I have a bunch of wood like this in the picture. Its from the section of wall we took down before in hopes of re-using it. When we started to put the frame together, we found the size wasn't right. Yeah, instead of 8', all these pieces are 7.5'... Useless to me for the wall, which means I have to go buy more now. The one upside is that I can use these wood for the cat walk behind the wall so people can watch the game. Bad news is this is more money I have to spend that I don't have.
Here is the wall after working on it yesterday. We managed to get 2 more section up. Its turning out really nice and straight.


The wall from another angle.

This is the first time in three weeks we have actually worked on the wall. And I got to say, it's really cold in there. Anyone want to install a chimney for the wood burner we have sitting there taunting us?

Last night we got the first two sections of the wall up. After arguing about how to make 16 inches on center for about 45 minutes, we figured it out and Kel went up in the attic to cut the holes in the drywall. After much hassle and dust, we put up the first section of wall, that's the part you see with the studs going all the way to the celing. The second section was much easier as it only had 1 stud going up, the rest was just an 8 foot wall.This picture is what will be the view from outside of the arena. The grid that the barriers hang on will be attached to the ledge you see in the lower right corner of the picture.

Actual construction of the wall began last night. The wall will be 60 feet long, making the long wall of the arena. The first 8 feet and last 8 feet of the wall will be solid all the way to the ceiling, this is where the doors into the arena will go.
The other 44 feet in the middle will be built 8 feet high with one support beam going up to a truss.

As you can see in this picture, we are building every 8 x 8 section with a 14 ft beam connected. This will allow a large viewing area with use of a 4 foot catwalk behind the wall, while still having enough strength to support the weight of the grid and all the barriers.
We were very worried about how to connect the studs to the truss in the ceiling, which we could not figure out how to do until someone ventured up there. This was a job for Kel.

We were worried about what he was going to find up there. Brian has never gone up there since buying the place in 2002. And you have to understand this is a pole building standing in the limbo between farmland and the city. It is getting cold out, but we expected a mess of cob webs and bat droppings. But there were none to be found, the attic was pristine!
So we found the truss we are attaching our wall to. It will require a cut in the drywall ceiling, but we can patch that up when we are done. I was happy to see the attic fully insulated. There is even empty electrical conduit with boxes for us to run new wire for any circuits we may need.
Besides the attic exploration and wall construction, most of the time was spent demolishing a small room in the corner. This was important because I am using that wood as part of my new wall.
Now that we have our plan, and our sections coming together, it won't be long before this wall is up. Now we just need to get Brian's old T-Bird out of the way. If only he could find the keys...

Construction material arrives!

Last night I purchased the wood for the frame, and brought it to our future location with a rented truck. Now construction can begin in full!

I have a very lofty goal of getting a tournament in our arena by the end of November. Working by myself, this will not happen, but with enough help...

There are going to be some more expenses than I thought going into this, but there always are in this type of project.
The uni-strut used to hold the grid up is gone, used for other things, so we have to buy new.
The grid lines themselves were made for the Jester's arena, with more from another arena we purchased years ago. I'm pretty sure I should have enough, but I may need to tie pieces together to make it work.
The current lighting fixtures are T-12 8 ft. They don't make black lights in that size. So we will leave the current fixtures in place and add T-12 4 ft fixtures. We have some old ones laying around, but may have to buy more.
We decided we are going to run conduit to inlayed boxes on the walls. This way we can add circuits if we ever need to, though it won't be as easy and cheap as running the lines without the conduit, and have you ever tried to put inlayed boxes in plywood? Surface mount is easier, but that means metal boxes sticking out of the wall.
One of the heating units is in the way, and so we are going to build the wall a bit inside of the 2800 sq ft mark. I don't mind the size, but the wall won't be directly under a truss, so we will need to support it on the next truss. If someone wants to mess with moving the heater, be my guest.
The equipment is scattered around everywhere. We are going to need to collect everything and get it all together before we can even start messing with it.

Here are some pics of the area we are working in. The first picture is the rest of the space we are moving everything too. Can you believe we are having a hard time finding space for all the junk in a 12,000 sq foot building?

We still have to move the car, and tare down the little room you see in the background, but now we are focusing on the design of the walls.

The old JC arena was 50 x 40, which is 2,000 sq feet. If we just build one wall, we will end up with 52 x 59, which is 3,068 sq feet, and very close to the same proportions JC was. However, this only leaves the single long wall as an option for the entrance to the arena. This means that with most arena designs, one team is going to have to get to their side by crossing the force shield. It's not like that is a huge problem, but it would irritate me to the end of days.

