Book tunnel time
Sessions.
Four ways to use the tunnel, all with an engineer at the controls. Prices include VAT, the report and the smoke video. You bring the bike, the kit or the model.
001 · 2 hours · up to 10 runs
Rider position.
For time-triallists, triathletes and anyone who rides alone into the wind. We measure you as you ride now, then change one thing at a time and measure again, so every watt in the report has a cause.
- You bring
- Your bike, shoes, helmet and race kit
- We change
- Pad height and width, extension angle, head and hand position, helmet
- You take home
- CdA and watts for every run, the smoke video, a two-page report
- Price
- £420
A position session
Two hours, five steps. Most of the time you're riding; the rest you're looking at your own smoke.
- 01 · 15 min
Set-up
Your bike goes on the balance by its axles, on a trainer that turns the rear wheel. We check your saddle and bar heights against what you race on.
- 02 · 15 min
Baseline
Two runs in your current position at your race speed. Each run is two minutes of steady pedalling while the balance averages the drag.
- 03 · 60 min
One change at a time
Pads down, pads in, head down, a different helmet. Every change is measured; anything under 4 W is run again.
- 04 · 15 min
Smoke
With the best position set, we run the smoke wand over you and film it from the side, so you can see the wake you just shrank.
- 05 · 15 min
Report
We go through the numbers with you and send the report and video the same evening, with the measurements for your bike fitter.
002 · 3 hours · up to 16 runs
Helmets and kit.
Compare up to four helmets, skinsuits, overshoes or bottle set-ups. We run every item twice in a random order, and sweep the yaw from −10° to +10° so you see how each behaves in a crosswind, not only head-on.
- On
- You, or our mannequin if you'd rather not pedal for three hours
- Helmets in stock
- Eleven common road and TT models, sizes M and L
- You take home
- A ranked table with the spread of each result
- Price
- £640
003 · usually 2 days · quoted
Buildings and canopies.
Osborne Reynolds showed, in Manchester, that a scale model sees the same flow as the real thing when one number matches. That is why a 1:50 courtyard in a tunnel can tell you why a real canopy lifts. We make the model from your drawings, or test yours.
- Scales
- 1:50 to 1:200, on a 1.6 m turntable
- We measure
- Pressure at up to 32 taps, smoke on video from 16 wind directions
- You take home
- Plots, video and two or three options tested side by side
- Price
- Quoted, most studies from £1,800
004 · 8 hours
Wings, drones, prototypes.
A day of tunnel time for teams who know what they want to measure: university projects, drone arms, sails, wheelchair racers, bike brands with a new fork. You get the six-component balance, the turntable, the smoke and an engineer.
- Test section
- 2.4 × 1.8 m open jet, 0 to 60 km/h
- Balance
- Six components, logged at 1 kHz
- You take home
- Raw data as CSV at the end of the day
- Price
- £2,100 a day, £1,200 a half day
Before you come
What to bring. Race the tunnel the way you race the road.
- 01The bike, set up for racing, tyres pumped
- 02Shoes, helmet, skinsuit or the kit you race in
- 03Your race speed and the power you hold for it
- 04Your fitter's numbers, if you have them
- 05A towel. Two hours of pedalling is warm, even in 40 km/h of air.