The Big Switch-On!
At last! The switch-on day arrived, but with some work it was a close thing.
The two new set pieces are there for everyone to see. The Snowflake, outside Lloyds Bank, was designed and built (with a little help from others!) by Roo Evans, and is a scheme which has been in his mind for a couple of years. Some nine feet in diameter, it is built up of hundreds of what we know as ‘droppers’, in various lengths, all built on a stainless steel mesh. Our electronics guru Kevin Lovell then set to work designing our biggest-ever Arduino-powered controller and programming it to give various instructions to fire off the units, and create the dazzling display we see today. There are over three hundred electrical connections and the termination box is a veritable cats cradle of wiring. Completed on Thursday, it had to wait until Saturday to be erected, when more work was needed to match it up to the power supplies. The final adjustments were frighteningly close to the switch-on! Not only does it take a 12 volt feed from a new power unit adjacent, it also uses 24 volts from the festoon. You would be hard pushed to find a display which features such complexity and such a superb finished result.
The other unit - the “Christmas Time” clock on Flowerdews in the Square - occupies the place where the Artist’s Clock used to exist in days of yore. It is another creation long in the creation, this time from Roger Wilkins, and if there is a hint of a fair organ in it, it is hardly surprising, given his enthusiasms! Again built from scratch, the casework encloses a one metre square illuminated clock face. A sensor at the top sets off a sequence every hour, playing each time one of eight carols played on eight handbells by electric strikers (they operate at four, five, six and seven pm, with just changing light displays later in the evening). The whole mechanism was constructed in-house. Kevin was again the electronic guru, interpreting the tunes into Arduino code, and sequencing the lights in tie with the music. The programming for this was actually completed at just before midnight on Friday! Installing this contraption was fun as well - but it works! There were very many long days and late nights putting this together.
Elsewhere, there is, for the second year, a display of illuminated artworks from the children of Pencombe, Bredenbury and St Peter’s Schools, the result of a repeat competition for all the local primary schools. These are on the face of the Bromyard Centre in Cruxwell Street. They bowled us over once again with their beautiful designs. We will have a computer display of all the artworks in town shortly, and on our website. By the way, we have also just installed a further power supply adjacent, to remove the convoluted cross-road arrangements previously here.
In the square, the “Multi-Star” on the Hop Pole has been completely stripped and rebuilt by David Wilkins, with an impressive 16 channel controller. The new ropelight is hugely more colourful, and the new controller takes full advantage of it. This is the first time we have used purple, pink and orange colours in our displays, and he wanted to use all three - plus three more - colours in one display!
The day of the switch-on went really well, with record crowds, but Covid-19 gave a very much shorter programme of events than usual, with Cliff Morris with his fair organ (once owned by his father, the late and greet Bill Morris, who was absolutely central to the lights in their earlier years), carols with the the Bromyard Wind Band and Choral Society members, the results for the (really very successful) decorated window competition, a mesmerising lantern procession and the switch-on itself with our good friend and supporter, John Silver from the Falcon, doing the honours. The Grotto was very successful, fully booked throughout, with the wonderful help from the Guides and Brownies acting as elves. There was certainly a sigh of relief from our David Grant at the end of the day - he masterminded the switch-on day events, working closely with the Safety Advisory Group and Health Protection Team from Hereford to make the day as safe as possible. The backup from the multitude of stewards was brilliant.
Everything went as it should when John closed the switch. Sadly, the Angel decided to hide her head, but it reappeared on Sunday! The reason for that will remain a mystery (well, not really - there must be a loose connection somewhere). However, late Sunday evening, just as the guests from the Chamber Luncheon left the Falcon, the section from the bottom of New Road to the top decided to fail. Your worthy scribe changed rapidly back into overalls and checked the feeds, to find them in order, so decided further investigations would have to be made on Monday, in the daylight. It is a measure of the enthusiasm of the crew that Ian and Dafydd appeared out of nowhere! Going to the clock in the square a little later and there Kevin and Matt appeared to hear the bells. Anyway, four of us resolved the failure Monday morning off ladders - a loose wire in a plug into the transformer had caused an arc and failure. A new plug and all was well; then back to the stores for a tidy up and packing gear away.
So there we are. No doubt a few dud lamp bulbs will appear (most of the crew can spot where they are immediately, even if there are only two or three out of thousands!) and a cherry picker will be out again to fix them, but, with LED technology, the reliability is normally hugely better than it was years ago; that is certainly our hope. Anyway, go and have a walk around, and we hope you will thoroughly enjoy the fruits of our labours and enthusiasm.