Trip Report: NAARSO Safety Forum
Charlotte, North Carolina - 01/25-29/2004

"Expect the Unexpected"

It took eleven. Heading down the West Virginia Turnpike, we encountered heavy snow near Beckley, where the snow was falling faster than the snowplows could push it away. Quickly the conditions deteriorated. Then we entered Virginia, where conditions failed to get better. Since he had lived in Fayetteville for a year before I was born, Dad suggested that in North Carolina we would find that they don't know how to handle snow at all. I accused him of being a pessimist.

He turned out to be right. When we crossed the border into North Carolina, the road literally disappeared. At least a dozen vehicles were spun off the road. Conditions failed to get significantly better, and as we approached Charlotte the drivers got nuttier. We were averaging about 35 MPH. A lot of people passed us, but we passed a lot of those people later...us plodding along at 35 MPH, them trying to figure out how to get their trucks out of the ditch. We learned that the snow turned to freezing rain in Charlotte. This is the phase-change that was supposed to have happened back at the Ohio River. Somebody goofed on this forecast!

We arrived at about 6:30 and checked into our room, then joined the ride inspectors for snacks in the hotel bar. Every time I come to one of these schools I am amazed at the number of people I actually know at least by name and often by face; I'm even more amazed at the number of people who actually know me. The evening ended after I talked Dad and Steve Elliott into sliding over to Krispy Kreme across the street for a couple of doughnuts.

Monday morning after breakfast we got our registration materials and were arbitrarily shunted into groups. The structure of the NAARSO school has changed a bit since the first one I attended. There is a lot more individualized tracking, with multiple, optional simultaneous classes and less group-based rotating classes, so the groups are now mostly for the hands-on activities and the incident investigation. NAARSO's arbitrary grouping is designed to split up people who normally work together, and to pair up different types of inspectors with different levels of experience.

Once grouped, we split up almost immediately for the first round of classes. Mike Martin did an electrical class in which he briefly touched on way too many topics, then finally discussed the factors that determine voltage drop in a power supply line. I'd had this in Physics classes decades ago when I first learned Ohm's Law, and if pressed I could do a voltage drop calculation, but this was the first time it was presented to me in such a way that I could understand it in a useful way. Later, Dave Collins did his hydraulic symbols class, which I'd had before. We talked about specific ride issues, then hit the steam tables for lunch. In the afternoon, Dave Collins expanded on the hydraulics by introducing us to pneumatics, while Larry Beauford brought us up to date on the codes and standards relating to pressure vessels--that is, containers under pressure which are not boilers. Steve Elliott explained how ASTM works to develop industry standards, and finally we were given the word that NAARSO was officially changing the calendar so that this week, Wednesday and Tuesday would change places in hopes that some of the ice would melt before our visit to Carowinds. We also learned from Brian King that NAARSO has entered into a partnership with the US Technical Training Center to develop on-line courses for certification renewal. It's more expensive than the annual seminar, at $15 per credit hour (32 required every two years), but spread evenly over 24 months that's only $20/month. That might be okay, but just look at all you don't get by not attending the school...like getting iced into a hotel in Charlotte!

"Wednesday", we divided not into our assigned groups, but into our assigned elective classes. My day started with an interesting class with a gentleman whose name I forgot to write down about steel roller coasters, concentrating mostly on structural issues. It's probably just as well that he didn't get to talk about vehicles during that class, as he was planning to call on Jack Fletcher from Cedar Point to come up from the back of the room and teach it for him. Nothing against Jack, it's just that I don't think he was planning to teach that morning!

From there I moved on to Tony Rossi's wood coaster class. He started by rolling a Robb Alvey video to point out that there are operational problems out there, and specifically asked me if I had any comment. As we were there to talk about wood coaster inspection and maintenance and not operations, I left it alone. He did have a lot of information for us about construction and inspection, and he pointed out that John Allen wrote the book on wood coaster maintenance and construction, and it's a book that still represents the best practices in the industry. The problems he showed us in a 3-day-old coaster were a good illustration of the saying I have always credited to Ollie Lindon at Kings Island: "You never stop building a wood coaster."

On down the hall was a session on commissioning a new ride, not so much getting into details like acceptance testing, but rather concentrating on the overall procedure, in particular the scheduling and making sure that the ride will be up on time. I don't remember who was teaching this one (sorry, I'm lousy with names), but this was the class where I met Gary Chubb and Laura Woodburn from Hersheypark. With Storm Runner, their park has a bit of a challenge in puting in a new ride, but I'm sure they're up to it. That's the park where I saw a Chaos running all day a couple of years ago with no mechanic in sight!

