WAKE COUNTY — Day 6: Friday, November 23
(Note: tinkered a bit yesterday, but primarily celebrated Thanksgiving with the Family)
Tasks for the day:
Return man-lift
Hang lights on Tree 4 (large maple)
Test all single color individual strands (135 Strings)
Start deploying individual color strings on bushes 1-11
Not much unique to say about putting out the single color light strings. Each large bush gets 3 100-light strings for each color (white, blue, red, green, purple), and each small one gets 1 of each.
Learned an important lesson from last year's take-down and put-away of the lights. I made light string balls, and some had the male plug in the center of the ball (inaccessible for testing). I had to undo and redo about half of the light string balls to test. You'll see a wheelbarrow full of light string balls in the image gallery for today.
Tried something different with the large maple, running light string bundles up and around the outside of the branches to the very top (took advantage of having the man-lift). I don't think I like the look as well as when I ran them along 6 primary branches up through the middle. In the dark last year, the lights made it look like a complete tree skeleton, but at about half of its real height. I'll probably add additional light strings to spruce it up a bit.
After getting the rest of the bush lights out, It will probably take me a day and 1/2 to run all the extension cords from the controllers to the lights they control. I might be able to run some test shows Sunday night, and go to automation (computer scheduled start & finish) as early as Monday or Tuesday. What I refer to as a show is a set of programmed song & light animations that runs about 15 minutes, then repeats the whole night. Many folks last year would watch until a song repeated. If too many folks start to gather, I run fewer songs in the set. I try to make sure my neighbors are not inconvenienced by my obsession.
Last year, up until Christmas week, I ran the show from 5:30 - 10:00 on weekdays, then to 11:00 on Fridays and Saturdays. The last couple of days of Christmas week, I scheduled the show to end much later, and would watch until no one was outside, then shut it down.
Steve Crisp, gas up your generator for Sunday night's testing. I have a test sequence that will turn on more lights than usual to make sure I'm full-load ready.
Lights deployed today: 7500
Total lights deployed: 38,000 (none of them plugged in yet)
*I'm using more strings for some of the elements than last year. I'm especially loading the blue lights heavier, since they need more to give the appearance of being as bright as the lighter colors. I know I'll break the 50,000 mark, just don't know by how much.
