Haven't been blogging much. Went to the Soth Coast Slam Pinball Show.

South Coast Slam was an excellent show.   There must have been at least 3 (or maybe 4) LOTRs there.  I had  a look, but didn't play them.  No one (including me) took an LOTR LE to the show, they were all the original run versions.

Concentrated instead on the new Stern Avatar and Rolling Stones Pins.  Also had a play at CSI, which I still like in a strange way as I didn't think much of the TV series.

I took to the show:
A Williams Blackout (1980 - same year as Firepower), Blackout is very enjoyable for a single ball game.
A Williams Star Light (1984 - very rare System 7 game, only 100 were produced).  Has a two ball Multiball.
Both were used for the Slam's "Classic Tournament".
I had to spent a huge amount of time repairing and rebuilding the Blackout to have it ready for the show. I had bought it some time ago literally as a box of bits.  Someone had taken the whole top of the playfiled apart (like doing a shop job) and never finished putting it back together.  Luckily all the plastics were there (and the spinners).  I "borrowed" the rest of the missing posts and most of the other parts from my Alien Poker and Firepower spares. Except one metal piece which I had to make.

Looked to me like the previous operator (or owner) had plugged the Lamp Matrix ROW connector into the Ground and Logic +5v connector on the driverboard.  Which must have been an interesting lightshow for about 2 seconds.  It was the only un-keyed connector and I think they gave up on restoring the game after that.  So a driverboard repair and a playfield rebuild later and I have a fairly nice game.  Plays nice.

Got lots of comments from people that had never seen or played the Star Light or who remembered playing the Blackout "back in the day".  But back to posting about LOTR.