Skyhawk Cable Snap - July 26, 2014

Dennis9096 said:
Yeah, what is the significance of the lemon chill guy in Tony's post?

More than likely none other than Tony pointing out which group of people he was posting to. Lemon Chill Guy is a long (apparently 14 years) running joke on here. Tony reads and sometimes posts on here enough to know the jokes...Lemon Chill Guy, Thread The Needle and Rain Checks!

Jeff said:

We're old. I can't believe how long we've been at this now. Almost three times the length of my first marriage.

It's amazing that I can say this exact same thing now, too. When I started on the 2 "Buzz" sites, I never thought I'd be talking about my wife, let alone my ex wife and selling our house, etc..

Crazy how life goes.

MrInkspot@aol.com said:
CedarPoint's official website was pretty much a Microsoft Word document then: http://www.cedarpoint.com/new.asp"]http://web.archive.org/web/19971007023901/http://www.cedarpoint.com/new.asp

Get off my lawn!

OK that link is just cool. I really enjoyed reading the entire site. Very old school.

I wonder if Skyhawk's infield will be embiggened before it reopens, based on the fact that the detached cable was able to make contact with the fence.

Interesting idea, but doubtful. It might be enlarged, but not embiggened as Cedar Point isn't in Springfield. ;)

I noticed the fence has been fixed at least. :p

The fence was repaired overnight as there are photographs from the next morning (27th).

They did a good job fixing the area overnight. I was at CP Sunday- Tuesday, and didn't even find out about Skyhawk until Monday morning when my mom called me and said she heard it on the radio in Detroit.

SkyHawk has new cables and is testing the right side.

Nice....

Hope they have it up and running this weekend.

The right side is testing however the left side still does not have the guy wire (or whatever it's called) that fell off remounted.

I wonder if they ever release further details on this, what caused the failure.

If I had an educated guess, it would be poor inspection. Wire rope generally shows signs of failure before it goes "pop!". I just wonder if given the location of the wire if it was failing too high up that careful inspection wasn't exactly easy to do to spot it before it happened.

Cables are nothing more than smaller metal wires all bound together in a specified configuration. Generally prior to any failure, individual wires will start to break, the wire will kink or a "bottle necking" will occur. A few years ago I had a full day of OSHA training on crane cable inspections, which is basically the same thing really when it comes down to the cable.

I mean I guess it is possible that it did just go "pop!", but it just doesn't seem likely without any visual signs.

I am just glad nobody was seriously injured! I look forward to riding it this season again hopefully... One of my favorite flats!

No...the park will not general release further details on what happened. Also, it probably wasn't the cable that actually failed but how it was connected to the frame. We dont know how often that part of the ride was inspected or if it even showed any signs of failing.

Im sure the part has been reviewing their inspection practices and will be changing them accordingly.

I don't think anyone should assume the wire broke and not some component of the fastener at the top.

And we'll never hear why it failed.

The internal investigation was quick, there was no outside investigation, and no other S&S swings were idle after the failure. To me, that suggests the failure mode on Skyhawk was obvious, and trivial to prevent from recurring.

Good point about the mounting/fastening method... For some reason that had slipped my mind!

^I agree.

I wonder how long it will take to get a replacement support cable. Hopefully not as long as it did to get the drive cable.

My guess is it will be running in Def Leppard mode for a while.

And you win the Internets today.

OK - I am a little slow - Def Leppard mode?