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View Poll Results: Opinion poll for what happened during 1974 original Sky Cycle "flight"
"Pilot" BAILED on flight by "Yankin' the leever" ! 5 31.25%
Vehicular malfunction 11 68.75%
Voters: 16. You may not vote on this poll

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  #11  
Old 03-20-2018, 02:30 PM
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ghrocketman ghrocketman is offline
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Before I buy that 'excuse' I want to see the ORIGINAL configuration flown unmanned.
If it prematurely deploys the chute, no leever-yankin' could take place unmanned.
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  #12  
Old 03-20-2018, 05:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ghrocketman
I'm thinking that was a convenient EXCUSE for what really happened.
BAILED by yankin' the leever.

Honestly, I don't think we will really ever know.
From a safety standpoint, it sure seems like riding out the flight would have been the right option.
Unlike many others on this forum, I DEFINITELY don't give the original 'pilot' credit for "intelligence" whatsoever and never will. Belligerent, yes, intelligent NO.
Way more "guts" than BRAINS, hence the number of serious CRASHES.

You're right that we can't know for sure unless they tested a mockup of the chute release after the jump. More guts than brains, yes. He was a smart guy when it came to publicity, but a dolt when it came to doing stupid crap like blowing all his money and going deep into debt, assaulting women, etc.

However, he knew that HD would pay him a crap load of money if he jumped their bikes. He knew he could easily obtain a bike that would make his jumps seem easy and people would quit paying attention. When he moved to the HD XR750 dirt tracker in 1970, he claimed it was for the strength of the frame and the power of the engine. He could have built a custom frame with longer travel motocross suspension and a honkin two stroke for light weight power. The crashes probably weren't intentional, but he knew that without them, people wouldn't waste a nickel to watch him anymore. Why do people watch NASCAR? They don't go to see cars turn left 800 times in a 500 mile race. They watch to see them crash...and their guy occasionally win.
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  #13  
Old 03-21-2018, 03:46 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
You're right that we can't know for sure unless they tested a mockup of the chute release after the jump. More guts than brains, yes. He was a smart guy when it came to publicity, but a dolt when it came to doing stupid crap like blowing all his money and going deep into debt, assaulting women, etc.

However, he knew that HD would pay him a crap load of money if he jumped their bikes. He knew he could easily obtain a bike that would make his jumps seem easy and people would quit paying attention. When he moved to the HD XR750 dirt tracker in 1970, he claimed it was for the strength of the frame and the power of the engine. He could have built a custom frame with longer travel motocross suspension and a honkin two stroke for light weight power. The crashes probably weren't intentional, but he knew that without them, people wouldn't waste a nickel to watch him anymore. Why do people watch NASCAR? They don't go to see cars turn left 800 times in a 500 mile race. They watch to see them crash...and their guy occasionally win.
I agree. NASCAR race watchers don't *want* people to crash, but if crashes occur, they want to see them--it's the sort of thing you can't *not* look at, like one day at our airport when I heard loud thumps during a Cargolux 747's takeoff roll, glanced up, and saw one of its inboard engines on fire! Regarding the original Skycycle's premature parachute deployment:

I don't think Evel chickened out. Robert Truax's hypothesis about the parachute cover may have been correct, but Evel could still have triggered the 'chute too soon *without* having panicked. If memory serves, the Skycycle's parachute system was deployed by a "dead-man switch" (just in case he experienced a black-out [or maybe a red-out, had the Skycycle spun rapidly--if, say, a fin had failed], as Truax left nothing to chance). It's possible that the acceleration--even if "on spec"--was greater than what Evel was expecting (mentally anticipating), and if his hand slipped, or if he momentarily relaxed it to re-brace himself against the acceleration, that's all it would have taken, and had he made such a basic mistake, he could easily have been too embarrassed to admit it afterward.
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  #14  
Old 03-21-2018, 09:30 AM
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Attempting ANY of the stunts he did on any sort of bike produced by Hardly-Movingson (heavy, slow, no useful amount of suspension, infinite other problems) was totally MORONIC.
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When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL
, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !

Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, and HAVOC !
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  #15  
Old 03-21-2018, 08:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ghrocketman
Attempting ANY of the stunts he did on any sort of bike produced by Hardly-Movingson (heavy, slow, no useful amount of suspension, infinite other problems) was totally MORONIC.

