Snowboard Poles
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Subject: snowboard poles From: Adam Megacz <adam@megacz.com> X-Home-Page: http://www.megacz.com/ Organization: Myself --text follows this line-- Hey, does anybody know where I would find the stuff I need to build this? If you know a MechE who's willing to answer questions about this stuff I'll take him/her out to lunch to pick their brains. The idea is that behind your rear foot you have what looks like a steel yo-yo with big steel claws (the axis of the yo-yo is parallel to the ground and perpendicular to your board, about 2" above it). It's mounted on your back binding plate and lifts up and down. When it's down the claws stick through slots in the back of your board (maybe 1cm across and 5cm long) into the snow. I'm thinking four sets of claws and four slots, but that would need experimentation. The yo-yo is spring loaded, and a steel cable runs from it under both your feet (but above your board) to a pully in front of your front foot mounted on your front binding, and then up along your front leg to a grip that you hold in your front hand (actually you'd want to pull with your back hand for more leverage, so the cable actually crosses your body). When you pull on the grip, the first 2-3 inches of pull bring the yo-yo down so the claws are in the snow (the lever that moves it up and down is spring-loaded to the "up" position), and the rest of the slack drives you forward. If you think about the forces, it should feel like a cross between waterskiing and starting an old gas generator. One or two yanks should send you a good 20 yards on flat snow. Of course the yo-yo is ratcheted, so when you release the tension on the cable between pulls, it doesn't spin back. When you let go of the cable the spring-load on the yo-yo pulls the cable all the way, so that the grip winds up just in front of your front foot. The yo-yo also lifts up out of the snow so the teeth don't drag when you're riding. You only reach down to grab it when you're on a flat spot. Combined with flow bindings (which are the bomb), this means you could strap in while on the lift, step off, and go straight down the mountain, even if there's a flat area between the lift and the run you want. Actually, with some practice, you could probably stay strapped in all day and use this thing to maneuver through the lift line. If you wanted to get really fancy you could even work in a brake -- only useful below 5mph of course; it's not going to do anything at all when you're going downhill. But you'd need a brake if you wanted to use it in the lift lines. So they're not really "poles", but that's the best two-word description I could come up with. Feel free to forward this as long as you keep my name on it. I'm dying to have this thing. - a -- "It's lucky," he added, after a pause, "that there are such a lot of islands in the world. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson." -- Mustapha Mond
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