DE20306615U1 - Airborne gate to hold balloons flying vertically (from bottom to top) - Google Patents

Abstract

The air goal which is fixed in the air by an upper holder has a flight opening at the bottom. The goal is spanned by a rod structure which when collapsed takes up minimal space. When hanging the goal the rods are mutually opened out by the earths attraction force. A net (8) and advertising transparency (6) can be clamped in the goal to increase its stability.

Description

B. Description: B.l State of the art:

In the advertising industry, an application that is of great interest is one in which an advertising banner that is visible from afar and is suspended in the air serves as a target object (in the sense of a goal to be hit) and a container for collecting balloons that are rising up. Such an application offers the advertiser the advantage of intensive, playful interaction between the advertising message and the customer and, based on this, between the advertiser and the customer.

Such a target gate for floating balloons does not exist to date. Such an application was first described in the utility model with the number 202 19 592.9.

B.2 Problems:

The following requirements must be met when designing the air gate:

■ Application compliance: Balloons can float into the air gate and are held in place.

■ Lightweight construction: Since the air gate must be held at a height of up to 10m (e.g. by a telescopic rod construction or a helium balloon), the air gate must have a minimal dead weight.

■ Low susceptibility to wind and weather: The goal is to achieve low susceptibility to wind so that the door faces the wind with the side with minimal wind resistance. This means that a sailing effect must be avoided. When used outdoors, it must be ensured that there is no risk of an increase in weight due to accumulating water.

■ Mobility: To enable flexible use in mobile advertising promotions, a minimal transport volume when folded up must be combined with quick assembly and disassembly.

B.3 Solution:

As a technical solution to this problem, the invention proposes a device having the features of claims 1 to 5, which is described in more detail below.

In order to fix the outer points of the air gate, two (of the total of four vertical) side parts of the gate and the upper side of the gate are each spanned by light (e.g. made of aluminum) cross bars. The cross bars in turn consist of two bars that are connected to each other in the middle so that they can rotate. The two cross bars that span the side parts are then connected at two corners to the cross bar that spans the side facing upwards. The connection at the corners is made using a small steel ring, so that when the entire structure is lifted or hung up, the side parts have enough freedom of movement to hang down under the effect of gravity, while the upper side remains horizontal.

Due to the force of gravity, the crossbars open like scissors to form a cuboid. This opening of the scissors is limited by a rope (or a chain or something similar) that is attached to the upper side part between the corners (= front sides) that are moving away from each other.

In the next step, the connecting rings are used at the respective corners of the pole crosses to clamp the net and advertising banner in place, with the advertising banner enclosing the side pole crosses and the side facing downwards. So that the balloons can fly into the air gate, the advertising banner has (at least) one opening on the side facing downwards.

The net, in turn, encloses the two front sides as well as the upward-facing side.

In order to fix the advertising banner in the final stretched position and to stabilize the cuboid construction, two flexible, overstretched fiberglass rods are clamped into the lower corners of the side parts, which then push the corners of the lower side surface apart.

To enable easy assembly and disassembly, the net and advertising banner are hooked into the connecting rings on one of the two front sides using snap hooks. By simply loosening or fastening the snap hooks in these rings, the air gate can be disassembled or assembled with minimal effort, as the scissors can then be closed without any problem. The construction shrinks to a bundle of six poles plus net and advertising banner, the latter of which can be rolled up.

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B.4 Advantages:

With the design described above, the defined requirements are met throughout:

■ Mobility: When folded up, it is a bundle of 6 rods around which the advertising banner and the net are wrapped. The air goal can be set up and dismantled in a total of seven steps: hanging up the goal (1 step), hooking the net and the advertising banner at four corners (4 steps) and clamping the tension rods on the lower side (2 steps).

