fun stuff

Recreational

Wake park rails

Development of an innovative adjustable rail system for wake parks

What happens when you combine 'Wake Park Peanut Butter with Hydraulic Cylinder Chololate....
Please help....  I'm not sure if I can stop this one...  It's late at night, we're still kicken' out Retract Lifts and I'm thinking how much fun the new Cable Park at Placid Waters is gonna' be...  The local brew is stoked about this one. 
 
 OK, wait... back up about   2 months - I received a   call from a very dear   friend and Pro Rider of   ours Andrew Adkison.     Andrew is working on a   Cable Park in Panama   City opening this fall and   has a friend working on   opening another Wake   Park this summer in   Texas and asked if I   would be interested in building docks for them....  Sounds like a riot.  Intense and Extreme... Sure.  I think maybe this might be a decent venue to discuss some ideas about aluminum tubular rails and kickers that retract in and out of the water using our Patented Retract System...  Now you see it - now you don't kind'a stuff.  So we've been working on ideas for about 2 years, (mostly on bar napkins at the weekly production meetings - the kind that no one is ever late for), and it hits me.  Let's step it up a notch.  Let's make a system that is going to challenge even the most insane riders out there...  Let's make it easy enough for beginners to master one of the most difficult wake board obstacles and difficult enough for the pros to walk (excuse me) crawl away from feeling the burn...  This is where it gets a bit dicey...    
                                     

Let's start with the Rail System.  72 intense feet long.  Don't worry it's a whopping foot wide.  HDPE top cover (high tech acronym for slipperier than snot - we call it STS).  It's a 5' drop, if you make it to the center.  And you will fall.  It's called a rainbow - today.  Smooth entry, smooth exit, nice arc throughout the mid section.  Hit it straight and hard enough to carry your speed without tugging on the cable too much and you'll do fine.  It'll be a rainbow for the next 24 hours, becauseyesterday, well, yesterday Scot and company drained the deep cycle batteries that control the 5 Retract Cylinders that change the shape of this mild manor, aluminum tubular constructed, HDPE covered rail into an instrument of death... Yesterday?  Let's see, it started out with the smooth entry, smooth exit rainbow.  Don't get me wrong, this is still a hand full...  But not enough.  Engage the hydraulic ram to raise the front nose and it's a 2 foot ollie.  Then raise the rear and it's a 3 foot drop...  but It's the mid sections that cause so much turmoil...  3 more cylinders control (3) 16 foot sections.  Straight, inverse arc, 2 tier up, 2 tier down, straight front elevated end, elevated front straight end...  You get the idea...  Adjust this, extend that, retract here and extend there....  Take a look at Scot busting out on the rail below....  (nice pic, Joe) 

 Sound like your kind of fun?  Stay tuned.  In the next few weeks we'll havephotos, testimonials of accomplishments and x-rays of bruised egos and maybe, somepics of Raley Jim throwin' it down.

Simulator

An exciting 12-passenger driving simulator that will send riders on a wild journey through space

Ok, this may be a bit over the top this time, but we really couldn't help ourselves (read the whole article before you judge - then tell us what you would do...). It's not like we're training aerial combat maneuvers like the Air Force, or mission flight describe the imagetraining like NASA, or even product development like our automotive friends. Not even close. More like we're were called to a higher order - fun. FUN, capital F-U-N. And in our book nothing yells fun like a motion simulator. Seriously serious fun. Think about the last family reunion you went to - was it any fun - no. Was there a motion simulator there - no... coincidental? I think not. But seriously, if I may, we were brain storming about the upcoming boat show in town (another staff meeting at the local pub), and I mentioned we needed to step it up another notch. My thoughts turned to family trips to Disney World and Universal Studios - now there's a place that screams fun. I remembered how entertaining the rides were and how the motion simulators made you feel right in the middle of the action... and it hit me...describe the image What if we could duplicate the experience of throwing a back roll on a wakeboard or hitting a ski jump at 80mph and flying 240' in the air. Ya, right... No really - a few years back we built a smaller version of this... It was a bit of a stretch to duplicate another one, but not impossible. We surfed the web and found the capsule of our dreams. Built by the same company that builds motion base simulators for the military - I figured these should be good enough for us. Long story short, we took a ride to a local motion base theater that had one on display and made the owner a deal neither of us describe the imagecould pass up... Now all we needed was a film, a controls guy, animator, motion programmer, custom lowboy air ride trailer and a tow vehicle. The easy part was done. I called 3 of the pro riders we sponsor and told them what we were up to and wanted helmet cam video - they were stoked... I mentioned to my guys we bought a motion simulator and this winter we're building a dual axle, air ride low boy trailer. Right. Well, as you can see I won the bet and after some shipping repairs, a redesigned control system from a very dear friend out in describe the imageCalifornia, all that was needed now was a video and motion programming. My script focused around launching our viewers from the boat show into outer space, sling shot around the moon and reenter earth's atmosphere, and land in a secret training lake where our pro riders would rip it up for them... Our local college, Ferris State University, provided the talent (see credits) for the animated space shot,describe the image and we did the editing in house. We utilized a professional sound studio to make it really rock and we started motion programming. It was a hit - no one had ever combined water sports and a motion simulator ride. Pro riders told us it felt like the real thing - except you don't get wet... Not yet anyway.... So if you have a special event give us a call - maybe it will be available. So now remember the question we started with... "What would you do?" Please view the video and imagine what kind'a fun are those guys at Summit Marine up to next....

contact

Ready to elevate your waterfront
experience?

Request a free consultation