Retractable Helipad Railings

I only found this link, but no more information:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFMoFcFedok

Its only a handrail, not a real classified guard rail.

A similar retractable handrail you can find on SKAT (Lürssen). On each side of the helipad there is a handrail with 4 stantions, but no rail wires.

In my picture I shot in Brunsbüttel (Kiel Kanal) the rail is retracted (attached below)

On Flickr I found a good picture with the rail in normal mode (photo by Dominique Pipet)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11765034@N02/2924386021/sizes/o/in/photostream/

There you can see in the left corner of the handrail a little diagonal bar, maybe the connection to a hydraulik or electrical drive

always custom

In my opinion this kind of rails are always custom made or at least for a big part of it. This is because it has to fit the boat. It is easy to produce a part, like on the pictures, but it is not easy to make it work on a complete deck.

A few questions?
-Is this for a new buit or refit?
-Do you have space in the structure for cylinders or drive motors, connectors and hinges?
-Do you really need elctrical or hydraulic, why not folding down by hand? This is less costs, more reliabillity.
-Does the budget fit with your needs? This kind of systems are awlways custom or at least for a part custom. It takes engineering time, production time and mounting time. Because of the fact that it is partly custom, you always find some problems to solve.....it will cost!!!!
-In what region is the boat built or refitted? This kind of products ask for a lot of interaction between designer and builder.

Hope you have some answers and that we can help you with the quest.

The best is to have removable railings. When they are just folding 90 degrees to the outside, there is a risk for the heli to catch them and crash. It has happened.

That brings up a question. Does anybody have statistics on the number of incidents related to helicopters landing or taking off from private yachts? There just doesn't seem to be a lot of extra space on some of these helipads when you consider that it's a moving target.

Have you done this with more than 20 pieces of around 20kg or more in a few minutes when the owner calls you: "I will be there in 10min"?

For every railing section you need a storage place or somthing else.

It will be much easier if you can push one button and the railing retracts automatically. But something like that you don't find today on yachts.

I wouldn´t have them installed when the owner is using a helicopter for transports...

But whatever, the rails must get out of the way completely so they can not tangle the helicopter during take off or landing.

We produced lots of helideck handrails that fold down, manually. These are easier to install on a deck, as you do not need drive parts underneath the deck.
We had the question for automatics several times, but it always got skipped of the list because of price, or because the project was too far to install parts underneath the deck.

(Commercial link removed)

Which kind of fold down mechanism? 90° folding handrails to the outside?

What do you do with rounded helipads and railings?

90 degrees

Hinges can fold to 90 degrees or more, depending on the bulwrk shape. Height when folde down can be onder 250 mm. In case of a round helideck the fences are bent, but the hinges of one fence are in one line. The hinge is made in a way that you lift the fence a little before folding down. Maybe you can send me a private message, so we can exchange some info?