Where did oyu get santa and the reindeer? I'm sure you made that, but how?
WOW! Lots going on there...where do you live?
Hey Mike, I live in Staten Island, New York. And being it is New Yawk, my displays GOT to have a lot going on to get noticed!!! LOL The blue LED reindeer were from Target, I think I picked them up in 2007? I remember LEDs were JUST starting to become popular for use in decorations, it may have been 2006? I was so particular at the time, I went through 19 reindeer until I found 9 that all the blue LEDs matched!!! The apparatus has 1 inch black pipe inside 2 and a half inch black pipe that I brought to a machine shop and had them install a bearing in the top and bottom of the 2and a half inch pipe leaving 3 feet of pipe sticking out above and a little more than a foot on the bottom and allowing the inner pipe to turn freely inside the outer pipe. They installed a 3" diameter pulley with a half inch groove in it around the 1" pipe at the bottom bellow that I installed a slip ring and ran wire up through the pipe which I drilled a 2.5" hole in the roof and braced against the center support beam in the attic . The motor is a high torque, low rpm that I further slowed down by using a smaller pulley on. I originally wanted have a 30' diameter but because I originally had only electric conduit that I bent in a curved shape for the reindeer, I had to shorten the diameter to 22' (if I am remembering correctly?) because the weight of eight reindeer was too much for it. Instead of the sled on the opposite side I had originally wanted to put my 7' x 7' wooden Snoopy Red Baron bi-plane on the other side so it would look like he was chasing the reindeer, but that was too heavy as well. Because the conduit wasn't strong enough(even with using guy wires from the center to help support it, I ended up picking up some long Kindorf channel from Home Depot and made a short triangle with a wide base out of it and that did a great job at supporting the conduit. I added Santa to the sled this year with the most amazing brackets that fit around the conduit and had a bolt on one side to fasten it and an S hook on the other that fit perfectly around Santa's wire frame. I am sure I am leaving some details out so if you have any questions feel free to ask. Also, You are not seeing it in the video but I have 16 of my 6' snowflakes across the street from my house on my neighbors fence that are doing the same effects as the driveway arches, I will get a video of that in a couple of days when it stops raining. Regards, George
