On Friday, March 14, 2014 9:25:49 AM UTC-7, Jim Bronson wrote: > > You can't make something fly just by making it light. >
You are totally right. You cannot make a great tire just by making it light, either. Aircraft design, especially in the early days before prodigious horsepower could lift even huge weights, was a careful balance of lightness and strength. On bicycles, we still live in that age, because we cannot increase the horsepower much. Even a professional racer puts out only little more than a single horsepower, and not for long! Back to tires, there are many factors that have to be considered. We could make our tires lighter, but only at the expense of a greatly reduced longevity. We'd gain very little in speed, so to me, the trade-off was not worth it. The art lies in making the right compromises, and of course, everybody will value different compromises depending on how they ride. There is no "perfect" tire, but a variety of perfect tires optimized for different riding styles. Jan Heine Editor Bicycle Quarterly www.bikequarterly.com Follow our blog at http://janheine.wordpress.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
