dirknerkle
DIGWDF mangler
I just spent an hour perusing various forums, and being here in Minnesota in the USA, I'm envious of you all that you can celebrate Christmas in warm sunshine. As I type this, it's 19F degrees outside with a wind chill of near zero F (that's about -7 to -16 centigrade) and it's snowing like crazy. I'm hoping it's not going to be as bad as it was a few years ago when I had to dig a path to my tune-to sign through the snowplow's leavings so people could see it!
I've been comparing methods that you good folks use for your shows with the way we try to do it up here in Minnesota. Up here we have to build things differently because of the climate. Our weather comes to us via the Jetstream that (usually) goes up into Canada from the Pacific Ocean, then zooms down toward us while dragging Arctic air along with it. Consequently, it's not uncommon for our temperatures to be an honest-to-goodness -25F (-31C) before applying the conversion for wind chill. So we find that zip ties often don't make it through the winter: they crack and break from the cold. Tape often doesn't stick. Cat5 connectors get brittle, crack and can literally fall off the wire. And forget about trying to repair anything outdoors -- you can't fix things when you're wearing mittens or leather gloves. I tried replacing a cat5 cable once -- a couple of the internal wires actually broke when I uncoiled the wire. And props that sit on the ground are always in trouble from being covered with snow. We're talking completely covered so you can't even see them!
We typically have to set up in October or early November before the snows and if you don't get your props out, connected and tested in time, well, there's always next year when you can try again... We don't worry too much about GFCI tripping because it's too cold for snow to melt and run into electrical connectors. Props that are pinned/staked to the ground to keep them from blowing away get "frozen-in" and we have to wait until late February or March before we can get the stakes out of the ground.
For animatronic users, servos generally fail up here, too: the lubrication/gear grease solidifies or freezes causing gears to either slip or completely jam, so we use a lot of automobile windshield wiper motors if we want successful moving displays. Inflatables can be troublesome as the fan motors may not run, and vinyl plastic inflatables can crack and deflate.
But the good news is that electricity always works!
This is a wonderful site -- thank you all for contributing to it and for your continued interest in this crazy pastime! Merry Christmas to you all from us up here in the freeze!!
I've been comparing methods that you good folks use for your shows with the way we try to do it up here in Minnesota. Up here we have to build things differently because of the climate. Our weather comes to us via the Jetstream that (usually) goes up into Canada from the Pacific Ocean, then zooms down toward us while dragging Arctic air along with it. Consequently, it's not uncommon for our temperatures to be an honest-to-goodness -25F (-31C) before applying the conversion for wind chill. So we find that zip ties often don't make it through the winter: they crack and break from the cold. Tape often doesn't stick. Cat5 connectors get brittle, crack and can literally fall off the wire. And forget about trying to repair anything outdoors -- you can't fix things when you're wearing mittens or leather gloves. I tried replacing a cat5 cable once -- a couple of the internal wires actually broke when I uncoiled the wire. And props that sit on the ground are always in trouble from being covered with snow. We're talking completely covered so you can't even see them!
We typically have to set up in October or early November before the snows and if you don't get your props out, connected and tested in time, well, there's always next year when you can try again... We don't worry too much about GFCI tripping because it's too cold for snow to melt and run into electrical connectors. Props that are pinned/staked to the ground to keep them from blowing away get "frozen-in" and we have to wait until late February or March before we can get the stakes out of the ground.
For animatronic users, servos generally fail up here, too: the lubrication/gear grease solidifies or freezes causing gears to either slip or completely jam, so we use a lot of automobile windshield wiper motors if we want successful moving displays. Inflatables can be troublesome as the fan motors may not run, and vinyl plastic inflatables can crack and deflate.
But the good news is that electricity always works!
This is a wonderful site -- thank you all for contributing to it and for your continued interest in this crazy pastime! Merry Christmas to you all from us up here in the freeze!!
