coasterlover420

Hm, I bet Jon Hildebrandt went crazy when he heard this

No, you're thinking of Kingda Ka

I don't think this has much more to do with physics than it does with false advertising. If you actually time these coasters logically, you'll find that any advertised time frame is usually inaccurate or scaled differently than others (i.e. from dispatch, start of lift, end of lift, etc...). TTD was advertised as a 17 second coaster, but KK was advertised as a 28 second coaster. There's no way 36 extra feet and a hill would add 11 seconds onto that coaster, they are just timed from different points.

^Yes, it is a hydraulic launch

Yeah, the first 8 seconds would be totally worth it. I like how it doesn't waste any time between when the train locks into the catch car and the launch. The older ones waited around 3 seconds, but FR seems to wait less than 1, and doesn't seem to wait at all before rolling back into place. It seems like it will be much better for capacity, considering the ride seems like it would lack considerably on capacity in the first place.

I don't think trims are a bad thing at all. Roller coasters shouldn't be about what's bigger, better, and faster. The experience is so much more exciting. In some cases, yes they are meant to slow a ride down, but there are coasters where they are part of the ride experience. Maverick, for example. In this case, I like to think of it as a race car slowing down because it's about to take a really sharp turn. I hear a lot of people complaining about the pov, and I really think people's judgment is misplaced. From what I can see from it, it is still going incredibly fast around the turns and over the hills. And honestly, the larger the hill, the longer it's going to take for a train to get over it, duh. It's not like because it takes so long, the negative g's will be diminished. It's just the nature of larger hills. The "vomit comet" is a perfect example. It is pure weightlessness, but it takes several minutes to achieve a single hill. People always complain that coasters don't have enough airtime, well here you go. This is what more airtime looks like. [Not to mention when there are people in the train, the trims will be a lot less effective, meaning a faster ride all around.]

B&M coasters' anti roll back dogs have a rubber cover, and over time it wears away so some times the lift hill will sound louder than other times. I'm guessing they replaced the parts.

^^^ Q: (To a ride op at the entrance of Dragster) "Is this that!?" *Points to Magnum* A: Yes, half-way through the train jumps off the tracks and lands over on the tracks by the beach. [i hated This one...] (AFTER checking someone's restraint) HEY! MISTER! EXCUSE MEE! (Flailing their arms and legs madly) (I walk back to their seat) "What!?" You didn't check my seat!!! At Raptor: "Sir, your child is too short to ride" "It's ok, I'll hold on to him" A woman and her child go in to park op and her child is barely 54 inches. The supervisor tells him to take off his shoes and the woman gets horribly offended and tells her kid to keep her shoes on. After being convinced that they could get kicked out of the park, she angrily tells her kid who is already crying to take his shoes off. The supervisor starts pulling stuffing out of the shoes while the mom is yelling angrily at him and her child is in the corner crying his eyes out. In the end, he is equipped with a 52" wristband. After telling someone their kid is too short to ride DT: "Sir, your child can't ride" Looks back at the long line "Well can we just cross over and leave?" "No sir, it is against Ohio state law" "What if I just carry him over?" After a while, it just kind of becomes a joke...

I'm guessing because Formula Rossa isn't located in sue-happy America. Also the lack of fat people...

^Which hopefully means they've already got one ready to go

^How would there be 4 polarities on a magnet? The concept isn't that the magnetic fields have to be flowing in the direction of travel, the idea is that the magnetic field created in the stators has to be moving. The stators would have electromagnets wound in this way: This way, the magnetic fields would interact and as the electromagnets are charged in order, the field moves down the track.

Fanboys

^(Edit2) Yes that is why I was perplexed. I think the polarity in that picture actually follows the arrows on the yellow labels. That way it creates several magnetic fields across both sides of the aperture. Here's a crude drawing I made:

^The train obviously isn't launching in that picture. How lame.

I found another picture floating around on pointbuzz You can see on the left are the pins which release restraints, on the right is the plate for drive wheels to move the train, and in the middle is the array of permanent magnets. I still can't really figure out the orientation of the magnets (polarity-wise) but I'm still looking for some more photos!

I still love hearing people who think Xcelerator is faster than Top Thrill Dragster; and the people who complain that Wicked Twister doesn't run two trains...

Half Pipe at Elitch Gardens. I must say, it really has not aged well. Elitch's doesn't do the best job at keeping their coasters in good condition...the stators are all pretty torn up and it squeaks like crazy! And this might just be because I worked at Cedar Point, but the employees could do a much better job all around...just sayin.

Millennium Force has it's wheels sprayed in the station too, so I doubt it was because I305's wheels were exploding. It's just a tactic Intamin uses to keep the moving parts of the train cool on a hot day. The problem is that all Intamin wheels go bad, regardless of condition, speed, or forces. Wheels age, some quicker than others; it's just something to deal with. I think as Robb's pov review shows, the reason I305 has been tamed is because it was hurting the riders, not it's parts. That's the same reason Magnum has trims...it's the same reason any coaster has trims. The structure can handle it, it's just the forces that hurt riders which cause parks to slow their rides down.

It seems like the biggest thing to me would be if one train takes a long time to load or something happens, the other train can't unload, and that's just more people that get stuck on the ride. I'm sure capacity would in theory be better. (Something funny: while I was working at WT, we got some people complain that we weren't running two trains )

^Finally someone asks what we're all thinking

Here is a picture under the maverick trains showing the size and polarity of the magnets that interact with the stators.

I have been doing some digging, and found this picture. As you can see, there are proxys so the computer knows the lift block is occupied, but there are also thin white sensors between several of the LSM's lining the lift (and also a single one a few feet before the first stator). They may not occupy every gap between the stators, but they are enough to acknowledge the position of the train at all times. I'm not sure how they work, but I'm guessing they are somewhat like proxys, which sense eddy currents in metal that is really close. My guess is they sense the magnetic flux when the magnets pass by them? I actually noticed this today on Half Pipe and thought I'd get looking for some good pictures

^Well, it is doubtful considering there aren't position sensors over the entire launch track (in the case of iSpeed and Maverick), but they are still LSM motors. Regular LIM's don't need to be as perfectly synchronized as LSM's do because they don't involve permanent magnets; but when magnets are used as the rotor instead of copper fins, the stators must be synchronized very precisely. I suppose in the case of these two coasters, it is just done with a computer by sensing where the train is before the launch begins and then timing it perfectly after that; because as far as I have observed, there are a great deal of sensors before each launch on Maverick. Don't quote me on this, but this is as close as I can get to an accurate description with close observations. I hope this helps.

^Yeah, if you look close enough to some of these coasters, it's pretty cool what you can find labeled on the parts. Most of the stators are InTraSys, pretty much all of the control panels are Allen-Bradley...etc. I find their site to be pretty fun with the help of http://translate.google.com/

^Companies can tell you what LIM's technically are and what they can possibly do, but usually they are not specific to roller coasters, which is why I included the explanation. I learned more about LIM's from US patents than I did from sites for companies that sell them. This one for example.