Spinning Bat

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I purchased one of the large rubber bats (I call him "Igor") and wanted to add red LED eyes and have it "fly" under one of the eaves of my garage. Adding the red LEDs eyes was real easy. I just melted holes through the existing eyes with a hot nail and epoxied the LEDs in place...after I wired them in series to the back of the body-- to a 9 volt battery and 220 ohm resistor (use a 1K ohm resistor instead if you want to limit the current more). I added a simple little slide switch to turn the eyes on and off.

Well, I went through several trial and error designs with this thing. First I tried using a swivel hook to allow the bat to spin completely around in circles. Then, I found out that if I didn't keep one side of the swivel bolted on solid, any wire setup would break off in a high wind. Plop!

Then, I realized the little red 5mm LEDs were just too small to be seen very well. So, I upgraded to the big 10mm red LEDs. But then I realized that unless the bat always faced forward, that the TOTs wouldn't see it was a bat very well.

I also realized that in the dark, the outline of the bat's face and body were missing. You would only see the big red eyes. So, I had an extra bright blue 5mm LED that I could use to highlight the bat's body and face. I used an old filing cabinet folder wire separator to create a hanger for the bat and a place to hold the blue LED. I bent the file folder wire in my workshop vise, so the bat's body points down. I bolted a small piece of steel through the bat's body -- to hold the hanger in place. In the back, I made a hook in the file folder wire to attach to the existing wire in the back of the body. You can see this in the photo below.

Now, the bat can tip its wings back and forth, but will always be facing forward. Then I used black and white electrical tape to cover the speaker wire that I used to hook the blue LED to the 9V battery switch (again using a 220 ohm resistor in series to limit the current). I just wrapped the speaker wire around around the file folder wire...and covered it with the tape.

Here's a daytime look at the bat and hanger setup.

Here's a night time look at the bat and hanger setup. Not a great photo, but you can see the blue LED light on the bat's head and nice silouette it casts behind the bat.

HAPPY HAUNTING!

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