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 This year saw a slightly scaled-back display compared to the previous year, due mainly to a lack of time, and also a spell of bad weather- I made the decision not to go climbing up and down ladders in order to install any lights round the roof-line as I`d probably sink halfway up in the mud that was our front lawn! Instead, together with an ever-present desire to buy new light sets, I decided to use all-new lights- every lighting product you see in the photo below was purchased new that year. Two "disco lighting" effects were used too for a bit of originality- including a small laser! There was just one exception to the "all new" rule- the two LED Tree-shapes hung in the upstairs middle window, that I made the previous year. Well, they took so long to make that I felt it would be a shame not to use them again.
I bought 17 new light sets in total that year (of which 5 were used for the display)- a personal "record" of sorts that stood until 2000 when my collection exploded in size thanks to the Internet, and I lost count of them all!  Unfortunately while my collection of light sets improved, my photo-taking skills did not- and that silly flash spoiled most of the night shots again. Hot tip- when taking photos of your lights, use a fast-exposure film and turn the flash off! Helps to use a tripod too, to avoid blurring. In order to show some of the parts in more detail here, I have broken down some of the photos I took- some of those below are taken from 2 different parts of the same picture. Since I don`t own a Scanner, all these photos are transferred to the computer under a "rostrum" video camera and capture-system. This means that I can zoom into specific points of the photos and try and show them a little clearer. It doesn`t always work as well as I hoped it would, but there you go- it`s the best I can do for now.
 - Upstairs window, middle- 20 colour changing LED light set powered by a custom made controller unit (smooth colour gradient from green to red, random fading), 2x 36-light home made tree shapes (red, green LEDs), colour changing Fibre-optic tree (multicolour), "Laser Crab" lighting effect (red) that was originally outside the downstairs right window in a waterproof enclosure*. - Downstairs window, left- Disco lighting effect, 20 watt halogen "Moonflower" (yellow/blue filter). - Above front door- 10 light Coronet-Lantern mains paralell set (multicolour), along guttering- Noma Royale Garden 20 mains series set (multicolour), continues down pillar below. - Front door- In ring on door- home made 10 mains set with round bulbs (clear, pink, blue, green- hand painted), in small live xmas tree- 20 low voltage lantern set (red, yellow, green, blue), round pillar- Noma Royale Garden set continued from guttering above (multicolour), along the bottom of the step- 48-light ropelight (red through to green LEDs, 6 colours in a "gradient" pattern). - Left front bush- 40 Pifco "olive" 4 channel chasing low voltage miniature set with glass bulb covers of a similar size to American C7 lamps (red, orange, geeen, blue). - Middle front bush- 100 Pifco low voltage net-lights with coloured covers (red, orange, green, blue). - Right front bush- 40 low voltage 4-way flashing set with large glass covers over the bulbs which resemble the early American C9 swirled bulbs (red, orange, green, blue). - Round garage roof- Homemade twinkling light set, 10 lights each with 7 LEDs (red). ## TOTAL LIGHTS- 452** ## *My original plan saw this laser effect used outdoors in the front garden. Housed in a waterproof enclosure with a transparent window in the front, it was positioned to shine on the back of the curtains in the right side window, projecting a rotating star shape. However I soon noticed that when it rained (and it did a lot of that), the effect was "drowned out" by the water drops on the box window diffracting the light. As a result of this, and the fact that every night I was worried someone`d steal it (though it was mounted to a heavy concrete flagstone, chained to the bush behind it, and had a CCTV camera pointed at it too), I moved it indoors (before these photos were taken) where it got mounted to a shelf in the little store-room, and shone its rotating star on the back of the net in the window. It looked better there. **The Laser and Projector effects count as one light each only. |
