Installations for simulating free flight, whether they are intended for sports use, e.g. parachute training, or for artistic use, are known and serve to cause people or objects to be levitated by means of a substantially vertical jet of air produced over a limited area by means of a blower unit or system. The speed of the air is preferably more or less constant over the entire area of the jet of air, and the section of the jet can optionally be made variable while flight is in progress.
Thus, it is known, e.g. from British Patent Application No. 2,094,163, to make installations of this type in the form of a fixed installation having a closed air circuit. Such an installation makes use of a large building of fixed infrastructure having the simulation installation permanently installed therein. The installation has a free flight chamber in the form of a cylindrical chimney that is several meters tall and several meters across, together with a series of staircases, access rooms, and observation halls arranged around the chimney. The bottom portion of the chimney opens out into a room containing the blower unit which includes an impeller and the means required to drive it for the purpose of generating a vertical flow of air in the chimney. The installation also has a closed air circuit for sucking air in and blowing it out within the installation itself, so that in spite of its large size the installation operates in a closed circuit.
The size of such installations and the necessary equipment necessarily requires a high level of financial investment for implementation, and operating costs are also considerable, such that the building, use, and operation of such installations will continue to be limited and restricted in the future.
In an attempt to solve that problem, at least to some extent, proposals have already been made to reduce the size of the device and of the building, and to reduce the operating costs of an installation for simulating free flight by making installations that are smaller in size and that operate in the open air. Such installations reduce building and operating costs in a non-negligible manner since there is no longer any need to make a closed enclosure that is several tens of meters tall. Nevertheless, they still require an infrastructure and a stationary base building to be provided so that the initial financial investment is still high.
Thus, the general trend in the art of making free flight simulators has been to further reduce the size of such installations so as to make installations that can be dismantled at least in part, that are small in size, and that are designed to levitate a limited number of people, and in practice only a single person.
Such small-sized installations are described, for example, in PCT Application No. WO 83/01380 which describes a free flight simulator that can be dismantled, comprising a chimney acting as a flight chamber beneath which there are disposed three blowers connected to the chamber by means of a connection duct of progressively tapering section. The installation implements a chimney of a diameter that is smaller than two meters, and in order to limit head losses it makes use of a precise upwardly-directed angular orientation of the blowers. Such an installation is indeed of reduced size, but it is correspondingly limited to training and levitating a single parachutist because of the limited capacity of the blower unit matched to the size of the chimney. An installation of that type therefore cannot be used as a demonstration installation forming part of a large-scale attraction and remains confined to individual use for training purposes only.
PCT Application No. WO 96/27866 describes an installation for artificially producing a levitation wind. Such an installation is fixed and unsuitable for being dismantled, and it comprises a series of blowers disposed around the flight chamber. The installation is not in any way intended for use as a demonstration area since it is closed. On the contrary, it is fitted with a computerized video system for the purpose of creating a virtual world around the user within the chamber itself.
British Patent Application No. 2,288,772 discloses a free flight simulation installation of small capacity and size which is suitable for being moved and dismantled. That patent application describes a free flight simulator installed and mounted on a traveling chassis fitted with wheels and including an open circuit free flight chamber connected by means of a duct forming substantially a 90.degree. bend to a single blower that is unsuitable for dismantling and that is disposed beneath the chamber outside the levitation area. The suction and blow axis of the blower is substantially horizontal and is consequently disposed perpendicularly to the vertical levitation flow.
Because of the small flow of air generated by the blower, that installation is likewise restricted to training an individual parachutist, and cannot be integrated in and used in large-scale shows or demonstrations requiring a plurality of parachutists to be present simultaneously in the levitation wind.
Consequently, an object of the present invention is to remedy the above-mentioned prior art installations by proposing a novel high-power installation for the artificial production of a training and levitation wind of air flow rate and capacity that are large enough to enable a plurality of parachutists to be levitated simultaneously, while nevertheless being of a size, particularly of a height, that is limited so as to enable it to be easily transported and installed in existing entertainment halls or venues.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a novel free flight installation that can be easily and completely dismantled, while still being capable of delivering air at a high flow rate and remaining small in size and adaptable to the volume and space available in various entertainment venues.
An additional object of the present invention is to propose a novel free flight simulation installation of large capacity and of high air flow rate which is suitable, during a show, for providing spectators with good viewing and sound comfort.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a novel flight simulation installation of high power in which control of the levitation flow is optimized.