Ride dynamics is a subject I have been studying for years, and I've been through Steve Elliott's class about it more than once before. Every time I sit through this one, I see more understanding in the faces around me...I don't know if that's because Steve is getting better, the students are getting better, or a little of both.

Another steam-table lunch was followed by a class in NDT awareness hosted by Michael Hupalo and Joe Bixler, this time with slides showing the use of dye penetrant, then across the hall, Steve Elliott and Tony Rossi showed off some potentially useful web sites. Not exactly what I expected from "Computer as an Inspection Tool", but somewhat useful anyway. Finally, a course in wire rope courtesy of...er...another name I didn't catch, but I know he was from Skyfair...taught me some facts about wire rope that I had never considered.

As if that wasn't enough, in the evening I attended an optional class on major incident investigations, which not only suggests the use of NFPA 921 (intended for the investigation of fire or explosion) as an investigative model, but also explains how to make it possible for all of the various groups which want to conduct an investigation to come in and do so without falling all over each other. It was scheduled from 6:30-7:30, but didn't end until 9:30, meaning that when it was over we were all tired and hungry...but it had been an exceptionally good course.

Tuesday didn't go quite as planned. Remember, in the crazy world of NAARSO '04, Tuesday is the day that comes AFTER Wednesday but BEFORE Thursday. Mother Nature still wasn't cooperating, so instead of the promised hands-on activities at Carowinds, we got small-group discussions in a sort of virtual Carowinds. Our group started with the incident investigation on the kiddie coaster, which was nicely done this year in spite of it being set up in a hotel conference room. The scenario was written so that instead of an incident investigation, we were to do an inquiry into complaints and an operational inspection. So the scenario performance began with something that looked like an incident just to try and trip up the people who forgot about it not being an incident.

With that completed, we spent the remainder of the day talking about specific rides: the Vortex stand-up steel coaster, the Scrambler, the Skycoaster, the Hurler wood coaster, the drop tower, a dark ride, a Looping Starship, bumper cars, Iwerks simulator, Balloon Race, Mini-Jet kiddie ride, and antique carousel. It was in these sessions that the NAARSO school wasn't quite as good as it could have been. Mostly that is because the sessions were literally thrown together at the last second. Also, I think that when you are standing in front (under, inside, whatever) of a ride, the inspection points are perfectly relevant, if only as a matter of interest. By comparison, a classroom discussion about a ride seems to be less meaningful if it is a ride you have never seen, and that normally you would never inspect. But that's just me. The truth is, they really did better than you might expect under the circumstances It might have helped if the people doing the teaching had been the ones who ran over to the park and took the pictures.

Even Thursday, the final day of the school, was busy. An audio equipmet manufacturer gave a brief presentation on those annoying auto-spiel systems, but then it was back to the content classes. Laura Woodburn from Hersheypark told us all about monitoring operational performance, and gave an enlightening talk about identifying problem riders. A lively Dan Dudley show-and-tell showed us all some notable problem spots on a bunch of rides. You know, back in 1996, I think these kinds of sessions dominated the school, but today there are so many well-developed classes that there is barely any time for the ride inspection show-and-tell.

After lunch, the groups...uh...re-grouped for our incident presentations. Our group was last for that. I was a little surprised that they never read the original script to let us know what "really" happened. But the presentations were followed by a round of Wayne Pierce, Esq., ripping our investigations apart. His presentation was a lot of fun, especially considering that his points are deadly serious. I think the message got through.

Thursday night was the closing banquet, yet another meal served out of the hotel's steam tables, accompanied by the traditional recognitions of the long lists of instructors, donors, group leaders, supporters, and officers.

In all, it was an outstanding school. It was my third visit to a NAARSO school (others were 1996 and 1999) and by far this one was the best. Let me put it this way: Unlike most of the people there, I am not an amusement industry professional. But I still got my money's worth out of it. If it was that valuable to me, I can only imagine how it must have been for most of the participants.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Oh, one more thing: Just because Cymon, our Group Leader was from TSSA (i.e. Canadian) doesn't automatically mean we cheated. 8-)

--DCAjr, member of the award-winning Red Group

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