S&S Free Fly

BogeyMon said:
Too bad for S&S that Paramount got out of the business. This looks right up their alley - "We really like high maintenance rides, now could you find a way to lower the capacity?" :)

Only if they could add complex themeing that'll be broken in a year!

Well.....God bless Arrow/S&S for always attempting to take on these Dynamics problems. . . a class I only managed to get a B- in college.

I thought it was called an Eagle Coaster.

http://www.rcdb.com/id4312.htm

Sounds about right. Are we going to see a break and wings painted on one in the USA?

I'd love it if S&S just built Powder Keg clones all over the place instead.

I don't think the issue with this concept is one of stress or dynamics but of vibration, as that seems to be the major problem with rides with large wingspans, like the 4D coasters and Intamin's Furious Baco.

I wonder if the vibrations won't be taken care of by the "air bags" shown in the animation near the beginning of the video. When I first saw this concept a few months ago, I thought the purpose of the bags was to simulate the flapping of a bird's wings. Now, however, I can't help but hope this is merely an amusing feature of the vibrations solution the guys at S&S have come up with.

Do any of the previous 4D-style coasters have shock absorbers that could potentially reduce vibrations?

Whatever the dampening device is, it may reduce the oscillation, but it won't eliminate it. It seems to me that the real danger comes with the possibility of pulling the track around in funny ways, the way the first suspended coaster at Kings Island did. I think you need a seriously more rigid track design.

Intamin of course uses their box track, and you may recall the prototype model and drawings that Setpoint did back in 2000 for side mounted seating.

B&M also uses a larger track gauge for their wide dive coaster trains.

SFGAdv lover said:
I thought it was called an Eagle Coaster.

http://www.rcdb.com/id4312.htm

YouTube Video

Looks like a lot of fun to me...but I would agree that they probably need to design track specific to this type of rolling stock. There is a lot of torque going on.

Well, you know what they say: torque is cheap.

^ That was bad, but funny. Torque may be cheap, but it's the horsepower that costs $$$$. :)

Did anybody else think of "Star Wars - The Ride" when they saw the clip of the prototype in action? The vehicle looks like one of those galactic fighter thingies.

It made me think of upset tummies. I'm sure the ride time will be brief on these, but enough of that circular up and down action taken rapidly would make me hurl pretty quickly. Otherwise it looks cool, and I'm sure they've taken it into account.

8 whole people per train load.
Should be great for large parks! :)

BullGuy said:
I'd love it if S&S just built Powder Keg clones all over the place instead.

I don't understand why another S&S launch like that hasn't been built. It's a great ride.

Reliability and capacity aren't that great though (at least when I was there). And the lift totally destroys the pacing. But I did like it quite a bit.

Jeff said:
I can't be the only one who finds it hilarious that the prototype is built from pieces of torn down Absolutely Insane rides.

Not only that, but the track looks identical to the style used by Arrow when they built suspended coasters. Any chance S&S purchased pieces to Astroworld's XLR-8 and used them to create this thing?

Although we have pointed out all the flaws, it does look like it would be a lot of fun as a ride.