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From Your Experience


RaceMedic

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First off ... I apologize for some basic questions but I will be doing my first LOR show next year but want to take advantage of the sale CDI has this month.

Can I ask for your experience:

I want to do a couple of mini arches and a few mini trees in C6 LED bulbs.

1. Would 2 strings of 100 ( single color ) work for the trees or would I need more ?
2. I was thinking of a 10' arch, 5 channels ... would a string of 100 work per channel ?
3. I hope this sounds right .... If I am mounting LED strings through a board so the lights are facing straight out would they give off a lot of light ?

THANK-YOU for your time ..... I am just trying to figure out how much and of what to order ?!

Dave

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Just speaking from my experiance is that on my arches i have 18 strings and the arch is 14' long. I built my arches out of thicker pvc so i got 9 inches of coverage out of one strand of lights. I have read that some got 12-14 inches out of one string but they had thinner pvc. I saw a picture of arches out of 3/4 pvc and at the coupling it was not a smooth looking bend so that is why i went with a thicker pipe and I in my own opinion think it is a smoother bend.

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In my opinion...buy twice what you think you will need...then MAYBE you will have enough. lol

Plus, why wait until you realize you need more and they are more expensive.

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Another thing speaking of double buy lots of extension cords on sale now or spt wire and buy double what you think you will need. I bought 2000 feet last year to go with the 1500 some foot i already had from my smaller show i had before lor. When i was setting it up i went threw all of the cord and needed to buy another 1300 foot to make all the changes and things i added last minute to work. And my show is only a little 80 channel. Not like the veterans with 300+ but i think they will agree.

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RaceMedic wrote:

Would 2 strings of 100 ( single color ) work for the trees or would I need more ?
That depends on the size of the mini tree and how dense you want the color. My mini trees are made from 32" tomato cages. I made some blue/white ones this year with one set of full-wave 50 ct mini LED's for each color and they are just fine. And for some reason if it isn't bright enough you can easily add another set of 50 at any time in the future.

2. I was thinking of a 10' arch, 5 channels ... would a string of 100 work per channel ?
I use 3/4" grey electrical pvc (which is easier to bend than other pvc) and I got about 14" with one set of 100's wound tightly. I recommend folding the set in half when you wrap them so if half of it would go dark during the season at least you won't have a bald spot in your arch. I would also encourage you to consider a 7-segment arch. Yes, you can do it with five segments but 7 will give you much smoother sweeps and "trails" and also allow more options for sequencing.

3. I hope this sounds right .... If I am mounting LED strings through a board so the lights are facing straight out would they give off a lot of light ?
I think this might be determined more by whether they are half-wave or full-wave and what size the LED 'bulb" is. My experience is that half-wave, especially C6, are very directional. Full wave much less so. And full-wave minis are almost equally bright in all directions. In either event, you can expect the light to be brightest dead on rather than to the side.
THANK-YOU for your time ..... I am just trying to figure out how much and of what to order ?!
I'm with Jim - order what you need, and then some, if you have the means to do so. It's so easy to come up with more and more things you want to do and it's nice to have some lights in reserve so you don't have to pay full price during the summer and fall. And don't forget about extension cords. I guarantee you don't have enough of them. And I guarantee that it will take between twice as many as you think and ten times as many. Have fun!
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RaceMedic wrote:

...I was thinking of a 10' arch, 5 channels ... would a string of 100 work per channel ?
Dave


I too was thinking of doing 10'-12' arches, using 5 channels. Has anybody pulled this off with just 5 channels each? Any video? What about 6 channels (though odd number seems to make more sense)?
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How to best say this? Gents if you go cheap (5 strings vs 7 strings on an arch) your display will look cheap. Hey I made my own bells to go on the wall between two windows. Made them out of pvc pipe that I heated and bent to a form I also made. What made the bells look cheap is that I used 2 70ct strings of LEDs. The bells looked fuzzy and at some points the M5 tips were pointing in a different direction so the lighting was dull at some points. Well I took them down last week and a few weeks earlier I bought some rope light for other purposes. I took some of that rope light and tie wrapped it to the top of the pvc piping and know what? It looks darn good now. But buying 150' of rope light is not cheap, but the results are great. I know people are going to love the new look of the bells.

This was my first year also. And I am doing all LEDs. So, my display is going to grow slowly. But I rather grow it slowly and do it right as much as I can the first time. Than build a display cheaply and have people give me that wave off as they turn their backs to my display. But I do have somewhat a captive audience out here in the sticks. ;)

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Max-Paul wrote:

How to best say this? Gents if you go cheap (5 strings vs 7 strings on an arch) your display will look cheap.

Do you mean 5 or 7 channels !?

I will buy as many strings as I need and I plan on buying more than I need.

I am just trying to figure out how to distribute my LOR channels so I was trying to figure out how many channels looks GOOD on an arch and reasonable at the same time.

THANK-YOU for all the replies and for the support to the newbies !!

Dave
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