Inclinometers

Geraint Jones said:

But, but, that depends on which way the wind is blowing.
You need an anemomi...anemony...anemome... wind meter on
your bike too, and don't believe anyone who tells you it
won't work.

Carl Fogel's wind meter thread on wreck.bike.tech ...
<http://tinyurl.co.uk/x6wa> or
<http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.bicycles.tech/browse_frm/thread/ddfad849737422>.

--
Dave...

On 23 Feb 2006 03:33:11 -0800, "John_Kane" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Paul

(') said:

Does anyone know if there is a supplier of a reasonably priced cycly
mounted inclinometer in the UK?

D'oh!

An inclinometer is definitely, 100%, guaranteed not going to work on a
bicycle, for a reason so obvious you will see it immediately if you
think. A gyroscopically driven artificial horizon might work.

I must be missing something again.
Stick a plumb bob and a protractor on the bike. Ride bike. When
measurement needed stop bike, read off meaurement. I am pretty sure
that Fitzpatrick in "The Bicycle in Wartime" reposts a US army officer
doing something similar when checking out routes for moving artillery.
John Kane, Kingston ON Canada

Tried it!

Would probably work very well if you had the tools and engineering skills to do
the job properly. I didn't! It's easier to just get off and do it.

Simon Brooke said:

Yup. If the bump is big enough the cycle can decelerate /very/ rapidly!

The same if often but not always true for the rider. ;-)

Jon

On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:06:31 +0000 (UTC),

(Geraint Jones) said:

[email hidden] (Paul) wrote:
| I only want to check out my wimpishness and see just how steep
| the hills I feel
| I can barely handle are.

But, but, that depends on which way the wind is blowing.
You need an anemomi...anemony...anemome... wind meter on
your bike too, and don't believe anyone who tells you it
won't work.

This is true, but you (well, I) tend to be going so slowly when at the limit of
my hill climbing ability that the wind component makes very little difference
unless it's blowing quite strongly.

There's no reason why an anemometer won't work on a bike (they're called
airspeed indicators and you can get one off any old plane you happen to have
lying around). Obviously, they won't tell you the speed of the wind (unless you
stop and face into it), but they can certainly tell you, in conjunction with the
speed reading from your computer, what the wind component you're fighting is.
(Of course, you'd need to reversible pitot if the ind was behind you!).

Simon Brooke said:

What's the point then? When you're stopped, you can lay the bike down on
its side or even turn it umop ap!sdn. Either way, you're none the wiser.
While you're on the bike, and moving, the direction of 'down' as
measured by the clinometer is a product of your speed and the radius of
the turn you are negotiating, and is in any case exactly the same as the
amount of lean required to negotiate that turn... So not only won't
work, but redundant anyway.

Ah, you thought I wanted to measure the bank angle of the bike!

That's quite amusing: using an inclinometer to measure the bank angle of a bike.
Don't think you'd get anything other than vertical unless you were falling off
(or sliding).

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I only want to check out my wimpishness and see just how steep the
hills I feel I can barely handle are.

Ah! Pitch, not roll. OK, as you were. The answer is about 1 in 4, for an
upright. Steeper than that and you can't keep the front wheel down.

I doubt that I can cycle up a one in four hill. Of course, I can cycle up hills
that _look_ as if they're one in four.

I did once cycle up a _very_ short stretch of hill where the front wheel kept
lifting, but I doubt I could manage more that 20-30 metres at that sort of
slope.

Simon Brooke said:

Ah! Pitch, not roll. OK, as you were. The answer is about 1 in 4, for an
upright. Steeper than that and you can't keep the front wheel down.

For 50% of cases I think.

For the other 50% the problem becomes one of not pitching over the
bars.

Tim

Mark Tranchant said:

Paul wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Does anyone know if there is a supplier of a reasonably priced cycly mounted
inclinometer in the UK?

Quoted message said:

Sorry, couldn't resist. Inclinometers won't work on bikes, as there's
too much motion. The best you could do is a flash computer with
altimeter and rate of climb.

A well damped one should work well, except for the problem that you
probably want the average inclination of a dozen or so yards, not just
the inclination of the bike at this spot on an undulating road. To do
that you want a sighting inclinometer where you choose your two
reference points on the hill. Many sighting compass manufacturers do
pocket sighting inclinometers.

--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

Paul said:

I doubt that I can cycle up a one in four hill. Of course, I can cycle up hills
that _look_ as if they're one in four.

Cycling up one in four hills sounds about right to me. I walk up a
second, and ride down the other two.

...d

Paul said:

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Paul

(') said:

Does anyone know if there is a supplier of a reasonably priced cycly
mounted inclinometer in the UK?

D'oh!

An inclinometer is definitely, 100%, guaranteed not going to work on a
bicycle, for a reason so obvious you will see it immediately if you
think. A gyroscopically driven artificial horizon might work.

An inclinometer will work perfectly well on a bike.

It might not work very well on a _moving_ bike (although if you are coasting
downhill, or it is sufficiently damped, I can't see why it wouldn't give you a
reasonable reading).

However, I was actually intending to stop to take the reading. It just saves all
the get off bike, prop up bike, get out home made inclinometer, get down on
hands and knees ... you get the picture.

I only want to check out my wimpishness and see just how steep the hills I feel
I can barely handle are.

Why not use a GPS? It'll give you both change in altitude and distance
travelled. From that you can work out the angle of the incline.

druidh

druidh said:

Paul said:

Simon Brooke said:

in message <[email hidden]>, Paul
([email hidden]'😉 wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

>Does anyone know if there is a supplier of a reasonably priced cycly
>mounted inclinometer in the UK?

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

An inclinometer is definitely, 100%, guaranteed not going to work on a
bicycle, for a reason so obvious you will see it immediately if you
think. A gyroscopically driven artificial horizon might work.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

An inclinometer will work perfectly well on a bike.

It might not work very well on a _moving_ bike (although if you are coasting
downhill, or it is sufficiently damped, I can't see why it wouldn't give you a
reasonable reading).

However, I was actually intending to stop to take the reading. It just saves all
the get off bike, prop up bike, get out home made inclinometer, get down on
hands and knees ... you get the picture.

I only want to check out my wimpishness and see just how steep the hills I feel
I can barely handle are.

Quoted message said:

Why not use a GPS? It'll give you both change in altitude and distance
travelled. From that you can work out the angle of the incline.

That would work over a long hill. For short hills the noise in GPS
altitude readings is much too great. That's why for the use of walkers
(who also care a lot about the precise inclination of hills) GPS
manufacturers produce GPS units with added barometric
altimeters. AFAIK Garmin produce the only ones which are capable of
cleverly autocalibrating themselves by using a smoothed function of
GPS altitude, and thus cancelling out (to a useful extent) the
vagaries of barometric pressure changes due to changing weather.

I've used one of these on a bike and it does give accurate enough
readings for local hill inclination estimations, although you have to
do the estimation by means of post-trip calculations, ideally in a
computer.

--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]