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Subject: Must be dumb!!

Author: Must say stupid on Kenny's forehead!

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 09/24/04 8:31:21pm Well, it’s happened. Barry and his John Deere 3020 spanked Kenny G. and his John Deere 4320 HARD. I watched in awe to see that Barry has found that even in a slow sport like farm tractor pulling there are certain scientific laws that still can be applied that others in the sport have yet to consider taking advantage of. Barry used a careful combination of physics and aerodynamics (hard to believe I know) to conquer Kenny and the mighty 4320. The secret is in the placement of his hat on his head and the cant of his body! Simple I know, but how clever! He carefully turned his hat to the right (did you notice?), 90 degrees to the longitudinal centerline of the tractor on the start of his pull and then canted (leaned) his body over also to the right about mid track. To most of us at the time (myself included) it just looked like he was goofing around with his hat and then leaned over as if he was keeping an eye on the track and his wheel spin. But it was after the whoopin’ that I asked myself “self, how can this be?” Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was so obvious! The gentle breeze was coming across the track directly out of North exactly perpendicular to the longitudinal centerline of his tractor. I knew this, because Jim was driving in front of me with the grader tractor and kicking up the dust which was blowing in my face (note to self. Volunteer as flagman AFTER the track has been wetted). Anyway, back to the wind. Barry had placed his hat with the visor facing to the South in this case, exactly parallel to but out of the flow of the wind (the visor was blocked by the top of his big head which by the way grew a lot bigger after the whoopin’). Keeping the visor out of the wind at the early point of the pull kept the very aerodynamic forces that he would use at mid track from working against him at the start. As he reached about mid track, he leaned forward and down to his right such that his visor was approximately 45 degrees off vertical which kept the visor of his hat out of the north wind and instead exposed it to the rearward horizontal flow of the wind produced by his engine’s fan. The curvature of the visor acts like the airfoil on an airplane’s wing producing lift. (If you notice, Barry bends his visor more than most peoples’ hats. Until now I never thought much of it except that maybe it did a better job at keeping the sun out of his eyes. Now I know better!). This 45-degree angle was optimum in producing a lift vector with both a vertical and horizontal lift component. The vertical component effectively produced a lifting force on the front of the tractor (because he leaned forward of the tractor’s center of gravity) thereby transferring frontal weight up and back to the rear tires for increased friction (traction) while the right hand horizontal component of the lift vector produced a pull force to the right (again because he was leaning forward of the center of gravity) which kept the tractor tracking straight down the track (if you noticed, other pullers were tracking left as they got near the end of their pull). So you see, the secret is in the hat and how you use it. The unsuspecting Kenny never even had a chance! Very clever Barry! Bet you thought no one would ever catch on to your little trick but you were mistaken and now your secret is out! Follow Ups: [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]