One way to get a bath.
I did... I did Hey good evening, it's a Sunday night
and we're doing something a little bit different this week. I'm heading out east towards Philadelphia Pennsylvania. I've been invited to record some video footage
of them setting up carnival rides at an event called the dogwood festival. I am particularly fascinated by how carnival rides are set up. More specifically, I'm interested in how they fold up for travel. This is going to be kind of a fun trip for me but it's also a learning trip. One of the issues that I have is that the rocket ride, It was never intended for the rocket vehicles
to actually travel on the trailer with the tower. They mentioned in the brochure
that it can be pulled by any vehicle, but, "oh by the way you got to put the cars
in a separate truck" and that's just inconvenient. There's operators out there who have modified theirs. They've added racking that the cars go on, and that's what I want to do. Go out here and see if I can get any ideas,
best practices maybe- little things I can pick up. My goal here is to focus specifically on the
zipper ride. In my mind it's one of the more elaborate rides
that can all fold up onto a single trailer. And I'm really keen to see how that works. I know that that one trailer it holds all the
decking, all the fencing, all the cosmetics and scenery. It's all on one unit and I really
want to see how that particular ride sets up. Hey this is Pete coming to you from the future
and I just want to say that I didn't do a lot of narration while I was recording this video primarily because, uh, most the time I didn't know
what they were doing until after they had done it. and I didn't want to get in their way asking
a lot of questions and over extend my welcome. So I'm going to go back in now and do some voice-over on any of the things that I thought
were either particularly interesting or important. One thing I think is pretty slick is that
the ride is leveled using hydraulic cylinders and the pump that they use to run those cylinders
is the same pump that will later run the ride. This brace on the back of the
trailer will eventually hold the decking that the riders walk up to get on the ride. The hydraulic cylinders are just
used to aid in leveling the ride, in operation the ride is actually sitting
on large screw jacks and cribbing blocks. After the ride is resting on its jack screws,
the hydraulic cylinders can be retracted. They use a combination of ratchet straps
and some special tub lock brackets to hold everything in place
while it's going down the road. Well you remember, all the pins on the bottom
point down, all the pins on top point up right ? All the pins on the bottom point up,
and all the pins on the top point down. Yup. He knows all the tricks to it. Yeah I use a spoon bar, I brought one of the spoon bars from the shop. oh yeah? yeah. So to me the zipper is really like a roller
coaster that just happens to be attached to a Ferris wheel. Even the wheels on the ride are similar to a roller coaster.
you've got your main trolley wheels, and then you have up stop wheels on the other side of the track, and inside friction wheels- all just going around an oval-shaped track -
(correction- elliptical shaped track) "Now you should definitely have a hole" "almost" - " okay, in or out?" "Out" - "okay, there you go" - "Yup" The tubs are mounted in pairs on a framework
that's attached to the drive cable. You have the main "H" frame that the tubs are mounted to. And then you have "K" bars that spread the tubs apart. Another feature with a double purpose which I think is pretty cool is the doors on the cabinets under the belly of the trailer fold up to form a catwalk that's used to help set up the ride. There's a large hydraulic cylinder
that's used to raise the tower but just like with the leveling, that cylinder
is not used to hold the tower during operation. There's additional bracing that goes in place. "Push it Rudy, push" Unfortunately the rain chased us away
but they did get the ride up and stabilized. The only thing really left to do
was the scenery and some fine tuning. So a few folks came back the
next day just to finish up. So here's another item with a dual purpose.
In the belly of the trailer, along with the hydraulic pump, is an air compressor. And that air compressor is used for the air brakes when the ride is running. When you're setting up the ride, you can use the hose to adjust the tire pressure on these wheels that drive the cable hub The controls are pretty straightforward. You have
a forward and reverse for the boom which runs hydraulically. And then forward and reverse for the
cable which runs on four electric motors. There's also an air operated handbrake. Really is amazing how quiet this is for putting out 450 000 watts. I mean, I can hear it, but i can talk next to it. This is what the inside of one of the boxes look
like that takes the voltage from the generator and distributes it amongst the rides
and games and concession stands. So I think this is a good time to thank
Majestic Midways for allowing me to come out and record this,
and a special thanks to Jay and Tony One of the last jobs to do is to adjust the
cross cables these are small little aircraft cables that go diagonally between carriages.
They're used to help compensate for small amounts of misalignment in the seat support axles. They basically encourage the carriage to run true. So I think I picked up a few ideas on that
trip that I'm going to be able to put to use on our own project both the rocket
and here with the combo ride. and if you want to see more videos like this you'll just have to
let me know down in the comments. I realize this is a vast departure from what
we normally do here on the channel . If you want to follow all those projects, click
that link to the left and come along for the ride
