And here are the models we created, so we could observe any errors, before making the real-life size land-yacht
I noticed in your beginners avi. that people have a tendency when tipping over to put their foot down to stop themselves. Warning! If they do this at speed there will be a good chance that they will over run that foot with disasterous consequences. Make sure they keep their feet on the steering bar until they stop. I have over run my foot at a starting line but due to the fact that i am "double" jointed i did not suffer too much. Always keep both feet on the steering bar until you stop.
Good advice TP1.... This should be of concern to newcomers to the sport.
That's the reason for the long seat on the LLMini, Class 5 also restricts your feet falling to the ground and blokarts keep your feet locked in safe.
Totally agree to that guys.
We stress the necessity to keep the feet on the rudder bar at all costs. During training we do not let them go solo until we are reasonably convinced they fully understand the consequences of having their feet dragged under the yacht. The instructors lift the wheels off the ground and capsize the whole yacht.....all the time the trainee must keep their feet on the rudder bar. This is repeated until it becomes second nature.
We have considered using toe clips and/or having feet contained AKA LLM. One thing that is a problem is the nature of our oval.....it being wet and slow often results in the land yacht being unable to carry through in a tack. We are able to complete the turn by engaging opposite lock and pushing backwards with our feet.....this would be difficult with a floor.
What do you think of this arrangment, this is a locking cleet that locks the mainsheet into place. Do you think this is a good idea or not??
Seat belts and toe clips lock the person into the yacht, over the years I have seen 2 people nearly drown in an overturned land yacht that flipped on a beach and a wave broke over them. Similar with toe clips if your feet are locked to the pedals and you have a fast crash you may break a leg, if there were no clips the feet would slip off. [maybe with a cut leg but not snapped bones]
PLEASE look at the yachts you have built critically and think what if !!!!!
ALWAYS THINK SAFETY
With the blokart, LLM, class3 mini-wheel base you can reach the wheels with your hands to bring the yacht around if you stall during the tack and they're that light on the front wheel that at most you can bring your feet closer to your body and skid the front by turning one wheel in reverse and the other forward
Part of the design on LLM's a weak pedal bar. If you hit something head on at speed the sudden stop will bend or break the steering bar not your ankles
We have added a feet containment system to our old land yacht. We found some coreflute that had become roadside rubbish, cut it to size and wrapped it around the frame. It is held in place with cable ties. This is the same material we have used extensively on our HPV's. It is very light, strong and bounces back into shape. We have sailed with it over the last few days and it has performed well.....the crash test dummies report their feet are well contained. The down side is as expected, the opposite lock turns cannot be performed and we have to use our hands ...wheel chair fashion to get out of a wet grass stall.
***UPDATE***
Latly we have been unactive in the forums because we have taken a few weeks off landsailing because I done a chinease gype and unfortunalty bent the good landyatch.
but were back and ready
In a few minutes I will upload a video i created on movie maker 3 weeks ago on Friday . . . it was really windy that day!! from my experience
Dog damn it!
We finally got to sail on a real beach with a decent breeze. Mark 1 land yacht had a new set of Falshal wheels and Mark 2 had some really spiffy looking spoked plastic 20' that an ex student had fixed with sealed bearings.
Things started slowly and got more and more exciting as a cold frontal system started to kick in. The troops had never had so much fun and were blown away by both the acceleration and the speeds they were able to get up to!
With the wind gusting to 30++ knts we rerigged both with our smallest sails and got into some serious sailing. The beach was only sailable for 150 meters and narrowed out to only just a tight turning circle at the fast end. (We had to run into the sea to turn a few times before the tide went out enough!)The other end was a little wider and had a comfortable amount of soft sand to help slow down in before the turn.
Things went down hill from there. Bodie went into the soft stuff at a huge rate of knots and ran over a sharp stick.....Mark 1 was out with a puncture.
I was in Mark 2 and performed a massive power slide as I had run out of options with no beach left after being hit by a huge gust. The wheel just buckled and gave way........troops said it was the most spekky thing they had seen in a while.
The moral for our tale of woe is that we are now saving up to inverst in Falshal wheels.
All a bit sad really......those wheels had performed so well....for a couple of hours!!
Guess I need to go on a diet
The troops now see how a ketch rig would be overkill in those conditions......one tiny sail and 2 crew would have been more than enough fun. Now to incorporate a third mast step option perhaps......back to the drawing board!
Thats some great sacrifices to the speed gods there folks, well done!![}:)] glad it gave you ideas , not just dissapiontment.
trick for punctures, find hole in tube, dab of adhesive silastic, half hour, and back in tyre no patch
We had the puncture repair kit and spare wheels etc along the "bad" end of the beach, about 1k away where the rest of the school community had set up for an end of year picnic etc.
To get to the "good" end we had to trudge through 100m of soft gunky mud...plus the rest of the walk. We then ran out of time as the school bus had to leave etc etc
Next time WE will decide what beach to go to!
Good to see the troops fired up......I suspect a few may be constructing their own land yachts in various parts of the state while they are on holidays. They didn't believe me when I told them the type of speeds you could get up to...they thought I was kidding.......now they are converts!
Well some of the troops just sent me some pics of the wheel disaster!
Typical....we were having so much fun!
Well, we are back at school and have started to put this thing together. We found an old scooter at the tip which had been flattened in all the right places......let's hope some poor kid wasn't flatttened with it. It had a very robust head set ..so we decided to use that......if it bends..well, we will just custom build something stronger.
We still have one of those plastic 20" wheels....with nice bearings and 2 sets of axles. The tyres have done about 2 hours on sand and were performing really well until "too fat to fly" broke the other wheel......if this one fails we will go for a wheelbarrow wheel at the front.
The scooter was cut and welded to some 40mm square section 2mm thick tube. This will slide nicely over the next size down and will be welded in place when we sort out the masts and seating positions.
As you can see from the pics we have decided to use a low pivot steering system.
We have fabricated a foot plate for the front passenger/crew. At this stage we will not add the tandem pedddling arrangement until we are satisfied the contraption will perform under sail.
Some smart kids have suggested we include a small V8!! Typical[}:)][}:)]
When I saw the metal foot supports I just shook my head ..... have you thought safety?
What would happen in a crash?
Have a look at the pictures of the LLMini seat and see how they are constructed.
It might give you some ideas.
Good point Gismo
We are very conscious of what happens in a crash.
What you see is just the initial fabrication, it will also include extra bars which become part of the mast support....and will stop feet from falling out. We also have side impact bars and all of this will be enclosed in a coreflute cowling for extra protection.
We have crashed frequently in the prototypes and have not as yet had any injuries......would like to keep it that way.
as a suggestion , why not make the footwell much deeper, this will stopp feet falling out and get the sharper edges away from the feet
Hi
I've draw up a sketch of how we intend to construct the front foot pan. I does not include the side impact bars which will become an importantl part of the LY's structure or the coreflute body. We could also include some toe type straps.....although there seems to be some criticism of that method. Most of our sailing will be done in a paddock or on the oval.....not much chance of drowning in Campania. When on the beach, we could dispense with them.
I've used the "eyebrow" method in the reconstruction of "Kristina's" cabin and cockpit. I did this by splitting the pipe with an angle grinder and welding it full length to the cabin structure. There are NO sharp edges.
With the LY I will not have to fully weld the eyebrows to make them soft.