How to Build a 16 Ribbon Tree?

[LaughsBrightly]

Looking for help building a ribbon tree. I bought 16 x 15' ribbons and a Pixie16. I have a 360 LED mega tree so I figured the RGB ribbon tree would be similar. My Dad has always built my props, but his health is now poor, so I am scrambling to figure this out.  I have spent hours searching the forums and elsewhere and do have some ideas, but what I found here is mostly from 10 years ago and the links, pictures, PDFs, etc., are gone.

My megatree uses a non-penetrating roof mount TV antenna base with 2" PVC over the metal pole. I was thinking of putting a 10' piece of PVC on another TV mount (aiming for 16' tall before the star) with wooden cross braces across the top and bottom and plumbers metal pipe hanging tape screwed vertically into the braces so I could zip the ribbons along the pipe hanging tape.  Or possibly PVC. I figure 3 guide wires.  I would really appreciate some guidance, especially how far apart at the top and bottom the ribbons should be and whether it should be flat or have some curve.  This will be free standing. 

 

 

[Al Saunders]

Hi LaughsBrightly,

I built my CCR tree based pretty much on Brian's in this link: https://www.superstarlights.com/SuperStarConstruction/CCRTreeMast.php 

I bought his pixel star as well and the mounting bracket that goes under it. That mounting bracket has marks were to drill to use bolts to mount PVC pipes. The plate is plastic so its easy to drill and the PCV pipes are mounted just under the star. This creates a curve or "arc" which makes the middle ribbons a bit higher than the outer ones. I used the same electrical rigid pipe that has threads so its easy to connect. I'm also pretty sure I have my pipe/mast at around 17' or maybe a bit higher to get the ribbons off the ground a bit. I used 2 10' sections of electrical (gray) PVC for each ribbon. I just cut them down to around 17' which gave me a few inches extra for the ribbons. The center ones might need to be a bit shorter. Depends on when you raise the pole/mast. I zip tied the ribbons to each gray pipe at the cut points. I have two OVC pipes going across to gold the ribbons/pipes in place. The upper is about 4 feet long and the bottom is about 9-10 feet long. I use the screws Brian describes in his video, I don't remember the size but I do use that size bolt. flat washer and nut. I use the 3 position brace and I'm pretty sure i got it from 3G Creations. I works great! I hope this helps, good luck and happy lighting! 😀

Al

[LaughsBrightly]

Thanks @Al Saunders. This was what I needed. 17' tall and 9' across seems to work well. We used pixel strips to save the weight of the PVC, since it's just me and my Dad lifting it.

How far from the viewing area is your tree? I forgot about branches (and that 17' was fairly tall) and had to move mine 17' from the road. I am thinking that's too close for people to watch?

 

[k6ccc]

There is a page on my show website that shows two versions of my pixel tree:  http://www.newburghlights.org/pixel_tree.html

Here is a very old photo of my then 12 x 50 pixel tree.  In that version of the tree, the distance from the top pixel to the bottom pixel was 122.5 inches - so 2.5 inch spacing.  You will notice that the outer strings of the tree line up with the downslopes of the star.  I make use of that feature in some sequences.  The overall height to the top of the star was about 15 feet.  Current version is about 17 feet and the tree is 26 x 100, but the angle is the same.

http://www.newburghlights.org/photos/2014_Pixel_Tree.jpg

 

Satellite view that was annotated for something else.  The tree is about where the lower left corner of the box that says "Actual P10 location".  The distance from the tree to the sidewalk is about 43 feet at the closest.

http://www.newburghlights.org/photos/Satellite_view_showing_parking_and_Tune-To_signs.png

 

[Al Saunders]

You're very welcome. Glad that helped. Yeah using the electrical rigid pipe for the center mast/post and PVC pipe for the strips does get pretty heavy. Thankfully my wife and mostly brother in law help raise our CCR tree. 

