Setting up lights at fairgrounds arena is a slow, precise process
(From left) Gavin Christopherson, Viktor Pashkovsky and Bob Paxman carefully maneuver the new lights being installed Tuesday at the Grant County Fairgrounds.
Gavin Christopherson (left) and Bob Paxman (right) work to keep a set of finely tuned (and expensive) lights from hitting the ground during installation at the Grant County Fairgrounds Tuesday.
Bob Paxman (left) and Viktor Pashkovsky carefully maneuver a bank of new lights being installed at the Grant County Fairgrounds Tuesday.
Bob Paxman (left) and Viktor Pashkovsky remove protective plastic from a new lighting system being installed Tuesday at the Grant County Fairgrounds.
Jordan Koon (left) and Brendan oncado pull wire while installing new lights at the Grant County Fairgrounds Tuesday.
MOSES LAKE — The job of setting a 75-foot light pole on a seven-foot base, using a lift that extends 20 feet and a crane that extends 100 feet, is an inches game.
And an application of dish soap can help, too.
Getting the new lights in the Moses Lake Roundup arena at the Grant County Fairgrounds is a very finicky operation.
“They are very precise,” said Joe Moncada of Neppel Electric & Controls LLC, in Moses Lake, the company installing the lights Tuesday.
The layout was designed by Musco Lighting, of Oskaloosa, Iowa, and was built just for the Roundup arena.
“They come from the factory preset,” Moncada said.
If the installation is off by even a few inches it affects the overall design, he said.
A laser is attached to each bank of lights to ensure that they’re lined up correctly. But the first step is setting them on the base.
It’s a process that involves a lot of patience. Ever so slowly the crane extends, the lift moves forward and the light pole inches into the air. Space is tight, and the crew has to work around a pile of dirt and rocks directly in their path.
Part of the finicky nature of the job was the need to avoid bumping the lights into the extended crane, and the crew kept a close eye on the clearance as the entire apparatus rose into the air. It took about an hour for the light pole to make the 30-foot journey from the ground to its permanent home on the cement base.
The dish soap was applied liberally to the base. Bob Paxman of Neppel Electric said the soap eased the chore of setting the pole onto a set of clips that help hold it in place.
The laser helps line up each pole, and it, too, was a painstaking operation. Viktor Pashkovsky, of Neppel Electric, stood on the other side of the arena giving directions: a few inches this way, a few inches that way.
Setting the lights was only one of the tasks on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. Crews were pulling wire from one side of the arena to the other, all connecting at a central panel.
The arena lights were the first phase of a two-part project. The second phase will be the installation of lights at the south end of the fairgrounds. Total cost of the project is $473,637, with $281,000 of it paid for by an allocation from the state’s supplemental capital budget.
State Rep. Tom Dent, R-Moses Lake, was instrumental in helping the county get the money, said Tom Gaines, Grant County’s Central Services director, in an earlier interview.
