Episode 3 of Pinball With The Pros - Star Trek with Zach Sharpe
Past episodes:
S01E01 - AC/DC with Keith Elwin
S01E02 - Mustang with Steve Bowden
Links not showing… maybe I don’t have permission?
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YT embeds no longer work here for whatever reason, even though of course they look great in the Preview box.
Link:
I’ll be checking this video out when I get home from work tonight. Thanks for making these.
I need to upgrade the forum software and this latest update requires a couple extra hoops to jump through and I’ve been putting it off. I’ll get to it soon.
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No spoilers but Zach needs to check his ball trough optos!
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Haha he called me literally that night and I walked him through how to do it over FaceTime. Hasn’t happened since! 
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I also fixed the drop target issue! That’s about the extent of my fixing ability on these things.
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best one yet. thanks to all involved.
That drop target thing is/has been an issue on like every Star Trek I’ve come across.
Right now my drop target only drops from a softer hit. A straight shot to it always bricks. Whatever, I don’t shoot for it :).
Nice job with this.
Shame you didn’t get a KM for the newbies to see. Stupid trough opto.
Try following the steps in this service bulletin for WPT:
http://www.sternpinball.com/service-bulletins/service-bulletin-165-world-poker-tour
Seems to have fixed mine.
Tech Help with the Pros.
Nate - Come over so we can film all my game issues. I would love to have Tilt Forums help me fix them 
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Wait until you see another Sharpe brother ALMOST get to a wizard mode in episode 4!
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Our ST pro in Columbia MO is a major trough switch offender, to the point it’s almost unplayable in league / events. Will see if we can get that service bulletin done, thanks for the link!
Wait, that link was for drop target fix, anyone have a good walk through (other than a Josh Sharpe skype event) for the trough opto fix?
There are two connectors for the trough. With the machine off, reseat both of them (unplug and plug).
That’s it.
60% of the time, works every time.
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Great episode. Never saw that three-ball cradle separation before (two balls on bottom, one on top in a triangle shape). In the past I’d always just try to do a full flip and hope for the best. I had the situation pop up on one of my home machines today multiple times and separating them “the Zach way” worked perfectly. It’s really cool to learn little tricks like that from these videos.
For the trough issue, I can vouch what @stevevt said about the connectors. There’s always the potential there could be an actual issue with one of the switches, but much of the time it’s just loose trough connectors, not the ball switches. They come loose easily, so if you ever move a game (even if it’s partway across the room), it’s probably a good idea to re-tighten them. There’s almost nothing worse than your game ending prematurely, especially if you’re having a good ball.
or if that does not work, the good old work around of cutting connectors off and soldering directly.
That is my preferred solution (although I unsolder the connector from the board and solder the wires directly in its place, more stable.)
Around 48:30, Zach has the Klingon Super lit on the right ramp, and is trying to shoot it directly. Couldn’t that be doubled with a shot to the left ramp first? Wondering if there was a specific reason or that was just an oversight.
Complete oversight
That was an awesome episode. Later that day, I went to a movie theater that just happened to have Star Trek in its waiting room (I went to see Zootopia, if anyone is curious). I couldn’t wait to try the strategies I saw in the video…only to find out that not only was this Star Trek never once updated, its drop target below the Vengeance was outright broken: It would not drop all the way, but the machine thought it did, making it impossible for the ball to get behind it and activate anything related to it.
It was kind of a frustrating experience.