However, these are the pinball things that have happened. In league I got into the VA playoffs by having a pretty good final week. Since I was in A division, the playoffs were kind of a foregone conclusion, but I did my best. I even did some practicing in Visual Pinball to learn the rules of the games I was weakest in a little better. My weakest game was High Speed II, and I was happy after a few VP games to have gotten 300 M on it, almost 10x my highest league score. Then in Allentown, I played one that was there and busted out another 300 M, and on a real machine to boot! I felt I was ready. So what happened? Nobody picked that game against me. So much for pathos. Anyway, I had one 4 point game of WHO Dunnit and three third place finishes for a third place overall. That ended up being OK because I got the prize I wanted, a copy of Pinball 101 (and a new toolbox). The guy who finished third in B got the same DVD, so obviously we intend to study up and improve our games. But, ya know, it was fun. The end of the season party was last night, and this time it was only about a half hour drive away. The guy hosting had a great selection of games, including Voltan Escapes Cosmic Doom, which I played a few times as a youngster and co-did a VP adaptation for, but have never played as an adult. There was a pinball scavenger hunt and a get the closest score contest, but I didn't do well in either. I did have the most frickin' awesome game of High Speed, scoring 3.5 M and getting multiball twice, which is really good for me since I have trouble getting the ramp shot. There was one of the nuttiest games I've ever seen called The Wiggler. The steaks for dinner were good, too. And one of the guys in the MD league who got a full set of 6 digit Bally displays for free brought one for my Paragon, which has a display with a segment out. Good times.
Allentown was OK. I went on Sunday, because Saturday was our anniversary. Sunday kinda sucked. There were half the games and half the flea marketers, and none of the vendors had much that I was looking for. I had my aforementioned awesome Getaway game, played some Iron Man (which was good... people say it's just the Austin Powers playfield, but the game feels different enough to me). I chatted with a guy that I'd met at the Fairfax Open. I was happy to see that the guy with the Future Spa with the messed up playfield finally fixed the gate (I had left a note suggesting he fix it a few shows ago... maybe he took my advice). There were a few more games that were pretty interesting... I'll probably mention something about them later.
I did talk to the guy who sold me the LEDs for Quicksilver, and the LED manufacturers as a whole apparently worked with the Alltek Systems guy to solve the flickering light problem by either a) soldering a diode on every feature light, or b) buying a new lamp driver board. I wasn't aiming to buy a new lamp board, but the guy offered to sell it to me for 20% the $100 list, and since I hadn't found much else at the show to buy I went for it. This, of course, is waiting until after graduation...
Not much progress on T2, aside from selecting a line filter and teasing out the wires to install a new plug. I used my new tiny camera to see why the speaker panel wasn't fitting correctly, and it turns out that just bending the brackets was all it needed. I ordered some parts for it, including 3 of the 4 ribbon cables from Great Plains, still the best price on cables by a dollar each.
I've having very good luck with my Fish Tales playfield. It was missing its reel, and I was kind of disparing finding a new one. But a guy posted the reel and motor on a Mr. Pinball classified and only wanted $60 for it, so I yoinked it up. Then I posted a WTB on RGP and Mr. Pinball for the brackets that held the optos, and I got a response from a guy who had parted out an FT who still had the brackets. We're currently negotiating, but he sends me only one email a day... why is no one as eager to finish these transactions as I am?!?
More as I have time and remember all the stuff I was planning to write...
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