Ours is at an angle to the road as we have a very long property with a large viewing area. I'd say the closest is about 50' and the farthest is probably about 200' away. Our website has some videos and pictures from past years. You can check it out here: www.saunderschristmaslights.com . 

I've had some "issues" but plan to start our show this evening. :) 

Merry Christmas! 

Al

[metallus2000]

I used 1/2 inch PVC and zip tied my CCRs to them. I got a mount (w/16 hooks) that I installed on top of a flagpole (In place of the ball).

At the top of the PVC, I drilled a hole, with a zip tie. On the 16-hook mount, I installed clamps and put a carabiner on them and hooked the PVC with CCR's on each hook, so it wouldn't slip off.

Everything is installed on the ground, and two of us lift the flagpole into the base in the ground. I then take rebar and stake each PVC strand to the rebar with zip ties.

 

[LaughsBrightly]

Thanks everyone for the responses. This has been quite the ordeal.

I'm writing this as an update and thanks to all who helped, as well as to make the next person's life a little easier.

So, I tried building the 17' tree as many suggested with PVC. My Dad bought 3/4 pvc as 1/2 would be "too flimsy". We found that quite heavy for two people.

Then we tried pipe holding tape which was recommended in a forum post and 16 strings of that is also fairly heavy.

So, I ordered the ribbon tree mounting kit from HolidayCoro that many had suggested. (Their customer service is awesome and ultimately one of their people designed my tree.) Went to put that together and found that it was too tall for our space without major tree trimming. Also, learned in the process that the closer the viewer is to the tree, the closer together the ribbons should be.  So, ultimately, the full-size tree with 5-meter ribbons was too tall for viewers 25' away, but 17' tall with 9' base is perfect for 150')

I called Wowlights and learned that the 3.5-meter ribbons have the same resolution as the 5-meter ones. (note to newbies - I was told to NOT cut the ribbons)

So, ultimately I have a 13' tall tree made of 2 sections of 10' top-rail fence post (Home Depot - one I cut with a sawzall to 3') that is inserted into a non-penetrating roof mount TV antenna holder ($70 on Amazon) that secures at ground and at 21". The Holiday Coro Extremestrips are 13'8" long giving us 2' between the bottom of the ribbon and the ground. We used 16" landscaping nails to attach to the ground. The bottom holes in the strip are 6.5" center to center. Using three guy wires - (I found a guy wire clamp on Amazon that works great) that I put 10' up. 

A key part of this was using the Pixie setup directions stickied in a forum post (JR, I think). That allowed me to get the Pixie 16 setup, set my network to enhanced, and fix the blue Santa problem I had later with the ribbon color pattern.

Then I had to update my preview to put the tree in it (thankfully WOW is an Authorized LOR partner so I was able to add the tree directly in the sequencer).

Once the preview was updated, I could load the Wow Lights ribbon sequences and (thanks to another post I have somewhere and y'all helped), copy the ribbon stuff to my sequence.

For my LOR purchased sequences, I was able to buy the RGB versions and then just use copy the RGB megatree  motion effects rows over. This, by the way, was very new to me as I'm all AC and had never even seen SuperStar before.  (I am now drooling at superstarlights.com)

So, in the course of this project, I learned a TON!

The tree looks fantastic, by the way. We have gotten rave reviews and the height accents the rest of the 132 channel show beautifully. A neighbor down the road even brought us a gift basket to say thanks for bringing all the lights to the neighborhood.

I really hope this helps the next guy. When searching, the answers were out there, but you needed to have enough knowledge to realize that. 

Thanks to all!!!!! 

Matt

--

Note: after all of this, I noticed on the WowLights website there is now a $149 ribbon tree mounting kit you can order with the Pixie Ribbon Tree package AND a list of needed parts with links (boy, would that have been nice). With my first call to them, the guy seemed to be taking a lot of notes, so I guess I know why. 

Note #2: For those wondering why I didn't order the LOR Tree mega tree frame that came out this year - they didn't have the 16' ones in stock.