Missing from this setup would be a back door to the arena. While there are two exits in the arena leading to the outside, it could not be used for war games (at least not in the winter).

If you have any ideas, the width of the space available is 59 feet. While the length of the building is 200 feet, I don't have all of it I can use. The original plan was to stay within 52 feet in length, that gives the dimensions I mentioned earlier. All other options involve building more walls, and cutting into that 3,000 sq feet.

I also plan on building a cat-walk on this new wall to give a view of the arena like XP Laser Sport does in Maryland. With a cat-walk already in place, it would be possible to expand that later into a party room(s). The cat-walk, and possible party room would be raised, but not enough to allow people in the first level. The total ceiling is only 12 feet, so having an 8 foot clearance for the cat-walk would only give us 4 feet below it. This means any future party room would take up a large chunk of space, and enable war games to be played around it.

That's all I have for now, bust out your graphing paper. Any good thoughts, leave them in the comments.

Wow, a lot of people came to help out last Thursday. We managed to clear out most of the area. Now we have a little left to clear, and Brian old car to move, then we can tare down that wall in the back corner.

If this gets all done today and tomorrow, we can start the wall next week.

Thursday August 27th brings the first day of construction for the new Laser Storm arena. I plan on starting around 6pm. This first day is going to involve clearing things out of the way (rather large task), and planning the location of the walls.

For all those wanting to lend a hand, send me a message on Facebook, or give me a call.

If I'm by myself on this, it will take a few months, with enough help we can get it done in weeks. I plan on working on this Thursdays and Fridays.

Checklist:
-Clear out the area that will be the arena
-Plan the final position of the walls
-Purchase the building materials
-Construct the frame
-Run wiring in frame
-Drywall, mud, sand, mud, sand...
-Paint
-Order batteries for Equipment
-Hang the Grid
-Install Energizers
-Install Computer and test energizers
-Re-build Jester's pods, install, test
-Create the first arena
-Install racks to hold the player units, so they can be stored and charged.
-Play

Decisions have to be made about the final size of the arena, location and size of vesting and briefing rooms if any, and where the computer is going to be.
These decisions will be made Thursday night, so if you want a say, you need to be there.

Dump Shuttle Wins

Dump Shuttle are the new National Champions, beating Justice 155 to 126.

3rd Place

We lost our last game to Justice, we did much better and even came back from 30 points behind with a very nice pod rush. Right now Justice is playing Dump Shuttle for 1st.

vs Park Rangers

We won, if we win our next game we take 3rd place.

vs Dump Shuttle

We lost and it wasn't pretty, 215 to 93. I think we also got DQed with more than 5 penalties.

Finals

Our first game vs Psudo Champs, we won 57 to 45.

vs Psydo

we lost by a few points. Now we drive home and come back for finals tomorrow

vs Impact

we lost by a few points at the very end.

vs Dump Shuttle

Lost, bad.

vs Justice

We got owned. Our 5 man defense was of no use.

Vs Park Rangers

We won. Its a very interesting arena, you can see it at laserstorm.org in the nationals section its the first arena.

Laser Storm Nationals

In Pittsburgh. We are team "Magic Murder Bag".
Icarus
Cool Cat
Ice
EZ
Tyrant

Lasertron World Championships

I'm at the LTWC in NY playing on a team with Cool Cat, The Baron, a few locals and some new players from the new XP Laser Sport in MD.
I haven't been posting because most games have 4 teams so you end up playing 3 games in a row.
We took 3rd place in sheilds recharge, and 3rd again in chips mode both times with Overpower in first and the Proffecionals in 2nd.

Right now we are in the middle of Quads, we have played twice coming in 2nd and first. After this is the managers cup where we make random teams.

We made it home. It was a long drive with a flat tire, and too many people seeing double to help drive. We really need to start getting a hotel for that final night.

Don't worry, we know our limits, the person driving was the one who was NOT seeing double.

It was a terrific tournament. I must say, this was the hardest Armageddon to date. Not only were the Vikings and Zombies really tough to beat, but they actually tied, Zombies won based on the head to head record. We even lost a game in Laser Storm.

DK from the Vikings really stood out this year. He is now good on every system, and is just an impressive player!

