Father Son Ghostbusters project

tripoli

Master Member
RPF PREMIUM MEMBER
I have been working on and off for the last year to get together a GB suit for my son as he really loved my GB gear over the previous years. I had sold off my original paranorman heavily modified pack years ago but Outlander had lent out his for me last year and to use for the long term as a base to build another pack.
When I saw a fiberglass shell come up on the JY last spring, I made the purchase and then went to work with the other parts I had been collecting. I was able to purchase a GB wand pre built here on the JY that made this just a bit easier to get finished. I picked up the extra parts from Multimediamayhem and some parts via the local plumbing shop. Finally I held a JY sale last week to get the electronics lights for my son's pack and they arrived mid week. We purchased them from zombieamusements on eBay. We had them in that night, a late night project to get the lighting all in. We still have the sound to pop in via propreplicator's sound chip, waiting on a bread board to arrive and then how to wire it up and pop in.

A big thank you to Outlander and all those that purchased item in my JY sale, as well those that sold us parts this year, it made this project possible to put together this pack in record time and for me to have a great time working with my son these past weeks as well for this fall's outings.

Here are the two packs, the older on on the left and the new one we worked on these past weeks on the right.

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My son David and I ready to bust some ghost:

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Wearing Ghosthost goggles, think we are going to keep these up when we go about at night, dark enough looking through them in the day:

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Another shot of Dave's pack:

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Thanks, the newer pack is the Exoray V71 Mark V fiberglass pack. It is more accurate to the older one including the sizing. It also is about 2/3rds the weight of the other mainly because of the updated electronics than materials in the pack. The lights are super bright and run on 2 9 volt batteries. The older pack is made up of wood, plastic and metal and has 3 sets of the D battery packs as well a much heavier speaker system. I would love to pick up a new shell and electronics and revamp the old one now. Cannot beat the old pack's sound system though, it really belts out the volume. I have added on newer parts and gotten some actual parts and pieces to upgrade it the last year. I do want to spend a little more time redoing the lights on it to make them brighter as well.

It would be almost as much though to build a new pack and I am now thinking along that line of thought for doing another pack. With the newer parts and ease of supplies, I was able to pop it together in about a month. I enjoyed making it and really am looking forward to going out with my son for a few events this fall.
 
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Those are just incredible. Especially that you get to share it with your son.

Congratulations.

Ted.
Prefect42.
 
Nice Jeff! Glad you were able to put that shell to good use so quickly. Great build, and lucky kid!
 
Awesome!

Man, I'm excited for my little boy (almost 11 months old now) to get interested in something so we can do it together. :) I may just have to do a Goblin King/Toby costume this year while he's still little. Heh.
 
My middle son Michael has gone to C3 with me and is a huge Star Wars fan. He was at Outlander's prop party a few years back and has been over at a few board members homes as he is a collector mainly of Star Wars and harry Potter items.
David's high school drama club had a haunted house for the local elementary school and I got to take some of the younger kids around as a Ghostbuster protector. Ha was in the mad scientist area and had a ball but wanted to do some of the GB escorting as well. This year we hope to really have some fun with the costumes. Outlander has worked with the scouts in his area the past few years and we hope to be able to do some thing with them there as well as the local scouts down here and again to help with the local school haunted house project. We also hope to "open our own Toledo franchise" via the GBfan web site later on this year. There are a couple other events we may be able to have fun with, so its a great way to have both boys now active with the prop collecting. Love my time with them and it great to be able to add this hobby to the father son time.
 
For those who are curious: The pack is one of the original group built up by the talented guys at Hangar 18 studios back in the late '90s.

At the time, Hyperdyne was breaking ground on his sound systems for trooper armour. I called Jim up and asked him; "What kind of sounds can you put on one of those chips?"

Hyperdyne provided the sound FX. I sent the pack to a buddy out east who also had a H18 pack and asked him for a favor, he untangled the labyrinth [sp?] of H18 wiring and rigged up what as far as I know was the first GB pack with sound.

Cut to 2005, some punk kid... something something Planter, or Farmer...comes up to me at the MI.P.P and sez "Hey, look at this: it's got sound."

I looked at him and I said *Yawn* "Seen it. Heard it."

*ZZZZZ---BLAM!*

After getting to my feet and dusting myself off, I realized that in five short years, the coolness of my pack had been eclipsed by the awesomeness of AMPLIFIED SOUND.
 
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