Welcome

Team Cygnus has developed a fully faired recumbent bicycle that can compete with the fastest recumbents in the world. The main goal is to use an optimum man-machine combination to break world records. The Cygnus team consists of technical specialists from various disciplines. Between them they have many years of experience with fully faired recumbents both in racing and in designing. All Cygnus team members are racers at the highest level. Every year they compete in national and international competitions such as Battle Mountain, the European Championship, the World Championship, and the Michigan Human Powered Speed Challenge, but they also attempt to break records on the tracks of RDW, DEKRA and Opel.

dinsdag 3 mei 2016

Big in Japan

Those of you who know their way around tracks will have noticed that the track in the last post wasn't the RDW track in Lelystad. Nor was it the track in Aldenhoven, the DEKRA track, or the track at Opel or Ford. We have been riding on the test track of the Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI) in Shirosato.

We were asked by the Japanese Public Broadcasting Company (NHK) to cooperate in a television program called Supreme Skills (Sugowaza). This program asks two teams to compete against each other to make an extreme effort. This time it was the Japanese team that will also take part in the World Human Powered Speed Challenge in Battle Mountain and Team Cygnus.
The Japanese team also had a chance to check out their performance before they will go to Battle Mountain in September.
After shooting some footage at the team members' homes or work place and at the Team Cygnus workshop in February, the rest of the filming was done in Japan at the end of March. In the Netherlands the film crew consisted of four persons; a director, a camara man, a sound man and an interpreter. In Japan everything was just huge. When we entered the JARI test track, we were under the impression that some kind of event was still going on. But that was just the film crew.

On Saturday we had the opportunity to test the bike a bit and the rehearsals for the filming of Sunday were done.

The program will broadcast on Saturday 7th May; on Japanese television that is.

5 opmerkingen:

  1. Hope you got some quality track time! It would be good to do an hour event if the network would pay to get some contenders there. It will be nice to see a Japanese team after all these years!

    BeantwoordenVerwijderen
  2. Oops!
    that was from George & Carole.

    BeantwoordenVerwijderen
  3. Hi George & Carole,
    We had a wonderful time out there. We are really looking forward to meeting you and the Japanese team at the WHPSC in Battle Mountain.

    BeantwoordenVerwijderen
  4. Oooh, yer all famous!

    (Tugs forelock, repeatedly shouts "Not worthy!")

    BeantwoordenVerwijderen
  5. Well you know, you got the T-shaped thing so you must be part of the crew. We might even consider giving you our autographs for free. We will bring some extra to Battle Mountain ;-)

    BeantwoordenVerwijderen