Genesis of the San Jose Human Powered Vehicle (HPV) Club

So how did the San Jose HPV club come about? Well we have to go back to 1997-98. I was finishing up my engineering degree at Cal Poly. I needed to do a senior project. I had worked previously on the Cal Poly HPV club back in 1994. I worked mostly on the fairing fabrication. The process of fabricating an HPV faring is quite long and complicated involving the fabrication of a foam male plug and female molds. For my senior project I wanted to try a new approach and machine the molds directly without the need of a foam male plug. So I designed a new fairing for the Cal Poly HPV team and had full scale molds machined at Scaled Composites. It's a long story that I will share at a later time. So anyway the 1998 Cal Poly HPV team went to Denver to compete in the ASME HPV College competition. And our HPV kicks some serious butt! We won both men's and women's sprints. Anyway George Leone, well known in the HPV community for many years, was the team's unofficial adviser. He had encouraged me to design and build my own HPV after graduation. I've toyed with the idea of starting an HPV team for years. But just now the time is right. I've met some new friends recently who share my dream of building the fastest Human Powered Vehicle in the world! So we march on now. It should be a fun adventure!