Lighting Department: Work Begins

 

This weekend's work was all about electrical and lighting. We have received all of the miniature and color-changing LEDs we ordered and so we set out to work, experimenting with how they could be added to our model. In the above picture you see we have broken out a piece of the Flipper's poles and added a color-changing LED behind it. In our testing these ended up working great. And we learned a huge lesson. It is better to work your lighting in BEFORE you put your model together...not after :)

 

 

 

Over on the Log Ride we have done just that. We waiting on these pirate signs and are really glad we did. Here you can see the back of the sign with a positive wire running up one side and a negative wire running up the other. Believe it or not, that tiny little speck of yellow with the two wires coming out of it sitting left of the sign is a mini LED.

 

 

Once installed and running it looks like this. Notice the yellow light lit on the right pole. These look really neat in low light.

 

So with the experimental part of this phase done we are now working away to add the rest of the lights to both models and to our game booths.

 

 

Attraction Department: More Construction

It's a little tough to see here, but we have our structures over a lift and a drop as well as our attraction sign installed. For those keen-eyed folks, you might notice that I put my little huts in a different place than the design calls for. Call it artistic license  ;)

 

Next up, it was time to build a cannon! This is going to require some pretty small cannon balls!

 

 

We were excited about this part. Our pirate has been installed! We love this part of the model.

 

 

Ah...there they are....and yes they are very small. Cannon balls! These ball piles had to be glued together as they started as three separate pieces. Crazy. So we will be installing these into the attraction tonight!



 

Flipper Stats

We promised you stats on our Flipper attraction and here they are:

Faller Flipper # 140439

Total Model Parts: 436

Total Hours Spent: 22

Total Days: 6

 

This attraction is now waiting for special lighting and final painting before being signed off as ready for installation. 

 

 

Attraction Department: More Log Work

Had about 90 minutes last night to do some work on the log ride which included working on two shelters and the attraction's sign.

Decorating the sign including cutting out these very small letters and pasting them down onto the sign.

So these three pieces are ready to be added to the attraction! More work coming soon.

Publicity Department: Hard at Work!

Looks like Mystic Mountain's little publicity department is already hard at work promoting our park.

Last night, Autumn came running into the studio saying "Dad, you gotta see this!" So she lead me to the living room where Nickelodeon's Sam & Cat were frozen on the TV screen. She excitedly hit play and there it was!

Sam and Cat were standing in their living room as Sam began to slowly take out something from her jacket pocket. The dialogue went something like this:

SAM: Hey....guess what I got?
CAT: I dunno....what have you got?
SAM: How about two free tickets to Mystic Mountain!

We all got a good laugh out of that. Looks like we better get our theme park up and running soon seeing as how Sam & Cat already have tickets  :)

Attraction Department: More Rigging & Beyond

 

Time to rig up the second mast. Now that I have the hang of it, it felt like I was doing someone's hair!

 

 

 

 

I must be getting better at it because this time I broke no cleats and only broke one threader! And.....it took only one hour to get this one done!

 

 

 

It was time to move on to other parts of construction. Safety is our number one goal here at Mystic Mountain (those HO scale people are really expensive!) and so we have sparred no expense in safety features. Here you see our emergency evacuation platforms on both of our lifts.

 

 

And here you see a walk-down ramp from the uplift. I had to take a little liberty with these as the ramp is a bit higher than it should be (had to do that to get it to operate properly). I decided to cut off the bottom boards so I could get the railings to align. When building a model like this I am finding that you have to think "out of the box".









Attraction Department: Redoing The Rig

Okay, no pirate I know ever used white rope. And that was driving me crazy. After three hours of madness, I was not happy with the way the mast looked. And I still had another one to make. Then I found this........

A piece of burlap. A trip to Michaels paid off when I spotted these hanging from a display. They were all ratty and the threads were hanging loose. But to me...this was perfect! I bought a roll and took it home and proceeded to take it apart.

This was much tougher to work with and I broke the cleats over and over again trying to thread this much thicker line through the holes. I broke many a sewing threader trying to get the job done too.

But I think the final result looks much better don't you? Now I can believe this is the work of a pirate! In all, it took over 5 hours to finally get this piece of the model correct.

Add in a few "ocean wave" trimmings and another step in the process is finished!

Attraction Department: Rigging Time.

It's time to do some rigging mates! Yikes, I swear it was easier for the pirates. This was tough as it is so small. But thanks to the jeweler's helmet and a pair of good tweezers, work began. Here you can see the white string attached to the cleats.

 

The cleats are glued to the base and the rigging to the mast begins. Reading the instructions carefully you find that some of the "rope" goes through all levels and some only go through two.

 

And finally, you have your string rigged onto the mast. Now let's add some sails.

In the sails go, making sure they are adjusted properly before the glue sets in.

And three hours later.......a pirate sail! But there was something that was really bothering me. That white string!

 

Attraction Department: Log Test Day

We brought in the water and cranked up the water pumps and upload ramps for testing day. At first, things looked good and our logs began to climb the first lift.

