Adventures of an Urban Jungleboy

Unfortunately, my job at the haunted house is as greeter and doorkeeper (we only let about 8 people go in at a time to keep it from getting too crowded) so I didn't have time to get many stills.

( A few stills from the haunted house )

Links to (bad) video shot of the installation at our haunted house:

The stargate exit from our maze (before opening)

Another shot after closing (featuring our alien commander)

Some photos of the SG-69 gate being assembled and installed at our lab haunted house.

( pictures behind the cut )

One of the less-than-perfect aspects of the gate when we put it up was that each encoding chevron had it's own "wall wart" power supply, with a 6' cord. That meant at least 3 of them were hanging off the gate without support, one more source of load on the frame.

I've now finished the SG-69 ECPS.12X2, which can provide 12VACx500mA for every one of the 7 chevrons. Hurrah!


( Photos of the new chevron power supply )

We built the new frame, I bolted it all together, we tipped it up onto the base with the help of half a dozen Klingons from Mara's bar. (No photos... we forgot the bloody camera)

Then a gust of wind hit. The Stargate held together, the base didn't tip over, but the metal braces attaching it to the base gave up and folded and it ended up face down anyway.

Much swearing ensued.

Then I did some field re-engineering and put it up as a seven-chevron partial gate so it would fit flush against the wall under the overhanging 3rd floor balcony.(This is as much of the gates as you usually see in most episodes of the series anyway, as there is a ramp/pedestal obscuring the lower two chevrons). We had to do front projection of the event horizon effect, but it was still very effective.

It was also wildly popular.

Once it was dark, I went out and took some pictures with my phone.

didjiman got some much better ones, I'm sure.

( Some photos of the gate shot with my phone )

We're getting ready to set up the gate this Saturday on the eastern patio of the Doubletree... with some upgrades

( Boring Details cut for those who don't care... no new photos, though )

There were some glitches, but it looked spectacular

( The SG-69 Gate goes up at the Golden Gate Guards run -- photos behind the cut )



Everyone loved our gate; unfortunately we didn't win anything. But that's for another post. In short, chalk it up to cultural differences.

Next stop: Silicon! (with a new and improved frame so it can really stand up)

So, I wasn't 100% happy with the plain silver chevrons.

Avery transparent full-sheet sticker shock to the Rescue!

( photos of new and improved chevrons )

In other developments, I have a happy stack of 1x2x35 spars to carriage-bolt together into a support frame for the whole works. We're going to resort to pushpins to hold the event horizon screen in place for this weekend; the shock-cord tensioned version might be ready for Silicon.

Tonight I got the inter-arc velcro glued onto the backs of the segments, and got the chevrons cut out:

( Pictures of Chevrons behind the cut )

Tomorrow's job: build the center screen.

Almost done! (Good thing, too... we leave Friday afternoon)

Further work on the stargate: Carving out the wells to take the lumin disk plasma lights in the arc segments.

( Photos behind the cut )

In other progress -- we bought die-cut velcro circles from nametags4u.com, and Andy sewed the hooks to our patches and the loops to the sleeves of our new BDUs.

We've bought a 15' shock-cord-strun tent pole to bend into a semicircle to tension a center curtain made out of white ripstop for the rear-projection of the Abyss effect. It'll be split down the center so we can actually walk through our "event horizon".