Smoke & Haze- outdoors

[Pitts]

Hi all,

I seem to be getting a few enquiries for small outdoor displays.
I have sufficient laser power for small localised events.

The question is how to have sufficient smoke/ haze. The 1200 smoke machine and the MVS hazer whilst brilliant indoor won't hack it outside.

I have seen at some other shows a guy walking around the crowd edge with what looks like a small, modified, weed blower petrol driven, back pack, blowing smoke

Any ideas on this.. ??

With my Pitts Special aircraft I make smoke for aerobatic displays by injecting Diesel or Corvus oil directly into the exhaust system. This works very well makes heaps of smoke.

Does anyone know if its much the same process and what they use as the medium.
We can't have the crowd falling over and choking on diesel fumes (its bad enough in the cockpit I can tell you) [show comes with inbuilt laxative if you do this, probably OSH issues as well I would think]

Cheers

Ray

[dave]

Wind is your enemy ;-)

Your best bet I think would be a few big well positioned smoke machines, with maybe fans to get the smoke where you need it quickly.

[Mr.Coffee]

You can probably run fog juice through insect foggers, since they're basically the same thing, that is probably what the guy had on his back. you can also try incendiary smoke. Not sure what the laws are like down there, but if you call a fireworks company they can probably help. also, you'll get the best fog or smoke on humid days.

Other than that, big machines, and as many of them as you can get ahold of.

[buffo]

They tried to do an outdoor Laser show on the ILDA cruise back in 2008. They had a pair of these babies (Martin MagnumPro 2000's) set up on a gazebo of sorts on the lido deck (where the pool was), along with the DJ, the sound system, and a pair of RGB projectors. So basically they had an outside area that was sheltered on the sides by at least 1 deck, and by several decks fore and aft.

It didn't make any difference though. With a roughly 15 kt wind blowing, the fog disappeared as soon as it left the nozzle of the machine, despite the large foggers they had. They were using 3 watt Infinity RGB projectors from Medialas, but they really looked lame outside because there was no fog. It was a shame too, because these same projectors absolutely *ROCKED* when they were used inside for the lase-off. But inside they had a hazer running and no wind to contend with.

Bottom line - if you book an outdoor beam show and it's windy, you're screwed unless you've got 20+ watts of Argon or a whole fleet (figure 15 to 20) of fog machines.

Adam

[norty303]

I have seen this technique used to good effect.

Get a large diameter fan (or a few) and have it pointing vertically in front of the projector. Use a couple of foggers that will do constant fog (most half decent ones will fog continuously at 20-30% output, Antari, Jem, etc) and have them fire over the top of the fan.
This puts a fairly diffuse wide column of fog in the beam path, and because its forced at quite high speed it can withstand reasonable winds

[carlos3621]

what power (watts) , are you planning to use for outdoors??

i find it hard to do outdoor shows ,so i dont do them, and i have 3 watts green, i dont feel its enough to make a good light show outdoors.............

[mccarrot]

Wind is your friend, but you need to use it or control it.

You need massive smoke machines (1500W = small), but most important are big fans to control the smoke in the direction you want.

for the fans you need models of 1000W or bigger, a big fan you use in your house is useless outdoors.

A good tip is blowing the smoke into the audience at there feets with a big fan so the smoke will rise up from the audience.

At events like Dancevalley,Mysteryland etc. they use these kind of blowers: http://www.floor-machine.org/minutem...er-p-5057.html

1HP 4000CFM.

When I was controling the smoke at qlimax I had one of these fans in my hand an I could shoot the smoke almost half over the football field.

[mccarrot]

what power (watts) , are you planning to use for outdoors??

i find it hard to do outdoor shows ,so i dont do them, and i have 3 watts green, i dont feel its enough to make a good light show outdoors.............

Then you MUST be doing something wrong.

these are 5W lasers and the stage was a 20.000 people stage:



Remember if you do not have correct smoke you need a 40W pulsed yag to get nice visible beams.

[haymaker]

Fireworks do make very good smoke machines, but a bit too expensive.

[Francesco]

I've very good experience with the MDG MAX5000 APS for outdoor shows. Together with the fans mentioned above. Works perfect!
MDG makes very nice smoke machines!! Also for indoor shows they are great, but not @ full power
Datasheet of MDG machine: http://www.mdgfog.com/pdf/max-aps-series_e.pdf
More info on haze vs. smoke: http://www.laserfx.com/Backstage.Las.../Support1.html