But it didn't take long for things to begin to fail. Once again, we had a lift issue. Placement of these lifts is very touchy. They have to be just right or the motors can't turn the belt.

 

Then we ran into a new problem. Boats weren't leaving after dropping from the lift into the flume. And so.....they piled up. We later found that this was an issue with leveling. After we leveled the model this problem went away.

 

 

It took a few hours and numerous leak repairs, but we finally got things running!

 

 

Autumn approved of the way things were working and we both agreed you could sit and watch this thing operate for hours.

 





 

 

NOTE: A clearer video is coming soon! :)

 

We still have a few leaks to deal with and we need to add some "steering" above the lifts so that 100% of the boats land correctly. But all in all, our first test was a success. Next up.....phase two.....theming and queue buildings.





Attraction Dept: Construction Phase One Finished!

We are happy to report that installation of the upramps are complete. You can see them here, one over the other, with their black belts ready to lift logs up to the highest points of the ride (which may turn out to be a challenge as we did some pretesting and all the dry logs did was slip on the belt).

It was insane getting these ramps in and I have to admit that I broke off many installed pieces getting them just right so the motors would actually move the belts. I had to completely take apart one of the ramps and rebuild it the opposite way to get it to turn properly. And yes.....once again....I broke the end of the trough off! Yikes!

After surveying the damage, and doing some repair here and there, it was time to bring out the logs and prepare them for construction. It was kind of nice to finally get an easy process for a change!

 

And here we are with phase one finished! Between phase one and phase two (which is mainly load buildings and lots of cool theming) we do a motors and pumps test. Power supplies are coming today and we will connect both motors and both pumps and fill the flume with water. The boats will be added to the attraction and we will run an hour-long test to work out any bugs. Here's hoping for a successful run tonight! Wish us luck!

Attraction Department: A Weekend of Work

We did a lot of work over the weekend and ran into some interesting problems and challenges. In the photo above you can see that we need to add our little bamboo decorations along the flume.

Here you can see we have started the work, while a pile of "bamboo" waits its turn to be added to the trough.

Now we have all of the bamboo and the legs inserted and cemented in. It's time to flip it over and add it to the base.

And there it is, both parts of the track put together. Notice the clear hose coming out of the ends of the troughs. I had to tear out the nozzle box at the end of the flume that the hose fits into 4 times before finally getting it right.

 

Time for more decorations. You can see what we are building at the left and the pieces it requires on the right. Currently, 12 of these must be made.

 

 

And they are all finished.......over 2 hours later! These were very time consuming.

 

 

Now we get into the tricky part....gears and belts. Here are some of the gears and rods that will go into the two upramps.

 

 

 

This was a nightmare. Getting the belt over the gears and putting a piece on top without knocking the gears out of their holes was not easy. And you can't use any glue. It took me quite some time to figure out the best way to do this. And you get to do it twice!

 

 

Then, once you get them together you find you can't get the belt to turn. It took a while to find just the right combination of turns on the screws that hold the ramp sides together before I could get the belts to loosen up. Now I have to keep my fingers crossed that they are loose enough for the motors to turn them.

We were pretty excited with the work we were able to do this weekend and have the four power supplies that will be needed on order now.

Atraction Department: Log Ride Construction Continues

Construction of the first of two sections of flume have begun. Here we have pieced them all together and are beginning to add bamboo decoration which you can see at the bottom of the picture.

With the bamboo pieces the flume is beginning to look good!

 

Here we have all of the bamboo attached (83 of them!) along with a few other pieces.

 

 

Here you can see the legs have been inserted. It was here that we found an issue with the nozzle piece. It is not totally clear how this should be inserted and we ended up having to pry it loose and re-install it to look more like the photo in the instructions. We have our fingers crossed.

 

 

Once flipped, we then inserted the legs and found a new problem. The longer legs seem to be too long in some spots and too short in others. We will do some adding and subtracting to get it just right. Two and a half hours was spent on this part of the attraction.  

Entertainment Department: Fireworks!

Of course we have an Entertainment Department!  And they (well....I)  have been working hard on this crazy idea that I had that I wanted Mystic Mountain to have a nightly fireworks show.

In comes FWSim, a fireworks show creation software company. This program is pretty amazing and can even be used for professional fireworks shows such as those at theme parks and special events.

We will be using this software to create a music-synced fireworks show that will be projected against our mountainous sky.  It should be quite a site!

Attraction Department: Faller Log Ride Construction Begins

With the Flipper cleared from our Attraction Department, we began to work on Faller's Log Ride. This is the one that sent shivers down our spine when we thought about this project. This is one mammoth model. Aside from the large Ferris Wheels, this model looks to be the most involved for a model builder.

You start the project by "bolting" down two motors and two water pumps onto the large base.

 

Here you can see the entire base along with the red pumps and yellow motors installed. We also added decorative decals along the edge.

 

Next, we installed buildings that cover the pumps and motors. The top on the brown boxes are removable as well as the entire blue structures over the pumps to make maintenance possible.

As there are four different items that need AC electricity, this attraction will prove to be an electrical challenge for us.