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« on: October 18, 2016, 11:22:34 AM »
I tend to think of a mega tree as the 'Center piece' of your Christmas light show. it may have started years ago when Mason Williams had that famous video in which his mega tree 'danced' back & forth with the music from Trans Siberian Orchestra's 'Wizards in Winter' (Still my favorite) with his early LOR show.
Somehow I either read or was told years ago that you needed to go to home depot hardware store and buy one or two 10 foot 1 1/4 steel threaded mast poles. Well that's exactly what I did. For over a decade my mega tree has been propped up with two 10 foot steel threaded 1 1/4 heavy metal steel pipes joined together in the middle with a female-female threaded coupler. This mast pole is extremely heavy and terribly top-heavy making it very difficult to handle. If it starts to tip over, it could easily find it's way into the neighbors living room through one of their large living room windows. YIKES!!!
I worked just fine but over the years but the hook head grew in size to accommodate more lights and the 'star' on top of the mega tree also grew to accommodate more lights. In the past all of this was made of steel and there was one big disadvantage. Yes, you guessed it. WEIGHT! Having large steel structures (hook head and star) on the end of a long heavy steel pole has been increasingly difficult to erect and stand up. It was just a matter of time before a disaster may have happened. 2-3 feet of this monstrous pole slides into a cemented slightly larger 'sleeve' that is always buried under the ground by a few inches. Trying to get the end of this pole to slip into the sleeve has been a difficult task at best because it is just so cumbersome with it being so top heavy.
As time grew my labor force of strong teenage boys dwindled down to zero as my three sons became adults and moved out of the home starting their own lives. They now live thousands of miles away at University in a different state, Coast Guard academy on the east coast and my oldest son is just lazy and useless. He wont help his dad even for money. It is now become impossible to erect this very heavy monstrosity, lift it up from the bottom and fit it into this sleeve. I need either a cherry picker bucket truck to lift it from the top or three more strong helpers.
But alas I have come up with a different solution. If airplanes were made of steel they wouldn't fly yet every airplane flies because they are made with aluminum. Over the years I have had the hook head re-manufactured with aluminum, the large pixel star is made entirely with aluminum and now I am using a aluminum mast pole. To keep strength, I am using a larger size pipe 1 1/2 diameter instead if 1 1/4, and went with a schedule 80 not schedule 40. The difference between schedule 80 vs. schedule 40 is thicker wall diameter. The pole appears much beefier, has a thicker wall diameter and yet it still is 1/3 the weight. Hooray!!!
I really don't know what other people are using to prop up their mega tree for their center pole. So therefore, please let me know how tall your mega tree is, what it is supporting, and what type of props (hook head and star) reside on top of your tree.
I'm proud to say that this mega tree in the LOR days had 16 strands of 300 count full wave LED's X 8 different colors/strand. 16 X 8 X 300 =38,400 LED's. In the modern pixel world, it will have 64 strands of 240 5V pixels WS2812b pixels (each strand) which I currently in process of constructing all the necessary devices to drive and support this. The Pixel star on the top will also have thousands of 5V pixels.
So far I have seen no negative consequence except for the high cost of having everything built from aluminum. In my real job, I'm paid to over-engineer everything for worse case scenario and have done the same with my Christmas light show.
So, how is your Mega Tree propped up?? Tell me how your mega tree is designed especially the center pole.
Thanks --Greg--
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