Santa and his reindeer

navyav8tr

navyav8tr

New member
I had big plans this year of getting this to fly. Perhaps next year but here is my setup of Santa and 9 reindeer (included Rudolph). It is suspended from the house and a light pole. Just some pics of the build. I also replaced the standard 7watt bulbs with 40W equivalent LEDs.









 
Looks great Charlie, sorry I probably won't get to see it this year!

I was actually thinking about your flying santa the other day while I was in Lowes. While looking at their little christmas village that had a flying santa, I thought it might be something that could be re-worked for fullsize. Essentially the santa and reindeer didn't move forward any, but the went up/down in an alternating fashion like a carousel does. So you could mount them in some way and have a motor(s) and cam system to raise lower them a foot or two and give them the look of flying without figuring out how to light them while having cross your court and NOT take out someone's $55k car. Just a thought that popped into my head....

Short and badly typed since written from my phone...
 
Can you post some close up pics of the attachment of the reindeers to the clear tubing? Exactly what I want to do....won't get to it this year and still have 4 more reindeer to find :)

Thanks...Duane
 
i like your set up. i have had mine hanging from the house to a tree in my yard for a few years now. i only have 4 reindeer though. i too have been trying to figure out how i could get them moving
 
Movement, hmmmm.
It looks like you have 2 parallel cables running the length of the rig and supporting it from the outside edges. I do not know how much tension is on those cables but can you rock one side by pulling it down slightly? What happens if you pull one side near the front down a little, let it return to normal, then pull it down near the sleigh a little and let it return, and repeat? The idea would be move the left and right sides vertically out of sync with each other. It may just look cheesy but if it looks ok, you could mount windshield wiper motors with bell arms on the ground below and attach the bell arms to the sides of the rig. Monsterguts.com sells that kind of stuff if you can't scrounge it.
 
I think Jerry-Rigs is on the right track. Even if you only moved one end up and down, you would let gravity do the work.

One of the floats in the Rose Parade this year had a couple of guys zip-lining back and forth. They raised and lowered one end to get a "downhill" effect for the sliders. You could do the same thing, just turn the lights off when the system is moving Santa back into position.

The other thing to do would be to hook up a "tow cable" and pull it back into place once a run has been made.
 
I was meaning more leaning parts of the rig side to side rather than moving the whole thing forward and back.

via Tapatalk on Android.
 
Can you also tell more about the white lights covering the front of your house...light type, hangers, spacing etc?
 
First, let me say this is so impressive that I'm going to go and build one myself.
It's very unique.

What exactly are the clear tubes and where did you get them?

Any insights as to how you store this? Do you disassemble it?
It appears you have a cable running through each reindeer and one additional cable that carries all of the electrical wire.

Can you show some more detail as to how Rudolph is connected and how you terminate the cables at the poles?
 
I have found a source for this set of santa and reindeer, but it requires me to travel some to get it.
If anyone else in Central Ohio or the Findlay/Lima area is interested in getting santa or the addon reindeer, PM me.
The problem with these blowmolds is that shipping can cost more than the item!
 
So sorry for this extremely late reply. Once Christmas was over I needed to decompress and haven't been on the forums in a while.
I used polycarbonate tubing from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Polycarbonat...1466684287&sr=8-4&keywords=polycarbonate+tube

What I did was drill a hole large enough to feed the cable through polycarbonate tube and reindeer. From there in order to secure the reindeer into position I had to use the the u shaped clamps in the front and the back. If you don't they will slide down the wire.

I did disassemble it for storage and next year will just redo everything again (with the hope of it moving).

ukewarrior said:
First, let me say this is so impressive that I'm going to go and build one myself.
It's very unique.

What exactly are the clear tubes and where did you get them?

Any insights as to how you store this? Do you disassemble it?
It appears you have a cable running through each reindeer and one additional cable that carries all of the electrical wire.

Can you show some more detail as to how Rudolph is connected and how you terminate the cables at the poles?
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top