thunderbolt85
Thursday, August 16, 2012 8:51:54 AM
Wanted to get thoughts on this idea. The Sky Wheel uses rim drive on the wheels themselves, but why couldn't you use rim drive on the bull wheels instead of the cables. As well I wonder if you could redesign it so that each trailer is only 28' (folding towers)so that when down, it would be a one trailer ride. I know all the tubs can fit in one of the boxes on current units. Maybe center the towers on the trailers to make it still balanced. Might be a way to do it and make the ride profitable again, but not sure it would work.

Thoughts?
JustinJames
Thursday, August 16, 2012 5:57:35 PM
That would be a LOT of unbalanced momentum to control with friction drive. They did away with it on the zipper.
Flying Coaster
Thursday, August 16, 2012 8:58:40 PM
You would have to use a large number of drive wheels on it, to counteract the balance and momentum issues because of the small diameter of the bull wheels. I think Flamo brought this up once as well. In the end it's still a ride with a very long and slow load cycle.
All Skywheels should be yeller.
thunderbolt85
Thursday, August 16, 2012 9:18:09 PM
Ok, thanks guys, i had just wondered about that but didn't think about the momentum.
Flying Coaster
Thursday, August 16, 2012 10:11:48 PM
I had heard that Chance had drawn up plans for a single trailer, hydraulic drive Skywheel with scissor lift towers similar to a Diver. I'd very much love to see those drawings to see how they proposed putting that much structure on one trailer.
All Skywheels should be yeller.
coasterkeener
Thursday, August 16, 2012 10:43:24 PM
Somewhere I have an old Chance catalog that showed a drawing of their proposed updated Sky Wheel. I believe it had side by side trailers that were connected. There was a scissor tower on each trailer. Hopefully I can find it.
Scott
  •  Scott
  • 87% (Honored)
  • Operations Foreman
Thursday, August 16, 2012 10:54:00 PM
Do any of you know that when "Blink" first conceived the ride, it was to be on a turn table and spin around! How about that!
Flying Coaster
Friday, August 17, 2012 7:15:26 AM
Originally Posted by: coasterkeener 

Somewhere I have an old Chance catalog that showed a drawing of their proposed updated Sky Wheel. I believe it had side by side trailers that were connected. There was a scissor tower on each trailer. Hopefully I can find it.


That would be great, I'd enjoy seeing that.

All Skywheels should be yeller.
Flying Coaster
Friday, August 17, 2012 7:16:27 AM
Originally Posted by: Scott 

Do any of you know that when "Blink" first conceived the ride, it was to be on a turn table and spin around! How about that!


I've seen that drawing, pretty wild.
All Skywheels should be yeller.
thunderbolt85
Friday, August 17, 2012 8:21:21 AM
I know when I first saw a picture of the space wheels when I was kid I didn't know then that it was two sky wheels side by side. In the picture one unit was in the up right position (loading), the other was coming down just at the half point and I thought it was one unit had four wheels. Now wouldn't that be something? I was kid, and soon find out later how it really was. But neat to hear some of this information on here about the sky wheels.
squirrel
Friday, August 17, 2012 4:02:20 PM
Originally Posted by: Scott 

Do any of you know that when "Blink" first conceived the ride, it was to be on a turn table and spin around! How about that!



I've heard those kinds of things about many rides -- there was a rumor going around that the original design of the Watkins Swingers was to have the seats be able to turn around, and the ride run in two directions. I don't know how true that is, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was true --

thunderbolt85
Friday, August 17, 2012 5:23:48 PM
We had a Watkins Swinger on our show and sometimes the seats would turn all the around and then back if someone moved their body around some, but i think i know what you are talking about secret squirrel.
Bill P
  •  Bill P
  • 81.66% (Honored)
  • Operations Foreman
Friday, August 17, 2012 8:20:24 PM
I saw a Musical Chairs ride this year with the seats turned to face out rather than facing ion the direction of rotation. Anybody else seen that?