Skilifts.org / SORT Forum

You mean this system?

Thats the style I have seen in Europe.

Yes, that is the system I was talking about. What do their new gates look like, or have they changed.

Kicking Horse, on Feb 10 2005, 03:23 PM, said:

There is a photoeye sensor in the Superconnect's mid station I guess its for the same purpose to make sure the chair is empty before the loading gates open.

Yes, that is how it works. If they hadn't come up with laser eyes, then they would probably just have to watch. Seeing people being booted off of the chair because of a metal bar is funny, but not practical. I'm suprised that there are no loading gates at the bottom, because it's just as easy to load every chair rather than wait every other chair.
This post has been edited by highspeedquad: 13 February 2005 - 09:30 PM

I was at Breck yesterday and saw the loading gates/carpet for the 7 chair. It seemed to be running smoothly. The carpet looked like the ones at www.poma.net. The gates looked somewhat sturdy, like a rectangular piece of plastic. The gates themselves looked like the Dopps, but they looked like they were mounted on smaller Poma cylinders. Once the gate opens you must shuffle onto the carpet to load.

Did you happen to get any pics of this?

No, I couldn't. Sorry. It looked much like the lifts here, though. http://www.poma.net/english/index.html
I think that you will find the best pics of what it looks like if you click "Winter Sports" then click "Fixed Grip Chairlifts." Explore around the pics of all of the fixed grip terminals. You should see what I mean. The gates at Breck don't have the middle divider, though. There are just two cylinders on the outside, with a gate attached to each.

i know what the poma ones look like.... i just wanna see how it looks on that chair.

I actually think it looks pretty nice, just wish that it was on a lift I use more. :D I will try and get some pics next time.

I had my first experience with these last night at Blue... I thought it was adorable how all 6 gates would open and close in a "wave" sweeping across as the chair in front would cross.

I didn't like how my board got caught up in the post, leaving me to stumble ungracefully back up to the load line. Whoops!

-Iain

Steamboat has some really small loading gates. They appear to be old racing start wands fixed to a motor that opens them when a proximity sensor is triped by the chair in front of the one that skiers would load on.

Those racing wands are very flimsy, or at least the ones I've seen. Do you have any pics of this?

No sorry. I didn't have my camera with me. They seem flimsy but most of them will hold up for a long time at least as racing start wands. Plus as loading gates they are on springs so if someone leans on them they breakaway. Also the wands with I imagine small servos to drive them would be much less expensive to maintain than a design like pomas.
This post has been edited by poloxskier: 03 March 2005 - 06:58 PM

Yeah, with the Poma if you stay there too long, you can move the gates open and closed as long as they don't close completely. I guess it is in case someone is slow.

Poma's design is very solid and do a good job of keeping people back until its time to load. Steamboat's are probably either an in-house design or another company since they are on multiple different lifts of different makes. They are also there just as a visual cue but they wont hold anyone back.

Check the Thunderhead Express pictures at Steamboat. I think you might be able to see them in those pictures.

Hmm, I couldn't find any.

Just about every chair in Australia has loading gates, and the majority of chairs here are FGs. At Falls Creek we have mostly Dopps and all the gates drop from the drive terminal, with the exception being Ruined Castle Quad which is a fixed grip with a loading carpet. For RC the gates are anchored in the ground and burried in snow.

We had a poma FG installed last summer and it does not have gates, as there is no option for poma gates for a top drive lift. We also have a CTEC FG that is a top drive, but has electric gates.

I wonder why Poma doesn't have loading gates for top-drive.

How would the loading gates work for FGs? I would think that you couldn't have the proxy switches.