| HPV team still one of the best |
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| Written by Adam Farquhar | |
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The past few weeks have seen the Human Powered Vehicle team in its annual West and East Coast competitions. This year the team had the opportunity to defend a national championship for the first time. In the west coast competition at the University of Nevada - Reno, Ben Kettler placed fourth in the male sprint, Whittney Metcalf placed third in the female sprint, and the team placed second in endurance. In terms of design, the speed bike placed third and the utility bike took second. For overall placement, the team took second.  The Missouri S&T HPV team places among the top in the nation the past two weekends. Taking place during the weekend of April 18-20, the West Coast competition’s location in Nevada began to present obstacles to the team soon after their arrival. Similar to the conditions that plagued the collegiate land speed record team last fall, fierce winds and cold temperatures remained the predominant weather conditions throughout the race. Apart from affecting the ability of the speed bikes to race as designed, the winds also proved detrimental to the officials’ original timing system of electronic gates. This prompted its replacement with a backup. Compounding this late alteration to the basic determinant of victory was confusion regarding the run-up distances for the sprint event, with some teams receiving greater run-up distances than others. Despite these challenges, both Kettler and Metcalf managed to place among the top four of 22 riders. With the slight improvement of conditions in weather and timing, the 65 km endurance race proved to be a better event and ended with the team coming from behind to take second. While the team held first for a fair portion of the event, a penalty flag for rider safety allowed the University of California - Chico to retake the lead. Kettler then began making up 20 seconds a lap regularly near the event’s end. Only running on a flat front tire for the last three miles prevented him from overtaking the leader from UC - Chico. Unfortunately, the utility trike did not fare as well in its race. This is the first year the team has constructed a vehicle for the utility event, an event intended to challenge teams in the design of a marketable trike for daily activities. As the name suggests, this trike is intended to be usable for a variety of daily tasks, including shopping, while maintaining safety. The problem with the team’s utility trike was the cumulative effect of strong winds and speed bumps at too high of speeds. With both conditions stressing the frame, the transmission mounts on the trike twisted and caused the chains to break as the trike turned into the wind on one portion of the track. An irreparable error on the race track, the utility trike had to be withdrawn from the event. This withdrawal put the utility trike in its overall 5th place, with the high marks in design offsetting the withdrawal. Following the intense competition at the West Coast competition, the Miners immediately headed out to Wisconsin this past weekend for the East Coast competition. Though judges at the West Coast competition had no issues with the team’s safety harness design, East Coast judges objected to the use of stitching over standard knots and forced the team to swap harness systems a mere hour before the start of the events. This forced replacement was in spite of the substantial testing conducted by the team in the university’s IDE lab. According to those test results, the safety restraints as designed could not have failed unless the bikes hit a solid wall at speeds in excess of 30 mph. Yet the judges decided the system was insufficiently secure and had it replaced regardless, a decision that would later cost the Miners. Winds and temperatures again caused the team trouble when a mistake was made in the gearing of the sprint bike, lowering its ratio for the first few runs in the sprint event. With the mistake in gearing, both Jerrod Bouchard and Ben Kettler managed to max out the gears on the run-up distance, placing a limit on their top speeds. By the time their mistake was discovered and fixed, the winds had increased to the point that remaining runs could not match previous times. In endurance, the combined performance of Whittney Metcalf, Ben Kettler, Evan Kleusner and Kyle Rackers led to a huge win for the Miners. The utility trike also entered the endurance event and fared well until the safety harness the judges forced the team to replace earlier failed at a critical time. This forced the trike to take a pit stop, and the team spent several costly minutes securing it again. In spite of the challenges from judges and the uncompromisingly unfavorable weather, the Miners maintained their position as one of the top teams in the nation. |
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