Halloween 2006

C

Chakara

Active Member
Starting to get things together for Halloween this year. Main difference is I would love to have a flying ghost - like Electron's last year.

My garage door opener stripped out it's gears this year so I have that motor and figured it would do the job. While I'm sure it's not supposed to run that long, the very low load may make up for that?

Anyway, was also wondering what the rest of you were thinking about for this year?
 
That motor is going to be way too loud. I used an old breadmaker last year, will be using wiper motors this year (got mine from allelectronics.com). I will probably also be doing some pneumatic props and a haunted mailbox. Check out halloweenforum.com , one of bigger and better forums out there. I will be controlling everything with UPB modules probably, and maybe a few hawkeyes.
 
It ended up moving more north than predicted, so I got lucky this time, and didn't get any snow at all. I have no problem with that at all, considering I still have to mow one more time lol.
 
Last year I did nothing... no time or money... but I didn't get any trick-or-treators either. Such is life in rural areas. But at my last home I used the wiper motor e was talking about for running my "ghoules" around the yard. I used some plastic 6" clothesline pulleys modified for the wiper motor and several turning points, with a woven fishing line. They worked well, but moved slowly. A larger pulley on the wiper motor would be better. The motor was perfect, though - worked well - got quite warm but worked fine, even in the rain! hehe

This year I'm probably not going to do much at all because, again, I expect no visitors. I suppose a few plastic lighted pumpkins or something...
 
Thanks E, I got distracted and just caught up with this thread:

Fog Chiller

Tons of good info - although at about 1/2 way through it seems to finalize so you can all save some time.

I'm curious about the Axworthy ghost, and how involved I have to be. It seems that I have to maintain a fair amount of tension on the line to make him work....IE: good support structures for the pulleys. While probably harder, that is my next goal now that i think I'll have good fog....
 
Actually, there are several tricks I came up with (most people use fixed points, such as poles in concrete etc) to make things easier. Every pully in my setup was attached to brand new bungee cords, which where connected to tree branches. I also used 1 10ft grounding rod, staked down like a tent, and connected one of the bungee cord pulleys to the eye bolt I installed at the top. Very easy to do, and I never had to worry about tension. I used 30lbs fishing line.

This year, I am making the track much larger, and will be buying several 10' EMT pipes (as long as the pipe won't buckle, it will work) since the grounding rods are expensive. The EMT pipes are around 2 bucks each. I also bought new fishing line (80lbs, 0 stretch) to deal with the larger distances, since I also want to use this setup for a flying witch, and a flying santa for Christmas.

I wasn't going to do any fog this year, but I just learnt that Party City has a 1000W fogger on sale for $39.99 or something, plus there are some coupons out there as well, which might make this an even better deal.
 
FYI, I built a fog chiller last year that worked very well (third type of a fog chiller I've built, and the best so far). It was simply a couple lengths of flexible dryer hose, the aluminum kind, stuff into a 50-gallon trash can (or whatever size you care to buy), with holes cut out on either side at the bottom. You coil the dryer hose around the inside of the trashcan and then when you reach the top, you tuck it down the center and out the other hole. Then fillthe whole thing with regular ice.

Set your fogger on the ground so that it shoots into the end that goes up the middle of the can - the heat of the smoke makes it rise and by the time it gets to the top, it's cool enough to go through the coil and out on the ground... The fogger doesn't even have to be touching or attached - it just shoots into the open end of dryer vent pipe. Worked great last year for me (Halloween party).

I found that the ice lasted for the entire night. If you wanted, I suppose you could get a larger trashcan and insulate it a bit. But I recommend you watch the placement as the ice does melt and water leaks out! I may set up a drain system for it in the future, but so far I've only used it outside where the water draining wasn't a problem.

I followed this basic design: http://www.kennymester.com/fogchill.htm and yes, it's onthe Monster List this year.
 
Good info Huggy. I used a gotfog.com design last year. Didn't work so well. But, I have a cooler all chopped up so I did a bit of poking and found that thread I listed above. It's based on the Vortex design and seems to work. I put ice in it tonight and the fog coming out was actually cold to the "touch." To windy to test outside in the chill night air so I won't know more until I get a calm evening.

My plan was to do like you did if this one doesn't work out too well. I was even thinking of the trash can with the coiled dryer hose, but seal up the holes and fill with water, salt and ice.
 
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