The block-long display at the home of Fred Loya, has become a holiday tradition in the west Texas town, with over 4,000 people gathering each weekend during the month of December to enjoy the lights of the massive Christmas show as they flash, chase and change colours in synchronisation to popular songs of the season.
This year's display is bigger and better than ever, featuring 12 Platinum Beam 5Rs, an extreme ACL beam effect powered by the new Philips MSD Platinum 5R lamp that blasts out the tight, narrow focus and ultra-brightness of a classic aircraft landing light. The intense light from the Platinum Beam 5R is responsible for El Paso's decision to require the display to have 'search light' permits for operation! Also included are 30 powerful Elation ELAR EX Floods, high-output LED RGB colour-mixing outdoor floods.
All of this glittering holiday magic is controlled by 1,900 DMX channels, programmed by Esteban De La Torre-Alva of Elation Inside Sales, who is now in his sixth year of designing the El Paso display. There are about 500 dimmers placed throughout the entire yard, consisting of Elation DP-415 4-channel dimmer packs that can control up to eight fixtures each and the compact, single-channel Uni Paks, dimmer/switch packs that have standard 512-DMX protocol. The light show is being run with Elation's Compu Live, DMX lighting software, using an AL-NET8 for art-net to DMX outputs.
(Jim Evans)