To see what everyone else is saying about the event, visit the Armageddon website, and check out the forums!

Final

With a head to head tie breaker, Zombies win with 30 points.
Vikings in second.
Violent Climax takes 3rd.
We took 4th.
Facepalm in 5th.
Justice took 6th.

Q-Zar

We have beaten Justice and Facepalm. We lost to Zombies and Climax and we are up against Vikings. It looks like a 4th place overall for us.

Updated standings

Vikings 26
Zombies 26
Violent Climax 19
Lil ones Closet 17
Facepalm 9
Justice 7

Laser Storm

So after 10 years we finaly took our first loss in Storm. We went 4 - 1 losing to Justice who swept the system.

The lack of updates was due to me running the games.

Next up Q-Zar

Violent Climax

For our final game of the night, we pulled out a win vs Rickys team.

Vs Justice

Another close game, we won

Zombies

Close game but we lost by 2k in the end. Just as well since we also lost 2k in running penalties

Vikings

We lost, really good game

Lasertron

Vs Facepalm we lost 115k to 114k

Blast problems

There have been some issues with the scores. When you hit a base you get 501 points, so at the end of your game if you get both bases your score will end in 2.
Since friendly fire is on you can hit your own base, so you lose 501 points making your score end in 9. But the scores seem to be messed up and some people are ending in 9 and we have to see the scorecards to figure it out. Unfortunatly the center didn't provide a second copy so we have to wait until later.
The center also didn't provide much help with turnover so we had no time for a replay. We will check later if Autos pack registered a base hit on our own team, as of now we went 3 - 2 on this system.

Vikings

We lost this game by 8k.

Facepalm and Justice

We beat both teams.

vs Zombies

We lost by 400, somehow one of our players got a hit on our base loosing us 500 pts. We will replay the game if we have time.

Laser Blast

First game we won vs Rickys team.

Updated totals

Official record:
Vikings 16
Zombies 16
Climax 13
lil ones closet 8
Facepalm 6
Justice 1

Last of Quest

We are so very not good on Quest. We lost to Facepalm and Vikings. We are 1 - 4.

Quest, Rickys team

Of coarse its hard to tell, but I'm pretty sure we lost this game with at least 4 of our players ranked at the bottom.

Zombies and Justice

We lost to Zombies by about 500 and we won agaist Justice

Updated totals

Zombies took first with 5 wins for a total of 13 wins.
Vikings had 4 wins for a total of 12 wins.
Rickys team had 3 wins for a total of 8.
Facepalm had 2 wins giving them a total of 3.
We only had 1 win giving us a total of 7.
Justice didn't win any so they have 1 total point.

Again these results are not official, and come from my memory.

vs Rickys team

Another loss to put us at 1 - 4 in Darklight.

Ouch

See that blue box in the screen? That was the Vikings score, we were the red team, that's the little line to the left of it.

vs Zombies

We lost, pretty much just got out played.

vs Justice

We won 6k to 4k

Darklight

We lost our first game vs facepalm very close with Gumby taking 1st with a lot of points.

4 - 1

In our final game we lost to The Vikings. They had 1 out, we had three, including Auto who went out of bounds and DQed.

After outdoor

Psyhco Family tied with Zombies with 8 wins each.
We have 6 wins.
Violent Climax (Rickys team) with 5.
Facepalm in 5th and Justice in 6th.

These are not official totals.

4 - 0

We won against Zombies. Both teams had 3 out, scores were counted final 130 - 85.

3 - 0

Our third game vs Facepalm, we won 1 dead to 3.

2 - 0

First game against Rickys team we won with 2 lives left, they had 1. Cheetah got the flag half way back.

Against Justice we won with 1 player out, they had 2.

Outdoor change

After three games, the last two lasted around 20 seconds. Whoever runs faster wins.

The was a captains vote and we are playing all the games over with a standard capture the flag format.

Outdoor begins

We have arrived, going over the rules now. Its not supposed to rain until we are done, let's hope we run our games on time.

Ultrazone

So... we went 2 and 3 in this system, it was the Infusion version with 1 shot per second. We played on the red and yellow teams with the blue base not on.
The Swedes swept the system giving an upset to the Zombies who had the crazy good Assassin on the team.

The Zombies held second place with only 1 loss, Rickys team came in third.

With our team taking 4th, we had Facepalm in 5th beating out Justice, the other full Laser Storm team from Pittsburgh

lost to rickys team

and I thought we were doing really good