Clear plastics

Ball was catching on the clear plastic square over hobbiton shire hole, as it came down the LH wire return ramp. Took plastic off for now as others wanted to play pinball!

*Sunday 28 Mar 2010* Added two 6/32 nuts to the tops of the metal posts, between posts and plastic. Note these are not locknuts, but slim normal ones.  Possibly the plastic is taking ball hits on the top. Or the hex posts are not mounted correctly from factory, one looks askew.

Installed Pinbits "9 piece LOTR protector set" Very nice and was easy to do - even without instructions.  Finally have protection top and bottom of Arwen plastic and for the two VUKs.  Needed this from the beginning.

*Sunday 28 Mar 2010* Took pinbits plastic off from behind the Balrog.  Was longer than existing, and the fork shaped end was fouling the "Balrog closed" switch.  Didn't do this when first installed.

Can't see the advantage of having it there.  I have spare plastics, except for Arwen.  Plan to will deal with both of the clear plastic issues (item 12) later when adding the AOME figures.

Flipper adjustment settings and the Coil Pulse Power

Been reading about flipper adjustment settings #53-55, and the Coil Pulse Power Setting #33

• Essentially the coils can get hot in a long game, so need to be pulsed less and switched to the "hold strength" quickly to keep them cooler and therefore stronger. An update around v8 to the CPU code implemented these settings, warnings not to adjust these settings so nothing was changed there.
• Made a change to adjustment SPI #33 (Coil Pulse Power) today, changed from Normal to Hard which is a 12.5% increase. It does seem more lively kicking the ball around, like using Hi-Tap on an old EM. Completed DTR in 30 sec on this setting, with the 1 ball DTR setting. Not convinced the coil strength makes a difference, once did 37 sec without any changes. So it's going back to the Normal setting. Don't understand the relationship between this and the flipper coils, but can see it isn't needed on a new game. Seems to get hammered enough on Normal.

Reached "There and Back Again" after going back to the Normal coil strength. Was concentrating on the Ring Modes and not on getting to DTR. You qualify for the "Movie Multiballs" anyway when playing for the Modes. As an example: War of the Ents tends to qualify the RotK MB, because you go to the PoTD over and over while hitting Orthanc.

I really like the music during TaBA, very soothing and a nice sound when you shoot the ring. I won't spoil it for you if you haven't reached it yet, but a nice addition to an already excellent game. I can see how really high scores are possible.