It seems to me, it kind of depends on how much time you have to knock down the 3 drops. Isn‘t the default around 15 seconds ? At that I‘ve gotten there maybe twice. When I first got the game, it was shorter and completely impossible to get more than a few planets.

Anybody know what qualifies the target on the right side of the playfield which spots a planet?

I‘ve never been real happy with the toothpick method. It seems to me the toothpicks have too much wiggle room so the flippers usually are not aligned well enough when I only use this method. I don’t stick anything in the holes and just use them as a guide to setting the flipper angle and visually make sure the two flippers line up. That being said I’ve never been sure if the holes are for lining up the flippers with or without rubber. I have never tried tapping these pieces up and down - might have to try that, but depending on how high up one taps them they would be touching the plastic flipper or the rubber.

“in the vortex” suggests that you are refering to gi lamps. check if the nonfunctioning lamps each have at least one wire attached to both leads of the lamp sockets.
A. If yes, check if these connections if they have continuity with other functioning gi lamps.
a1. If yes, then probably the yellow wire is unrelated, maybe the sockets are defective
a2. If no, then go to the next line
B. If no check if the yellow wire has continuity with other functioning gi lamps
b1. If yes, then probably the yellow wire is the one you need - check what this wire is connected to and if it has voltage (check for ac for gi)
b2 If no, then you’ll need to fix a broken connection elsewhere

The manuals for Williams games should all be available at the International Pinball Database ipdb.org

I’ve used leds in the gi, but left the inserts mostly incandescent - except the blue planets which always seemed kind of dark with incandescents. I kind of like the slow smooth light show on the matrix in front of the visor - I’m guessing with leds this doesn’t look as nice.

I had a cool shot today - ball hit the remaining drop target to get another planet then on to lock itself in the visor - one of the joys of pinball, those random unexpected shots.