Originally Posted by
carleton
That's great feedback.
So, if one were to properly test, say, 4 frames (1 AL + 3 Carbon) how much time would you book? 4 hours?
I think 3-4 at least yeah. If you take care of absolutely everything but the tests (so the operator had to do nothing except swap the bikes out to eat up time) you could do a lot in 3 hours. The positive is for a track bike you really don't need to test the sweeps like you do for a road/tt/tri bike, but swapping the bikes themselves (or anything on them) is a bit of an ordeal that eats up your time. You need to go back to those bikes at least once to re-test and verify your results. I think you could get some good data in 3-4 hours... but you could spend forever in the tunnel and still not have all the answers.
It'd be nice to have runs without a rider on all the bikes as well, just for giggles. Some interesting difference come up as to what's fast when you compare bike only to bike+mannequin to bike+rider pedaling.
Here is the link to the Aero Shootout done last year. It's a good read and had some experts (Brian Stover and Heath Dotson) behind the scenes making sure everything was as close as possible.