■ Low susceptibility to wind: Because the side parts that support the advertising banner are stretched out from a stable crossbar, the wind cannot get caught in this side part, which prevents a "sail effect". Instead, the air gate can turn out of the wind and take up a position with minimal wind resistance. This position is achieved by covering the two front sides with wind-permeable nets and placing them in the direction of the wind. The requirement for resistance to rain is met by the fact that the transparent material is water-repellent and water-permeable and the construction uses minimal horizontally positioned fabric surfaces (underside), which in turn also prevent water build-up due to their cutouts (gate openings).

■ Lightweight construction: Instead of clamping the outer edges with rods, only three side parts are clamped with crossed rods. This means that the number of rods required to meet the above requirements is minimal. The clamping rods to be clamped to the lower side part are also very light.

B.5 Further development of the invention:

The embodiments mentioned are not to be understood as an exhaustive list, but rather have an exemplary character.

B.6 Description of an embodiment:

Figure 1 shows an air gate under construction lying on the ground. Figure 2 shows an air gate in the unfolded, hanging state.

The basic elements are 6 rods, which are connected to three crosses (No. 1 and No. 2) via a rotating screw connection (No. 3). These crosses can be rotated like scissors and are connected via four

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Connecting rings (No. 4), each of which is passed through holes in the ends of the rods (No. 5) at one corner, are movably connected to one another. When hanging, the opening width of the scissors is fixed by a limiting rope or a light chain (No. 13) that is pre-configured in length. The advertising banner (6) is led around the outside of the air gate so that it encompasses two side parts and the lower side of the gate. The advertising banner is hooked into the connecting rings using a hook each via the hole rivets (No. 7) attached at a suitable point in the advertising banner. The net (No. 8) is finally attached so that it encloses the three remaining sides and is linked to the connecting rings (No. 9). On one of the front sides, the net and advertising banner are attached to the connecting rings with snap hooks (No. 11). This allows the air gate to be quickly assembled or dismantled by closing or opening the snap hooks.

A holding rope (No. 10) attached to the upper suspension of the air gate (No. 14) can then be connected to the supporting structure (e.g. a telescopic mast). Finally, after the tension rods (No. 11) have been clamped to the lower corners of the air gate to push the corner points outwards, all corner points of the air gate have taken up a fixed position and the advertising banner is completely stretched.

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List of reference symbols

1 cross bar of the upward facing side

2 Crossbar of a side part

3 Rotatable screw connection of the rods to the rod cross

4 Connecting ring

5 Hole in the rod for attaching the connecting ring

6 Advertising banner

7 hole rivets in advertising banner

8 Network

9 Connection point between net and connecting ring

10 Upper tether

11 Snap hooks that can be hooked or unhooked for assembly or dismantling

12 tension rod

13 Boundary rope

14 Suspension of the air gate

Claims (6)

1. Gate which is attached to an upper holding point in the air, has an entry opening on the lower side and the other sides are closed off, characterized in that the gate is spanned by a rod construction, whereby this rod construction takes up a minimal volume when folded and the rods span each other due to the effect of gravity when the gate is hung on the upper holding point. 2. Rod construction according to claim 1, characterized in that a pairwise crossing of the rods, ensured by a rotatable connection of the rod pairs in the middle of the rod and a flexible fastening of the rod pair ends to the respectively adjacent rod pair ends by the use of connecting rings, enables the air gate to be assembled and disassembled within seconds. 3. Device according to claim 1, characterized in that an advertising banner and a safety net can be clamped into this construction, whereby the safety net and advertising banner further increase the stability of the gate. 4. Advertising banner and net construction according to claim 3, characterized in that two (of four) opposite vertical side parts and the top are covered with net, and the remaining three sides with a banner so that the construction is as little susceptible to wind as possible and still offers a maximum area for advertising messages. 5. Transparent structure according to claim 4, characterized in that a light wind and water-permeable material is used which allows the water to flow away when it rains. 6. Gate construction according to claim 1, characterized in that tension on the underside of the cuboid construction is achieved by two fiberglass rods clamped between the lower corner points, which create tension in the construction because their length is greater than the maximum size permitted by the transparency expansion.