Flying Turns Update

Yeah, cams have been out for at least 3 or more days I believe. I will be in Northeast PA starting Friday and hope to get down to Knoebels either Friday or Saturday to get some rides and pics. I'll post them as soon as I get back.

Tom

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Seth said:
i noticed that they added new videos but windows media player will not play them...

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Seth, I can't view them with Windows media player either but I can view them with Real Player. Try downloading it and give it a try.

thanks for letting me know i do belive that windows media player is having so tech problems cuz whenever i play music off the internet it freezes and stuff so its prob just windows media player.... also can't wait to see those pictures when you get back LdScotsman ... take some good ones

A year ago this week, the park was underwater followed by the clean up after the flood. And this year, people are worried about it being too dry.

Gotta love the crazy PA weather. It was 50s up until December/Jan this past winter lol. New pics up at the site btw:
http://knoebels.com/whats-new.asp
Theres one of the entrance and one of the helix showing how steep it is, hehe.

I wonder if they might cover the ground/gravel with mulch or something around the walkway. Just a suggestion, I hope that's not "too cedar fair" lol.

Eh, mulch attracts bugs.

I think it's so cool how close you'll get to the ride while waiting in line. You'll practically be able to feel a train going through that one turn shown toward the front of that walkway picture.

True, and yeah it is a nice way they set that up so you are walking directly through the middle of the ride, I can only imagine how it'll sound in line when a train full of riders is going through the trough.

The webcams are finally back up. There's a strip of wood up the middle of the second lift. I wonder if the chain guide is going to mount to this, although I don't know why it couldn't have just been mounted to the cross-beams. Not too much is visible on the entrance side of the station, but the exit side has a ramp now. The side walls of the track on the third lift look like they're done. I can't tell what's going on on the first lift, other than somebody finally took a chunk out of the tree that was blocking the helix entrance. Hopefully this means they're going to get started on the service track switches soon, Coastin' Steve says they weren't started as of last weekend. (Yet somehow he's optimistic that it'll be ready for testing "very, very very soon".) Finally, it looks like the area from the queue entrance down to the midway has been graded and concreted. (I'm glad they're getting some of the little things done while the big stuff is taking so long.)

Does anyone know what kind of anti-rollback system this ride is going to have on the lifts? Can they use a standard one, or since the train won't be locked to the track will it need to be a horizontal lever system like on Leap The Dips?

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Jim S. said:
Does anyone know what kind of anti-rollback system this ride is going to have on the lifts? Can they use a standard one, or since the train won't be locked to the track will it need to be a horizontal lever system like on Leap The Dips?

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The Flying Turns I rode had a standard anti-rollback system. Clickety-clickety-click.

It looks like chain guide on the webcam now, but with the poor resolution (it's 640x480 if you save the image and view it outside of your browser, but the lens must be terrible and also the frame isn't deinterlaced properly sometimes) I can't tell if it has the anti-rollback cogs on it.

Ok, got the photos up from our trip this past Saturday. See them at:

http://tmcgill1.photosite.com/KnoebelsGrovesJune30th2007/

Mostly of the new station and the initial helix, we've all seen the main trough before.

A couple of interesting things: They have taken the chassis from a two car train and pushed it up the main lift and sent it down. JUST the chassis, not the whole cars, and only two, not the normal 5 car train it is going to have. They were overall happy with the performance of the train but it did show them that some tweaking with the trains still needs to be done. Another interesting thing is going to be the transfer track. The last construction picture I have in the fading light is of a tree right next to the initial helix AND the road. This tree is staying. The transfer track will go out OVER THE ROAD.

Special thanks goes out to Coastin' Steve who told me to stop back at the end of the workday and he showed me around what you see in the pictures. The poor guy was exhausted since he got up at 3am to drive from Philadelphia to the site, and to John Fetterman who I had the fortune of spotting and he took some time to answer a few questions .

Tom

Very nice pics,thanks for posting them.

nice pictures and thanks for the updates!! can't wait til its done its coming right along!

Thanks for the pics as well, it seems to be closing in on the completion. That must be one heck of a drive from Philly to Knoebels each day, I'm about in the middle of that drive and it takes me about 3 hours to get to Knoebels (I'm right on 73 so I just shoot up there to 61 then 487)

So close to being finished. Glad to hear they are already testing the cars.

so they got the cars/trains? anyone know anything about them or how they look??

All they were supposed to be getting so far is a frame to see how the wheels work on the track. If anybody knows what the rest of the car is going to look like it would be John Fetterman. Apparently the seat/restraint design was an annoying process. Hopefully they've settled it by now, but I haven't heard anything.

I'm fairly sure no one said they were testing yet.

Eh... testing? As of Friday the 22nd, the track is not even complete yet.

My guess... I would NOT look for this to be open in 2007.

Did you not read this:

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LdScotsman said:

They have taken the chassis from a two car train and pushed it up the main lift and sent it down. JUST the chassis, not the whole cars, and only two, not the normal 5 car train it is going to have. They were overall happy with the performance of the train but it did show them that some tweaking with the trains still needs to be done.

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