As a newby asking basic questions and for advice before buying a bike, I must say how civil, helpful, and intelligent I have found members of this forum. Thank you for treating my odd requirements with patience.
NRG has in some senses just hit the jackpot, and I will deal with that below.
First,
tilson: Yes I measure road running race courses. The requirement for worst case errors is one part in one thousand, under ideal conditions with no wobbling and good surfaces I can get repeatability nearly 10 times more accurate than that: about 1 to 2 metres over 10km. (As a side note, GPS is about ten times worse than the bike, even in the hands of a careful measurer.)
Xcytronex: So that prompts me to ask if all the guys who have an outing once a fortnight find their li-ion batteries have noticeably reduced range after say two years?
NRG:
10mph you will be better off hiring a moped / electric bike or using a set of lead acid batteries to power the bike. Or maybe you could hook up with David @ Wisper or another manufacturer and see if they will lend you a bike for each run for a bit of free promotion and marketing in return.
You must be clairvoyant - my mind has already been running in this direction.
LEAD ACID BATTERIES - I had wondered, if I got a bike which is only good for 20 miles with the supplied Li-ion battery, whether for the occasional long measurement ride I could use 2 12v 18AH golf buggy lead acids in the bike panniers weight about 10kg, cost about £50, life about 10 years. When I do these long measurement rides I often arrange to be accompanied by race organiser staff in motor vehicles so they could carry the lead acids while I start using the bike's Li-ion, then when this is flat we transfer the lead acids to the panniers. In fact the range is just limited by the number of additional lead acid sets that are carried in the support car! This reminds me of the picture I saw in the book,
Electric Bicycles by Henshaw and Peace which shows two or three lead acids being used on a tandem in the early C20.
PROMOTION/MARKETING DEAL Spot-on. This has been going through my head over the last two days. I had been inclined to quietly mention this to main dealers when I visit them to see if there is any interest, but now you,
NRG have had the same idea, I may as well go public...
I have been invited to measure the London Marathon course for 2011, in the company of two world top measurers who are much younger/fitter than myself. I wont be able to keep up without an electric bike. As far as I can discover no measurer in the world has ever used an electric bike for measurement. (Motor bikes have been tried but they are not as good as push bikes - cars are terrible). So the possible deal goes like this. I find a supplier who has a suitable long range bike (35 miles ie 26 miles for the marathon plus 5 miles before and 5 miles after messing around doing calibrations.) I visit the dealer for some test rides with my distance recording mechanism, which slips on the front wheel between the fork and the hub. An hour or two is plenty for a test over a much shorter distance which will show if the measurement with the electric bike (with my mechanism fitted) is fully up to the precsion obtainable with a push bike. I then arrange to borrow/hire the bike for about 48 hours in April for the London Marathon Measurement. The actual measurement ride is done at night with escort vehicles for protection of the riders. If the distance recorded by the two top measurers on push bikes agrees with mine on the electric bike, as of course would be expected, it will be a World First for a new application of electric bikes. OK, the marketing possibilities to other elderly measurers may be modest, but surely association with a high profile happening like the London Marathon measurement would be offer promotion opportunities to any bike dealer.