Designer Times: 1984 Los Angeles Olympics - Closing Ceremonies Spacecraft
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During the next few weeks, McGraw would call me for advice on a "flying saucer", since we both were working on Michael Jackson's 1984 Victory Tour. Then, with just six weeks to go, McGraw called me while I was with Jackson rehearsing in Birmingham Alabama. He had the Olympic Closing Ceremonies Flying Saucer contract......but said there's not enough time or money for him to do it. He talked to Applied Entertainment Systems (AES), builder of the Jackson Lighting EFX, and then asked me to take on the job. I had airline tickets to England, not wanting to be in Los Angeles during the upcoming Summer Olympics....Aha, a project I can't refuse.

I inherited the technical side of the mad venture, while Dave Schweninger, President of AES, attempted to pull together the remains of McGraw's suppliers. Only two days into my engineering of the flying saucer structure, AES went bankrupt and the project died....but only momentarily. I thought the wild scheme was so clever, we should not let it really die. Since I had my own company, GurrDesign, Inc., I could operate along with McGraws suppliers. Tom Baker of UMF Systems near Culver City was a big enough firm to contract with the Olympics Committee, who by this time were totally spooked with two contract failures with time rapidly running out. UMF then contracted GurrDesign, I hired a handful of AES victims and away we went.

I asked the Broggie-Elliot Company in North Hollywood if they would build my main flying saucer structure in a contract with UMF. Sherry Peck of Daniel Flannery Productions, the Ceremonies Lighting Designer, coordinated everyone as I danced daily with the now reluctant McGraw suppliers since I needed instant technical interface and they wanted to see money before doing anything. Somehow everyone believed in the job and trusted that the money would be forthcoming from the Olympics Committee. I'll bet they were exasperated beyond words by then.

Anyway, the wild contraption I envisioned got drawn up and built at a furious pace, based on a lot of trust amongst the players. The thing was to be 50 feet in diameter, carry a lot of equipment, but must be light enough to be carried by a Bell 314 big-lift Helicopter. So I made an outer ring of welded aluminum truss sections all pulled together by cables to a center triangular frame. This was inspired by the extremely light construction of the 1930's Hindenburg Zeppelin. The saucer looked like a slice out of the Hindenburg turned sideways.

The center frame would carry the 90 KVA 208 3 phase gas turbine generator furnished by Alturdyne of San Diego and the show control unit built by Knute Skjoneberg of Newport Beach. We used (360) 600 watt Ray Lites supplied by TMB Associates, a Pichel Industries 7K Xenon searchlight, plus a whole bunch more lighting gizmos totaling (432) items using 238,200 watts....but not all at once! The wiring alone stretched 1.5 miles. The whole deal had to be portable to fit in (2) 20' stake trucks with no single part heavier than 142 pounds so we could stick it together by hand. The really big chunks, which need a forklift, were the 1,160 generator and the 328 pound Xenon power supply. Total ready-to-fly weight was 3,689 pounds.

In addition to this project madness, Dave Schweninger, Tom Reidenbach, and I were attempting to reorganize the AES survivors into a new company (which would become Sequoia Creative in December 1984). All the while we were moving the physical assets of the AES bankruptcy auction to various storage locations, and I was driving all over town chasing parts and getting information....but thankfully very few meetings (unlike today's world). The Michael Jackson project took nine weeks, but we did the flying saucer job in just five weeks start to finish.

Broggie-Elliot delivered all the center structural sections to a secure corner of the Hughes Aircraft Airport in Culver City so we could begin final assembly. All the wiring was done at nearby UMF mostly by Garland Markley from my electrical diagrams. Rod Duff had a sewing bee way out in the desert with a bunch of hot air balloon characters to make the fabric covering for the saucer. Finally the Olympic flying saucer was completely assembled and ready to fly.

Down to nine days before the show. The saucer had attracted a few Hughes folks, including two bright helicopter engineers. The three of us were having a brown bag lunch at the airfield just idly viewing the saucer as we talked. They began to ask a lot of incisive questions as to helicopter downwash airloads on the saucer, etc. I assured them that McGraw's experts had assured him that there would be very little wind 100 feet below the helicopter when lifting the saucer. Quietly these guys educated me in helicopter reality. I had accepted McGraw's data without question. The first flight test was scheduled for later in the afternoon....I was now mentally prepared for the coming disaster.

oOo

Next Month: Rise of the flying saucer to the Phoenix Spacecraft