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"The main look Tommy wanted was one similar to the runway lights you see at the airport. The Crüecifly has two runs of truss, each approximately 200' long, that support Tommy's drum kit as he flies from the stage to a landing platform behind FOH. I had the guys mount, actually tape, the Flex Tape to the top cord of the truss so it would be safe from all the machinery."
"The actual fabrication was done in a great rush, because it took a while for management to approve the finances and to get the thing really into a 'go' condition. Basically, the whole thing was designed and built in less than six weeks.Pearce also says on plsn.com that Tommy Lee didn't have 'more than a day or so of rehearsal before the first show.'
Everything is double- or triple- secured. The drum kit is welded to plates on the rotating deck, with secondary attachments for the individual parts. It's radio-controlled and miked, with a UPS unit supplying power.
The horizontal speed of the Crüecifly is limited. It's going through changing radius curves, from tracking on the inside of a curve to tracking on the outside of a curve. Every time it transitions, the program has to speed up and slow down the opposing drive wheels to get through that transition point, then accelerate and slow down and run them at different speeds as it hits the next changing curve.
Programming-wise, it's very complex to go around these multiple curves. Four drive units drive simultaneously. As their position changes as they move along the track, their speed relative to each other has to change. That alone took about 20 hours of programming to figure out."
