Larger rear tire.

[Water Warrior 2]

Who cares about off topic. That was a fascinating bit of info. Sounds like a tremendous amount of coordination and effort by people who care.

[DAN]

It is really exciting to do this, just imagine escorting a P-51 Mustang through a crowd of people. The airside ground safety bikes are only a very small portion of the volunteers. Airside you have at lease 100 flag men/women dividing the planes by type and directing them toward different areas designated by type parking or parking and camping areas. Volunteer air controllers, workshop volunteers (metal shop, fabric shop, 10 different shops), security volunteers, medical first responders, emergency services, even the refuse collectors have a large team of volunteers. I'm sure there are a couple of thousand volunteers that work the show, some (the "early birds") arrive in October to start preparations for a end of March first of April event. This air show is a fantastic place to immerse yourself in any facet of aviation (including Motorcycle enthusiasts). The best part is free entrance and free camping for the volunteers. All kinds of evening entertainment, hundreds of seminars to choose from and a few nice parties to attend, all right on the Sun-N-Fun grounds. It makes a great week plus. If you don't get to the show this year, remember when you're frozen in next year this might be a good place to escape for a week of bike riding. --Dan--

PS: For the b
Brits reading this post there is a large group of young British scouts that come as volunteers each year that work very hard in many areas of the Air show particularly with War Bird parking. A great group of young people.

[alantf]

Wow, I used to love going to the airshows on the military airfields in England. Just two airports on this island (for international airlines - one passenger, & one freight) so haven't been to one in years. One I especially liked was at RAF Culdrose in Cornwall. A helicopter base, so they got helicopters from all over the world.

[DAN]

Update: Back from the air show. Only rode 155 miles in 1 and 2nd gear this year. poor weather the first 3 days limited aircraft arrivals, but last 3 days were perfect. Enough of the airshow, so how did the 130/90-16 front and the 140/90-15 work out? The only thing I can say not described above is 1: raise the front fender 1" higher (or more if you want) as the 3/4" I used is minimal and 2: above 40 mph the bike seems to be more stable, probably due to the greater weight and diameter of the tires giving more gyroscopic forces to the wheels. 3: riding up the raised sides of the taxi ways almost on a paralell coarse ( a 2" to 4" drop/rise) caused no problems. The D404 dunlop tires smoothly rode up onto and off the pavement into the grass with no side pull or any kind of jerk, just a steady ride. The rain soaked grass fields with grass and standing water were no problem to ride through. If you stopped the rims sank into the grassy sandy mud up to the rim/spoke level, much more stable if speed was kept at 10 mph or greater. The wider fat tires seemed to stay on top of the wet grass/mud better and just puched right through at 10 - 15 mph. I may post a fender "how to raise higher" 130mm tire install in the "how to" section in the next week as a seperate topic. --Dan--

[Water Warrior 2]

Glad to hear the show was a success. And you got to scrub in the new tires with all sorts of weather and surfaces.