That canopy reminded me of Fat Albert... :sifone:
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That canopy reminded me of Fat Albert... :sifone:
Great stuff in here. Glad to see the racers taking their safety seriously.
Lets make 2010 the year of Safe Racing!
What ever happened with the idea of testing at Stevens?
You got it Phragle. We call them "Piercing Strakes" . Our entire mask and strakes are Vacuum bagged and will be mounted to the cockpit as and additional layer of protection. Our "on staff" carbon laminate expert combined with outside experts have created a lightweight super strong shell that will increase the safety envelope.
Great job with the Safty upgrades!!!!
We did....The Lavin Foundation was started in 1987 by Marce and Chris Lavin as a result of a safety meeting called after Mark's death including Gary Garbrecht, Bob Nordskog, George Linder, Don Pruett, Dr. Matt Houghton, Bill Fauntleroy (Lifeline jackets), engineers from Bell Helmets, Texstar (F-16 canopy manufacturers), and me. That humble beginning begat the Lavin guidelines. The guidelines basically languished until a fatal accident took the lives of some Arab racers. This caused a major safety effort in UIM and the guidelines (with updates) became mandatory in their races. In the U.S. a combination of litigation worries, splintered racing organizations, and an almost maniacal desire to remove weight from race boats while making overweight and out of shape owner/drivers "comfortable" removed all serious safety development. Sadly even the UIM racers cut corners to save weight in recent years (with fatal consequences) until their safety systems were no more than the windowed "decorations" we see on so many hulls today.
I applaud the Geico team for their efforts and I'm sure they will admit that this is the result of wisdom through experience----- which can only be achieved after you spend enough time in the sport. The challenge therefore remains to gain the support of that plethora of racers who have not had enough time or experience to fully understand the risks involved.
Marc, Scotty, et al........ Keep up the good work,and if you need any help in not re-inventing the wheel, give us a call at any time..
T2x
"while making overweight and out of shape owner/drivers "comfortable":sifone::sifone:
Agreed on all of the above.
The other problem is that the sanctioning groups want boat count. The inspectors do not have the absolute authority to deem a design unsafe and leave it on the trailer. Not to mention the everyone wants to be friends part of offshore racing.
Mike A. has a very good accident reconstruction team I would bet he would share their learnings.
Steve
Bingo x 1000. , I talked to Gary Stray about your previous post and he asked for your #Quote:
I can't see how you would scale down weight, inertia, cockpit air/water pressure or the human body and its organs.
I've heard this put forth on many occasions- the concept of dynamic testing. Just off the top of my head, I can think of a handful of ways to crash an offshore boat. A forward stuff, a barrel roll, and like the Victory boat, a rearward crash. Probably lots of variations. Now we have speeds ranging between 100 and 180 mph. so someone is going to have to figure out how to crash in these different ways at these different speeds to test all the variables. Sounds expensive and technologically challenging.
I applaud the Geico team for what they're doing. It's smart to learn from the experiences of others. It may not be flawless, but it's leagues better than some of what's presently happening.
This same discussion is a very hot topic here in Europe also. We have had discussions on ways of testing canopies but it is hard to find good methods since the variations of impact forces are infinite. I personally think that we need to use computer simulations.
It's really great to see that you take safety seriously. The public opinion here in Europe is that racers in the US are less engaged in safety issues. Therefore it is great to see initiatives like these. Just to bad that the UIM and your american organizations does'nt work closer together. I hope there will be changes to that.
PS! Pardon my badly written english ;-)
Just to set the record strait, safety has been a priority for our team since its inception and we have continued to try and improve our boat year after year. We have been proactive and not reactive
T2x, so no testing? like i stated earlier, no one has tested these changes/modifications that anyone is doing. wether it be geico, skater, mti or DW.
But as far as I've read DW is the only that is using FRP engineering (High Modulas) that has far more experience working with FRP panels and laminates. For instance they have taken test panels on varying laminates and tested them to failure. This atleast gives a baseline for recommending laminate schedules.
Its great to say that you guys are working with military submarine MIT grads, but I'm pretty sure that wether it was a submarine or the Raptor jet that there was actual testing done. This is the point everyone seems to be overlooking. It's great that you guys are moving in a forward direction but there is no TESTING to say its going to work.
Is it really that hard to get Mystic to fabricate a canopy with the cockpit liner to form a pod and do some testing? What maybe 30k to build that, you guys had 10x that in props sitting on the floor.
Skater made a pod for dunk testing for OSS, they're half way there.