A sad moment

I sold the Whitewater machine last week. It has been almost 4 years since I last touched it, so I guess it's a logical step. I just don't have the time or space needed to continue with this hobby. In this situation one just not turn down a fair offer. I believe it went to a good home. Friend sold his Addams also. But I'm keeping the Star trek for now, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

A Lifelong dream

I know it's been a long time since my latest blog entry, but there simpli wasn't anything to write about.

This changed a couple of days ago when I was spending my time at the slovenian coast for the weekend. In the camp where I was spending my nigths, they had a pretty nice example of Stern's Monopoly and on it, after spending a good portion of my vacation playing it, I have accomplished something that I've always strived for. They say that a picture tells more than a 1000 words so here it is:

Checked, I have beaten the high score on a publicly placed pinball :).

Vacation Jackpot

My pinball wizzardish friend find some time this weekend to smash all the records I've hold on the Whitewater machine. He sure gave me something to work on now. This is what I've recorded during his playing:

This is widely agreed by far the coolest effect in any pinball machine ever. If you have any better candidates do not hesitate to write a comment.

He managed to get everything ready for the this during the first ball, with two EBs left and then got stuck with getting the last lock lit (It was the third time around). You can see in the video how he just lost ball 2 and then succeeded with the last ball.

This makes me think how much our pinball playing improved over the years. The first time I owed the Whitwater, I've only seen the Vacation Jackpot once during the period of two years, as now I've seen it a couple of times during just one weekend.

My mission is now known: The Whitewater river master

I got me a game room

As the title says. Finally, I've managed to obtain a place that will suite my pinball needs once and forall(or at least until I reach the rooms threshold). Due to the fact that I currently own only two pinball machines, this will probably take some time. The "Game room" as I've called it shoud hold 5-6 pinballs with ease. You've seen the rate at what I've been putting the machines together, so this will do it for at least a couple of years.

Thanks mom & dad.

Since a game room with only one game (for now) looked a bit sad, a friend of mine decided to move his Addams family to my place. This was kinda special experience. You don't drive a pinball machine on a trolley on a busy road every day ;):



Our common dream to have our machines at one place has finally came true:




Star Trek (that failed again last week, btw), will probably join them soon.

Star trek back online

Yesterday, I've managed to get the Star trek back together

As I (and Pinrepair) suspected what needed to be replaced was the Q16 transistor on the auxiliary (8 - driver board).

Here's the picture of the sinfull pcb, right before installing it.


For the first time in history I now have two fully functional pinball machines in my possesion and I wonder where all this will end.

Bigfoot ramp

I should have put this post together before, but I just couldn't find the time. Here are some pics of how I've fixed the pretty badly broken bigfoot ramp. It took me a whole week to do it, since epoxy glue that I was using takes around 24 hours to dry properly.

This is how it was broken:






My approach was the following:
I've cut out the missing piece from some sort of durable plastics and glued it to some other piece of plastics. This bit came from some old fax machine I found lying around. Here's what came out:


I than glued this bit to the ramp with epoxy. I took me two days, since I did not have enough clamps to do it all at once.



Half way there:


And the result:



I've been using this thing. I just could not find anything stronger on the market.


Luckily, this ramp is almost completely hidden from view, so the artistic impression won't count much, but I bet, this will hold the thing together properly.

Armed and ready

Yesterday I've finished with the playfield. The machine is now in it's full playable form. Needless to say, all the other work stopped for now since everybody want's to play it. Here are some pics of the final steps. There's not that many of them, since I was rushing to get the thing playable ASAP.

Bigfoot ramp installed


Rail attached


Insanity falls is so huge, I had to use a tub to clean it


Installed Insanity falls.


Finished playfield. Boulder garden still missing.


And here's a thing waiting to be done: