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The 2005 Victory Hammer blows away every competitor on the manufacturing side with a 250mm rear tire for the Victory Hammer. The Victory Hammer has the fattest ever fitted rear tire to be attached to a mass produced motorcycle. It is at least 50mm wider than the competition. It will turn heads.

The Victory Hammer is no doubt an undeniably a motorcycle with attitude. The Victory’s Hammer debuts Victory’s new 100cubic inch 6-speed power train. When you ride the Victory Hammer, you will never mistake it for its smaller Victory siblings: Kingpin, 8-Ball, Vegas. By smaller, I mean smaller engine displacement. I own a Kingpin with the 92 cubic inch engine. I could use the extra boost in power the Hammer provides when hauling a passenger. After all, it’s all about the horsepower.

The Victory Hammer definitely feels different from a traditional cruiser. The Victory Hammer is very balanced and predictable. The Victory Hammer also feels lighter and more balanced than its smaller Victory siblings: Kingpin, 8-Ball, Vegas.

Even if The Victory Hammer’s disposition steers towards the straight-line dragster, there is still enough handling for the twisty turns and high-speed cornering. You won’t keep up with the sport bikes that you once rode, but you won’t lose site of them either.

The Victory Hammer has seen spiked interest at the various motorcycle shows. While other manufacturers are offering more of the same, Victory comes out with a motorcycle that gets everyone saying, “Wow, what is that and when can I get one.” Now that The Victory Hammer is arriving at your local Victory dealership, hurry up and see one because they are selling faster than imagined. There are not even any bikes in the shops for demo rides.

You may be looking at the fat 250mm rear tire and wonder, “For whom did Victory build the Hammer?” What was their target consumer? Was it the chopper show watchers? Maybe? It is my opinion that the target consumer for the badass Victory Hammer is the experienced rider, someone that owns, or has owned, sport bikes. These are riders that have reached the stage where they do not require going quite so fast or having the desire to be stuck in the racer’s crouch position.

Some basic Hammer specifications: The Hammer has a 5-gallon fuel tank. Cruising at approximately 70mph, this bike averages 40MPG. 100 cubic inch displacement, 50-degree V-Twin, 76 rear-whell hp and 86 foot-pounds torque. Frame has been narrowed for cornering clearance. Six-speed transmission, with the sixth gear being for overdrive. The Hammer has new primary gears, pump drive, and a new cam drive.

Someone at Victory should get a raise, because the concept to production of the Victory Hammer is a real winner.

Impressions from new Victory Hammer owners:
I will say the Hammer is, in my opinion, one of the coolest looking production bikes on the market. As far as the rear tire being the largest in the production industry, I believe it is. But the Rocket III comes close with a 240mm. The Hammer is not the best handling bike made, but it does handle well. It’s not the fastest, but it is fast. It’s not the most comfortable, but it is comfortable. But after riding for 75 miles today, and having to head home because of the incoming rains, I just can’t get the grin off my face. It’s just plain cool. It’s like a super-sexy woman. It has great curves, big jugs, a nice a$$, and real attitude.

Contributing author to Cycle Solutions. http://www.CycleSolutions.net
http://www.CycleSolutions.net

Today’s applications – either for the Web or standalone – are starting to focus more and more on the user interface. The time when you had to write lines and lines of commands or go through several menus to execute a certain task has passed. Developers have now implemented simple wizards, with on-screen help near each important element of the application, which will make even the most complicated task look like a walk in the park. And the easiest and most efficient way to create user-friendly interfaces is to add self-explanatory icons. These small images that take a couple dozens of pixels will most of the times have more meaning than a full paragraph of text. It’s more comfortable and efficient to insert an icon than it is to write some text explaining a certain function.
Icons are very important to the user-interface. People want to use an application’s features to the maximum, and don’t like to it when they can’t find how to complete a specific task. This is why developers should always create shortcuts to the main tasks that can be accomplished using their application. These shortcut items must catch the user’s attention, so adding icons will do the trick in most of the cases. The icons must be related to that certain task, so, for example, a disk icon would be a great visual enhancement for a “Save” button, as a printer icon would fit perfectly inside a “Print” button. A good set of icons in the interface will greatly improve the communication between the user and the application. Icons are colorful and, in most cases, larger than the description text of the application feature they relate to; this way, they are a lot easier to be spotted.

Most of today’s applications use icons, even though pretty much all developers don’t bother to implement custom designed icons into their applications. Actually, settling with the operating system’s default stock icons is not such a bad thing as some people might think. Computer users might sometimes have some problems adapting to new applications, especially if they have different interfaces than the applications already installed on the users’ computers. What happens if you want to save and you’re looking for a disk icon, but you can’t find it because the developer decided to use a star icon? If so, there will be a poor communication between the user and the application, because the interface’s icons are different from the ones the user is used to. Application developers should not fall into this trap just because they like some other icons and they don’t want to use the same old default system icons, because it would do more bad than good. The default system icons are preferred because most applications use them, so users will learn to use your application a lot faster. The functions and commands will be easier to understand, because users will be able to faster identify the iconic symbols.

If a developer wants to give their application a distinct look, they should use professional, custom-made icons, especially designed for their application. Today, such services are affordable, and you will be able to tell the designer how you want the icons to look like. In most cases, you shouldn’t go with a completely different look than the system’s icons (for the reasons described above), but you should try to give them a unique, personal touch; the application will stand out from the crowd and will look a lot better than the other ones, thus attracting more users. Changing colors, for example, is the easiest way to get new, yet similar icons.

To have a good communication between the user and the application, developers must predict all the possible problems that the interface could cause its users. Are the buttons too small? Are they too big? Can the toolbars be moved around the screen? How about the menus, can users add new items to them? Also, can they replace the icons and other graphics with some of their own? How about users with special needs?

Unfortunately, there are a lot of developers that disregard such problems, and create rigid interfaces, which cannot be changed by the users to better suit them. A simple answer to this problem is to create multiple skins, with different colors and different icons. The application should have a “standard” skin to start with, and then a few different skins, for example a minimalistic skin with only a few main buttons and large icons, or an “expanded” skin with many toolbars and buttons, each with their own small icon. Also, a skin with high contrast colors and icons will be very appreciated by the users with eye problems. Apart from all these, developers should also allow users to create their own custom skin and use different icons.

There are multiple benefits from using icons in an application interface. No matter whether an application uses the operating system’s default icons or has custom-made icons designed especially for it, there must be some form of graphics in it, otherwise people might find it harder to use. This may happen because most of today’s application use icons to ease the learning of the application. Because most applications use similar icons in certain tasks – for example a printer icon for printing or a disk button for saving files – it’s a lot faster for users to click on those buttons, therefore they will remember it next time they use that application, or any other application for that matter. Even if later on advanced users will choose to use shortcut keys on the keyboard instead of clicking with the mouse on buttons in the toolbars, it’s really important that for starters they will use the toolbar, so icons will be very important in the communication with the application.

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