering we came in nineth place. For speed we didn't do so well, coming in twenty-fourth. Having a top speed of 6MPH on the road really hurt us. And for Racers Choice we came in in the twenties. Our overall score tied us in twentieth place.
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We Aced the Arcata-Ferndale race in 1997. |
Time Rex team:
| This site: http://brown.armoredpenguin.com/~abrown/rex/TimeRex/Arcata1997/index.html |
My home site:
http://brown.armoredpenguin.com/~abrown |
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Last modified 11 Dec 2006 |
Copyright 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 |