Large roller rinks with an air hockey floor....
People given large flat board to ride and slide upon......
People have a good time.....-- DesertFox, Aug 24 2004 Air Bearings http://nelsonair.com/NA_primer.htmPerhaps this would work better [harderthanjesus, Oct 05 2004] travelairter http://www.halfbake...m/idea/Travelairterbaked as a practical transport medium [neilp, Oct 05 2004] Giant air hockey http://www.halfbake...iant_20air_20hockeyoh so very close to this idea by [PotatoStew] [krelnik, Oct 05 2004] excuse bad English.....-- DesertFox, Aug 24 2004 I can feel my elbows breaking already! [+]-- dobtabulous, Aug 24 2004 Cool, my only concern is falling and getting an embolism. But there are ways around that.+-- swimr, Aug 24 2004 Do the spectators get to have big paddles to smack the boarders with? (obviously only in the interest of trying to score goals;)-- scubadooper, Aug 24 2004 Yeah, any giant floating pucks?-- swimr, Aug 24 2004 Most of the air hockey tables I've seen work by blowing air in from all sides, lifting the puck by the combined air pressure pushing inwards and upwards. The table must be small in order to work so an ice rink would be too big. Are there other designs of air hockey tables you had in mind? Something along the lines of the system linked perhaps?-- harderthanjesus, Aug 24 2004 "Big fans in floor" comes to mind, [htj]. Perhaps it could be refined to "big fans in floor with air forced through tiny little holes."
After all, one fan can keep a beach ball in the air, and a lot of air spread over a large flat surface, like a board, would probably do pretty well at it, too.-- shapu, Aug 24 2004 I like this, but when I first saw the title I thought it might be about mid-air boarding of airplanes. I pictured solar powered planes at high altitude that would never land and smaller planes which would dock with them.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 24 2004 air hockey tables work by blowing air up through lots of little holes. Any size would work. What I want to know is how do you turn?-- Freefall, Aug 24 2004 Not the air hockey tables I've played on [Freefall] but if you say there are such as that I believe you. The jets power would have to be increased I guess.-- harderthanjesus, Aug 24 2004 [desertfox], I half did this before, see link-- neilp, Aug 24 2004 True, neilp. Your idea is close, but slightly different. Mine isn't transport, nor do you ride on trays. In fact it's just that both use air hockey technology.
Mine is a sport in a closed rink while riding on boards.-- DesertFox, Aug 24 2004 Neato. How 'bout this one...Air Luge. +-- sartep, Aug 24 2004 Seems awfully close to the idea in my link, the only difference is you don't mention scoring goals.-- krelnik, Aug 25 2004 I like it. Maybe if there is a PSI issue in keeping up enough air pressure over a large surface area, you could have your large surface area floor actually be composed of square "cells" about the same size as an air hockey table.-- submitinkmonkey, Mar 10 2005 I'd pay for admission to an Air Hocky Rink. But are there big holes at either end of the rink like in regular Air Hockey? If you fall down in to one of the holes you should slide down a shoot that ends up in a dumpster. And in order to get back in you have to buy another ticket. Which makes sense, because you should be penalized for being clumsy.-- thefullrob, Mar 10 2005 I don't think it would be difficult to provide enough air flow or air pressure. If the board were (say) a 2ft square, then a 200lb person would only need a pressure of about half a PSI. The board would probably float only a fraction of an inch above the floor, so the area of "gap" out of which the air escapes at the board-edges is only 8ft x fraction-of- an-inch (say maybe 10 square inches). Correspondingly, then, the flow of air through the floor-holes isn't going to be that great (even over the total floor area). Remember, you're only trying to maintain a 'lubricating' film of air under the board - it's not like trying to blow a person upwards in free air.
I love the idea :-)-- Basepair, Mar 10 2005 Perhaps one of those big office building airconditioner units could supply sufficient volume. The key thing is that it must be consistent and dead reliable or injuries will result.-- bristolz, Mar 10 2005 That would sound about right. Incidentally, if you drop an 8x4ft sheet of MDF (?don't know if that translates - it's a sheet timber product) down on a polished floor and jump on it as it hits the ground, you can 'float' with alarming ease for about half a second just from the trapped air film. It's probably better if you're *expecting* this to happen, which I wasn't at the time.-- Basepair, Mar 11 2005 [Basepair] Most amusing! Thank you.
There is/was a product that would be appropriate here, but I'm not going to google for it. Essentially, it's a bed of air nozzles, with each nozzle just barely blocked by a ball. When a load depresses the ball, the air escapes and supports the load, while the ball is free to roll in the airstream. The advantage is that the air is used only as needed. You might be able to persuade the balls to roll in only one direction, but I'd like to see barely-adequate pedal-powered ducted fans for propulsion and steering. Okay, maybe bumpers around the boards. Better yet, make a parabolic floor, so the riders have to orbit around the center.-- baconbrain, Mar 11 2005 I ain't skatin' on no pairabolics.-- Basepair, Mar 11 2005 random, halfbakery