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We received love calls from "Japan Bobsleigh & Luge Federation". As
they were so eager that moved us and we decided to have a fact-finding
visit in Hokkaido.
The Olympic machines we saw there were not big different from rides in a
shabby amusement park and we thought, "We could make faster ones" and
nodded to each other.
Then we became really serious about development. To gain a full
understanding of the current Bobsleigh kineticism quantitatively, we
took a Bobsleigh with full range of equipment such as a pitot tube
(rapidity), G-sensor (acceleration ), potent ion meter (steering angle),
Gyro (roll angle acceleration), strain gate (runner's load), heat
transfer (runner temperature) to Lillehammer and Altenberg to carry out
basic researches.
We had some wind tunnel experiments later and got enough data. It was
we were about to start making a model when we were involved in a family
feud of Japan Bobsleigh & Luge Federation and the people we worked with
were all kicked out.
Thus the project vanished and more than half of the development cost
wasn't paid.
I thought Japan will not be able to win the race for the next 100 years
by seeing the fact that they spend a lot of money to build a course for
Nagano Olympic or inviting foreign athletes, but fail to strengthen
their own athletes and equipments.
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