With the layover steering now common place... Has this increased the turning circle to the yacht?
If so has anyone found problems in VERY tight sailing situations? ie. carparks
I'd be interested to know what the people think of this. I myself don't have the experience to say one way or the other except that I try to go about halfway between upright steering (bike style) and flat layover.
I'd say my reasons are aestetics and I didn't like the steering pivot to pushrod angle being any further from 90* than the semi upright layout. Hope I explained that correctly. 
the turning circle is mainly affected by the wheelbase length. the LM will turn in 2.5 yacht lengths ,but if set up as a handsteerer, like a blowie yuo can get it down to 2 yacht lengths. the bowies at speed really scrub front tyres ,due to the pilots oversteering to get a fast tack.
Icertainly wouldnt go back. the front off the PROMO is the best ive ever had
Blokarts have a narrow front tyre (12.5" x 2.25") with a trigonic cross section (ie small foot print when upright but increased when laid over), that is until 2008. The new blokarts have a round profile tyre as fitted to many prams and golf trolleys today. A bit like a racing slick.
My experience has been that I wear the tread off the sides of the trigonic front tyre long before I wear it off the middle of the tyre, also a front tyre usually outlasts two or three pair of rear tyres, especially when sailing on bitumen, concrete or gravel.
The blokart seems to benefit with a narrow front tyre giving better grip due to smaller footprint and therefore greater contact pressure per unit of contact area.
Whether this configuration of wide rear tyres and narrow front tyre gives optimal steering for a class 5 yacht or other, is for somebody else to say as blokart is my only land yacht experience to date.
An available blokart accessory is the "big fork" which allows the fitment of the same size wheel as the rear wheel to the front of the blokart. This configuration was used by Mr. Blokart himself (Paul Beckett) in the performance class at last year's nationals on the beach at Yeppoon.
On varying surfaces this may prevent "burying" of the front wheel in softer patches and therefore maintain speed but at the sacrifice of grip in turns if using a ribbed tread on the front.
My suggestion (for a blokart at least) is for the same sized rims all round with the widest ribbed tyre on the rear with the narrowest block tread tyre on the front.
Does that sound logical??? Cheers Cisco.
one of the nice things about a correctly aligned lay over set up is that as the yacht heels or lift a wheel the front wheel maintains it alignment and tracks true . in the older fork set up the yacht would start to round up to windard causing the yacht to heel more ........... .
it is also far more responsive in correcting slide ina high speed drift turn.
FAZE 5's favourite set up i a 20" bmx front and 4.00x8 rear , but he aways says you need really good rim that wont distort
Hi Paul,
Now I'm totaly confused. I am at the stage where I can start to build the front end of my C/5. I dont know what style of steering to apply, do I go with the "fork" style as used on most (?) L/Y's or do I use the style as drawn for the Pacific Magic?
What does the steering arrangement on the PROMO look like and what actually is a Promo? Have I missed something here?
The wheel I have for the front is a Fallshaw, 400mm in diameter including the tyre. The rear wheels are the same. If I use the usual "forks style" of steering, I can change the size of the wheel dia. with very little trouble if I chose to. If I use the PM style of steering, I cant change to a larger wheel dia. without surgery to the "steering tube" as this part must be absolutely vertical for best and consistent results. What are the pros' and cons' of each design of steering? What to do, what to do???
(insert totally confused smiley here ..(ª¿ª)..
Joe
Kody cant help me, she is sound asleep 
Heres the PROMO front end with a fallshaw wheel. . Its a layover unit with a steerin pin angle of 30degrees. I have basically got the whole front as simple as I can make it. The PROMO is a restricted design cl 5 yacht that FISLY has adopted to make it cheaper for people to get into racing. the biggest restrictions are the RIMS (4.00x8) max and the seat must be on top of the chassis. Theree are also materials constraints that preclude the use of Exotic materials. the resulting yachts are very close to what we are sailing in Australia. I built this yacht as a first step to a good promo class yacht that we could take to Europe and be competative .
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the steering push rod linkage is very simple, no pivots or knuckle joints. I dont like cables.
Previous to this design I had used the C bar as seen on the PM, but this is simply better. . I would stick wih the 4.00x8 front as it is a good compromise and reliable.
Hi Paul
Thanks so much for your info and help. I will definitely go with the set-up you have shown. It looks really great. Once I get all the "honey-do's" completed, I can start again on the yacht. I expect to have it racing up and down Farnbourgh Beach before Christmas. More photos will come soon.
Kody
Of all the yachts you have posted pics of Paul, I like this one and crazy trav's OTT the best. Simplicity is beautiful.
Cheers Cisco.
sorry I dont have any drawings of that front , but its simple to draw full size. remember the angle of the pivot is 30degrees off horizontal, and than just draw eveything else full size. I do it on a sheet of chipboard , you can then pull the angles and measurements straight off the fullsize plans. afterward the chipboard is turned over to the clean side and used as th extensions for my sewing table.( always 2 uses , if you want to justify all your crap)
same front end on travs OTT.
