Amusement Today article

If you have already read the newest amusement today you will already know this.

This is a quote from Monty Jasper from Eric Minton's article on page 17, Titled Dragster timeline began with Millennium's opening.

"At 120 MPH, you roll back ... At 121 you go over. At 123 we ge a high-speed alarm."

The article also goes on with the "four-car trains were used during the opening and were bumped up to 5 cars by the second weekend, and that Jasper expects to be fine tuning the ride for the rest of the season."

I thought the speeds were interesting, because I havent heard anyone else say anything about the extra 1 MPH and i havent seen anything on the website. If this has already been talked about let me know and I will delete it.
*** This post was edited by Fury 6/11/2003 11:07:59 AM ***

If at 120 you rollback why did the speedometer always read 117 or 118 almost always??

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2003 Statistics
Top Thrill Dragster: 4
Millennium Force: 14
Trips to the point: 10

Was that with 4 or 5 car trains?

fat chris he meant the highest speed from the launch, the trains do slow down after they disengage the catch car. evertime i saw it lauch it read 121 and then slowed down.

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Ed Markey is my anti-drug.
Rollercoasters have proven to cause brain damage in stupid politicians. DAR-HOOT

trips to CP:6 Dragster:2 MFer:6 Magnum: 13 Running with the bulls for a 15 minutes dragster wait, Must be June!

Is each train weighed prior to launching? Perhaps there is not enough of a weight difference between trains with riders but I think that would have some kind of impact on the launch.

Train weight doesn't matter. As long as the launch gets to 121 and stay there by some point before the sled disconnects, it is going to get over the top. It may get to that speed in 3.8 seconds, or 4.0 seconds.

I'd imagine the computer knows when it hits this speed and then stops accelerating the train but keeps the speed up.

121 MPH is not achieved just before the sled disconnects, but most likely well before.

my .02 cents.

Of course, it's not quite doing 121 these days.

That's amazing how just minimal speed changes can change things so much.

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Corey
Times Going Full Force - 19

This is off topic but if I suscribe to Amusement Today is there an issue every month?

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CP Coaster Guide
Top Thrill Dragster, the tallest, fastest, and the greatest coaster ever!

Every 2 months and it is pretty pricey IMHO.

Some have good articles and some are full of boring stuff.

It is $40 for one year.

OK, here is the way Monty described it to me after talking to him after the Q&A at coastermania. First off, if you don't know how the launch works, go check it out on virtaulmidway. Now, the weight of the train does not matter. The optimum speed at its highest point is from 120-123. While the drum is spinning (thus, the train lauching) the computer is constantly calculating the RPM. When the drum hits a certain RPM (which correseponds to the optimum speed) which is somewhere around 500 at ANY time during the launch, even before the end of the launch, the computer will open valves to bypass turbines and bleed the rest of the hydraulic fluid to the holding tanks. So even if the train is going 121 before the end of the launch section, the hydraulic launch will stop accelerating the train. Hope this gives you a decent idea of how its done.

--Kirk

fat chris said:
If at 120 you rollback why did the speedometer always read 117 or 118 almost always??

It has to do with how RADAR guns work. They're not exactly perfect. Plus, the RADAR transmitter/receiver is on an angle to the ride, so the cosine effect gets in the way too. It's more for show than anything. The RADAR unit shows the speed on the sign, and that's it. The actual speed used by the ride is calculated by the computer as described.

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18 straight years of real thrills and counting...
Being watched? http://www.lavasoftusa.com [Support forums moderator]

They need to put up speedometer with a time from the start to the finish which is acurate the ten-thousanth place, also with an average and the highest speeds.

Fury said:
Every 2 months and it is pretty pricey IMHO.
Some have good articles and some are full of boring stuff.
It is $40 for one year.

That's funny, I pay $35 a year and get an issue every month.

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The Point of Cedars - Pointing you in the right direction!
http://www.thepointofcedars.tk
http://www.thepointofcedarsforum.tk

Well then, you can be garenteed that you are going at least 120mph even though the reader may only say 118mph. I think it's important that the weight of the train is figured since if you have a light train, then it might not make it over. And, if you don't make it over, do you get to ride again?

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If there's bugs on your shirt, you had a good ride.

The weight is not measured or calculated.

The launch system is designed so that it will successfully launch an overloaded train, and that excessive launch force is used on every launch.

On the launch track, there are prox switches mounted every couple of feet. As the train progresses down the launch track, its position is noted and its speed is calculated. Correction...its speed is probably not calculated, but the timing between switches is measured. Once that time is down to a particular value, the launch motor is shifted hydraulically into neutral (that is, a valve diverts the fluid around the motor instead of through it) so that the acceleration stops. That's a lot simpler than weighing the train and recalculating every launch. By insuring that the system is overpowered, it also makes the speed performance consistent, even though the total train mass is not.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Hey, that's cool! It's amazing how fast it sends the signal.
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The Point of Cedars - Pointing you in the right direction!
http://www.thepointofcedars.tk
http://www.thepointofcedarsforum.tk

Whatever happened to the speedometer, it wasn't up there today. But I was there on May 23rd when it was clocking 116mph and it was still going over. Maybe the clock wasn't reading right and they took it down.

To see a rollback was amazing today, I wish I was on it! But at whatever speed I saw it on May 23rd, it always looked like it wouldn't make it over the top, but it always did smoothly.

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Life has it's ups and downs, might as well make it on a coaster!