Yep. Unless it was a custom frame with a Harley engine that wasn't a Harley. HD had to start using Rotax engines in their dirt track bikes to remain competitive. I can't remember when it started, but I know they were using Rotax in the mid 80's and calling them HD. The AMA eventually changed all the rules to cheat for HD just like the NHRA did for drag racing so the HD style motors could became competitive again. Same crap happened in AMA and World Superbike road racing to make Ducati and HD/Buell competitive, but only Ducati was successful with rules allowing much lower minimum weight and much greater displacement.
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  #16  
Old 03-21-2018, 09:43 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
Yep. Unless it was a custom frame with a Harley engine that wasn't a Harley. HD had to start using Rotax engines in their dirt track bikes to remain competitive. I can't remember when it started, but I know they were using Rotax in the mid 80's and calling them HD. The AMA eventually changed all the rules to cheat for HD just like the NHRA did for drag racing so the HD style motors could became competitive again. Same crap happened in AMA and World Superbike road racing to make Ducati and HD/Buell competitive, but only Ducati was successful with rules allowing much lower minimum weight and much greater displacement.
So in other words, Harley-Davidson's fastest "vehicle" is the AQM-37 Jayhawk? (They became, at least for a time, the manufacturer of its LR64 two-chamber liquid propellant rocket engine [see: http://www.google.com/search?ei=lBe...1.0.JAWLfHJySXc ].)
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  #17  
Old 03-21-2018, 10:04 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blackshire
So in other words, Harley-Davidson's fastest "vehicle" is the AQM-37 Jayhawk? (They became, at least for a time, the manufacturer of its LR64 two-chamber liquid propellant rocket engine [see: http://www.google.com/search?ei=lBe...1.0.JAWLfHJySXc ].)

LOL, I reckon so. Their race bikes aren't very fast unless someone else built the engines. There is just so much you can expect from a potato-potato-potato noise maker. It accelerates from zero to "I'm gonna blow that thing up if he keeps revving that @&*$ thing in the driveway" in less than 10 seconds.

HD may have welded up the combustion chamber and assembled the parts of what looks like an extremely simple liquid fuel engine, but they sure as heck didn't design it!
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  #18  
Old 03-21-2018, 11:05 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
LOL, I reckon so. Their race bikes aren't very fast unless someone else built the engines. There is just so much you can expect from a potato-potato-potato noise maker. It accelerates from zero to "I'm gonna blow that thing up if he keeps revving that @&*$ thing in the driveway" in less than 10 seconds.
But it always "marks its spot" (with oil), as a friend of mine--a Harley "liker" but not rabid fan--mentioned. :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by tbzep
HD may have welded up the combustion chamber and assembled the parts of what looks like an extremely simple liquid fuel engine, but they sure as heck didn't design it!
The story I heard, while looking for AQM-81A Firebolt scale data many years ago, was that at one point, Harley-Davidson purchased an industrial building that--unbeknownst to them--happened to contain the LR64 engine tooling (I'm guessing that it may have been a subcontractor that actually "cut and welded the metal" for Aerojet, which developed the engine; there was an apparent "AQM-37 production gap" of some years, before more were ordered in the 1990s [the AQM-37C/D version is still in limited production, now by Raytheon]). This website (see: http://www.ridingvintage.com/2013/0...lds-rocket.html ) says (about the Harley-Davidson-made AQM-37 rocket engines):

"Before AMF bought Harley-Davidson, they had a contract with the US Navy building rocket engines. Production of these engines continued after their acquisition of Harley, being built alongside the motorcycles that came out of the York, PA plant. The model LR-64 was used in the AQM-37A "Jayhawk", a supersonic target drone missile, which was produced by the Beechcraft Corporation. These were used by the US military to simulate different kinds of missile attacks. Some of the models were even fitted with a two-stage parachute so they could be recovered." (The ablative-coated AQM-37A/D [see: http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-37.html - Rocketarium's scale kit depicts the AQM-37C] can even reach 100 km [62.1 miles] altitude, a range of 425 km [265 miles], and a terminal velocity of Mach 5, when flown in a ballistic missile simulation flight profile.)
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  #19  
Old 03-21-2018, 11:23 PM
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I just came across *this* www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJoxVnmCF8g Harley-Davidson film from 1985, when they were static firing a single-chamber, variable-thrust AQM-37 rocket engine (the operational AQM-37 versions use--and have used--a two-chamber LR64 engine, consisting of a booster chamber and a sustainer chamber (the larger booster chamber shuts down after the vehicle reaches its desired cruise speed, which is maintained by the smaller sustainer chamber), and:

Here (see: www.youtube.com/results?search_query=aqm-37d ) are AQM-37 (mostly AQM-37D) target flight videos.
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Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
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