Human Powered Vehicles (HPV)
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Lafleur/Varna Record Report - by Paul Buttemer VARNA sets new records! - by Carole Leone

LAFLEUR/VARNA RECORD REPORT - by

In late July of 1998, Robert Lafleur, Team Varna and ), and IHPVA officials (Pierre Laliberté, , George Leone and John Tetz) congregated in Blainville, Québec, Canada. PMG Technologies, a company in Blainville, allowed us the use of their large racetrack to make record attempts in various categories as recognized by the IHPVA.


THE VENUE

PMG Technologies owns a large facility and several tracks.  The track we used, called Alpha, is 6.86 km in length and is very level, the difference between the highest and lowest point being 3.8 meters. The track is roughly oval, with the corners and both straightaways all being about 1.7 km long.  The front straightaway has two very slight S-bends.  The track surface is hard and has low rolling resistance, although it was paved about 20 years ago and has some cracks and repaired sections.  The bumps were noticeable, but we were able to find a path that missed most of the ones that would cause speed loss, and PMG staff did some beautiful last-minute repair of the very worst ones.

    The sprint courses were set up on the back straightaway, which is the smoothest section of the track, and has an average downgrade of about 0.07%, dropping about 1.2 meters in 1700 meters.  (This is close to one tenth the allowable grade - the IHPVA rules allow a 0.67% downgrade, or a drop of 11.3 meters in 1700 meters.)  When Sam made a sprint attempt, he would take one full lap of the track to gradually get up to about 70 kph, then would have over 2 km to accelerate to final speed.

    Normally, the weather in Blainville at the end of July is perfect for HPV riding - daily high temperatures around 25C - 30C, relative humidity below 50% and calm winds.  However, July 1998 was an exception (el Niño aftermath?).  Temperatures were a little colder than expected and the humidity was higher than normal, but it was the wind that gave us a real scare.  Every day the winds averaged between 25 and 40 kph, and varied up and down in random cycles.  Several places on the course were gusty because of the surrounding terrain, and as a result, the track was generally not rideable at all during the day.  On most days there was a window (of calm wind conditions) in the early morning and just before sunset.  The early morning window was very unpredictable.  Sometimes we would get up before dawn, and the wind would already be howling.  Sometimes we would get up, see calm conditions and hurry to the track only to see the wind rise before we could even warm up.  We were at the track for 15 days, and were only able to take advantage of the morning window once, for some of Sam's required sprint backup runs.  Paul had one morning 100 km record nullified by winds over the legal limit.  We also missed a couple of morning chances due to bad luck and/or poor planning.  In the evening, the winds would usually calm down to within legal strength about 30 to 60 minutes before sunset.  Unfortunately, the temperature would also plummet (making for more air resistance).  But, in the end, we had five evening sessions, four of which resulted in records with legal wind conditions.

    The PMG Technologies facility is actually a proving grounds and is not suitable for public-view events.  All vehicular movement is governed by a controller, and one must ask permission by radio to enter a track, and inform the controller when leaving a track.  A small paved area and garage are adjacent to the entrance to the Alpha track, where we were given some space for our operation.  We have discussed the future possibility of holding a small invitational event on the Alpha track, and the track manager has agreed in principal.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

    We would like to thank all our officials for their time, patience and proficiency.  Each venue presents unique problems for officiating.  To make attempts on eight records, we had six different course arrangements which required planning and time to set up.  The officials were busy all day, every day, and in no way could the job have been done any better!  Pierre took three months out of his life prior to our arrival to take care of all the thousands of details that needed to be attended to.  The record attempts would not have happened at all without his help.

    We would also like thank all the staff at PMG Technologies.  They were always friendly, helpful, and frequently went far beyond the call of duty to accommodate our unusual and unfamiliar requests.  We hope that we have made a good name for the HPV community at PMG, and that we will be welcome guests in the future.

  RESULTS - - Click here to see a detailed chart of results.

VARNA sets new records! - by

From July 16 to the 24th George and I were official observers at a record attempt session by the Varna team outside of Montreal. The venue was a huge auto test track (approximately a 4 mile oval). The track had not been repaved in many years and was very bumpy in sections, otherwise I believe the speeds would have been even greater. After the first week, John Tetz drove up to be an observer, along with Pierre Laliberte of Quebec, who was the main person who secured the site for the team and who was an observer the entire time.

During the two weeks a total of 7 records were broken by the two Varna bikes and riders, Sam Wittingham (200 m, 500 m, kilometer, mile and hour) and Paul Buttemer (10 k and 100 k). Four were better than the high and low altitude records, three were new low altitude records. One record, the 4000 meter, was broken by Robert Lafleur. He broke both the previous high and low altitude records.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE WORLD RECORDS!