April 11, 2006 Minutes
NCC News:
John Eckerle is still taking order for the NCC Snowman.
John also has free NCC pins available and you can order the snowman pin for $5.
Visit the NCC website at www.NCC56.com for pictures.
Digest – No news, our rep Tom was not in attendance.
Just Ducky News:
New product is set up on display in the store.
There will be 20% discount on club night on all non village accessories (i.e trees, landscape, etc).
A new line called Accents was issued by Dept 56. All pieces are battery operated. Some are duplicates of other village pieces but a smaller scale. This is a cross marketing idea and these pieces are not intended to be high end collectibles.
General News:
Halloween Housewalk is set for October 21st.
There is an auction in Iowa that is accepting absentee forms. See Dan Ranachowski for details.
June 10th is Flannagan's Wake at Pheasant Run. Cost is $42 per person which includes tax & gratuity. Gates open at 5:30, show starts at 6:00
October 14th is the Murder Mystery Mansion. This is a private home which includes dinner, $60 per person.
Chicago Gathering – Over 200 attendees currently. Still need volunteers for seminars to distribute raffle tickets. 57 Vendor tables have been sold. There will be an auction Saturday night. They will accept cash, check or charge. They will also provide a tax id for write offs. There will be Bingo Thursday and Friday nights.
Ronald McDonald House - Rich Wyllie presented Andi and Sue from the Ronald McDonald house with a check for $2500. They were very grateful to our club!
Electrical Questions: The following questions were addressed by Ron Blazek.
Is there a way to stop pieces from blinking? Need a limiting resistor. See Ron for further help.
How can you “step” the lights to go on in sections of the village working their way thru the village. “Like telling a story in lights”. First Snow Village, then Christmas in the City, etc. You can use remote timers manually or take the same circuitry. Ron is going to do more research on this. However, another member said at Christmas time they found a device at American Sales where you can plug in different pieces and the device will provide rhythm.
What would cause an accessory to work on a battery but not work when hooked up to an adapter? Can possibly be some bad wiring. Ron would be willing to take a look at the piece.
How do you get rid of the small white boxes? Ron demonstrated how to get rid of the white boxes.
Remote switch to turn display on and off? Menards sells the Super Switch which is 8 amps (approx 160 houses) and wireless. Also, there is a remote with a wire (extended outlet switch) which is great for just using for one piece that you don't want on all the time such as a sledding hill.
How can you gradually bring the lights up? There is a dimmer switch on a cable sold at Menards (it was on sale for $8) with a 6 foot cord. These retail about $30 on ebay. It is 300 watts (approx. 10 buildings). LED lights won't work that well and should be careful with motorized pieces.
How much power do I need to light a village? Big village? Small village? Separate circuit? Most buildings use 5 watt bulbs, brite lites use 10 watts and Lemax addapters use 4 watts. A 15 amp circuit can handle 110 volts and 1650 watts.