April 2010

Little League: what a start! We actually started out season at the end of February, but due to the nature of this blog and how it is written, it’s always one month behind. Our first game with the mighty Major Dodgers got off to a great start, although we thought we weren’t going to play due to the rain, we did eventually get the game going. We knew we had a weaker team, so we soften up our defenses and let the younger players occupy the infield, while our older players visited the outfield or reacquainted themselves with the bench. It does not really matter what we do, our team is so strong, and they perform wherever you play them.

We have played nine games up to Easter weekend and currently we are tied for first with one loss. Our team batting average is an awesome 498 with our top hitter batting 709, after 9 games we have hit 10 home runs with five of our batters while another two continue to bounce off the fence, This is nothing but a solid team with solid players. I could not ask for a better team! Bubba incidentally is hitting 609 after 23 official at-bats.

We have not done anything with the seven-foot trees yet, I am displeased with the manufactures design of removable branches. We have discussed this at length, and it will be one of those let try something and see projects.

We received our new controllers from Light-O-Rama from the Fall Sale, a new CTB16PC Kit, and a CMB16DC controller, pushing us to 160 channels of control. Having all the controllers will allow me to distribute my power needs more evenly amongst the controllers, dropping the amperage load considerably on all controllers and get the controllers closer to the elements.

The DC controller we purchased specifically for the Blizzard and Rainbow wash LED lights. I am hoping I can gather enough funds to purchase enough Rainbow Wash lights to replace all our flood lights, which is approximately 40 – 150 Watt lights, giving us back over 50 amps of available power, but at $20.00 each, this will be quite an investment, so we will have to see what happens with this element.

We have decided to purchase a new FM transmitter; our old Belkin has LCD screen finally died after 4 years of service, not a bad investment for $30.00. We have chosen the EDM LCD RDS transmitter that is manufactured in South Africa; this has nothing but great reviews and meets the FCC part 15 compliance regulations for home FM broadcast. The EDM LCD RDS clarity is unparallel to other transmitters, and will allow us to broadcast the song titles and artist names directly to the listener’s car stereo. This was quite an investment, but it does play a very important part to our display, without it, it’s just lights.

We started building our four - seven channel arches, two have been built and one is in the works. We planned to do one per week, but we only built two in three weeks. We should have the third built this weekend and the final one at least started.

Bubba and I have decided that we would build a unique twenty-foot tree for this coming year, it so happens that our neighbor decided to cut down a twenty-foot pine tree just at the corner of our property, this will be a perfect location for our twenty-foot flag pole tree, this corner is high terraced and viewable from the main street and will serve as a beacon to our display. This will not be just an ordinary tree, it will be something that has yet to be seen in this neighborhood, and will add that dramatic innovative effect that we always try to achieve.

We have purchased 125-C9 retrofit LED lights that will replace our incandescent C9’s that currently burn 7.29 amps, the amperage savings alone will be just under 7 amps, not to mention hours of life per bulb is almost 10 fold.

We have also purchased 24 more strobes for the display, pushing our total count of strobes up to 36; this will add to the drama that we can produce with the strobes.

What we have left to do?

Christmas tree builds
Arches (2 built – 2 left)
Corner Stone’s (Design and build)
Mega Tree (Purchase parts, Design and build)
Rainbow Wash (Order and build)
LOR Controller Cases (Order 7)
Re-sequence everything
Secure new charity organization

More to come next month.