I need a handheld wireless mic system

[ingeborgdot]

I am looking for a handheld wireless mic system that has a range of at least 400' or even a little more. It will be used for sideline reporting and other things but when doing sideline reporting it will be a long distance from the base to the mic. I would like to keep it under the $400 mark as we are a school on a budget. I really like the Audio-Technica System 10 Digital Wireless - Handheld System range but it only has a range of 100' is what they say. Does anyone know of any good deals out there that would work? Thanks.

[sameness]

Why does it have to be wireless? Can you not just run a cable out instead, which would be considerably cheaper and will cause you less issues?

 

Also $400 is a ludicrously low budget for what you are trying to do

[paulears]

Frankly, none of the usual entertainment type products are going to work. They're not designed to do long distances, and we always treat any manufacturer who give a distance measurement as marketing hype. It is quite possible to increase the range of these devices - by using tracking aerials. Long beams, operated by on the ball people, feeding diversity receivers can increase the reliability, but it will never be 100% reliable. Digital systems work differently - so you get solid audio, until there is suddenly no audio. Analogue goes hissy as the signal drops. Opinions differ on which is best.

 

Broadcasters use different systems - higher power, which here in the UK, where the forum is firmly based, but not exclusively - has to be licensed.

There is something else you can consider. I assume your 'sideline' is the space between the white line and the crowd? It is possible to use an ordinary radio mic system, with multiple aerials, which you distribute along the path the user can take. For a British football pitch, 4 aerials, down the touchline with each one feeding a combiner, pairing every other one to one of the two receiver channels works quite well. You use the diversity switching as a kind of selector - the person moves down the line and starts to drop off aerial 1, as this is happening, aerial 2 is going up. The receiver switches, and as the person passes aerial 2, the signal starts to come up on aerial 3, paired with aerial 1 and again as this increases in strength, the receiver switches again and so on. You use low loss feeder cable - Westflex 103 works quite well, but there will be a US alternative, I'm sure. This isn't everyday stuff for people who work with radio systems, but could let your cheap solution work. Just needs some attention in the receiver placement and cabling. I did this quite successfully a few years ago on a TV job where the presenter needed to walk towards the camera down a long garden in a stately home. Far too far for the usual radios, and we hid the aerials in the shrubbery, running out the cables down the garden, hidden. The receiver was half way along, with car battery power supply, and then a very long XLR cable back to the mixer. Pairing was with T-pieces, which means there is an impedance mismatch, and a little loss in the combining process. It made little difference in practice.

 

You can probably use any of the popular systems, and add the extra bits as required. Dipoles on microphones stands might be the simple solution if the system needs to be simple.

[ingeborgdot]

As I rethink my distance I don't know why I decided 400'. I guess that would be by running a cable down, around under and over things to get it to where I need. I guess as the crow flies and in a straight line it would be closer to 100- 200' max. Does that help my cause?

[paulears]

being very honest, 20 feet can sometimes be impossible. The power output isn't the main problem, but it's the field strength at the receive antenna. Sometimes it's multi path routes, combining in a destructive way, so in what appears to be free empty space, you step into an area where the signal just vanishes. A diversity receiver has two aerials in different space - so hopefully unless both are in a null (easy when they are simple aerials plugged into the back panel sockets) when one is in a null, the other isn't. When I do sports stuff, thankfully rarely now as I hate sport, I can often see a shotgun mic, with attached radio pack, maybe 50 or 60- feet away - sitting on the grass, away from people. At the camera a nice noise free signal, until the linesman runs past and wipes it out - a big put, and it's gone. That's body absorption. At that distance, a diversity receiver at the camera end wouldn't help at all. If you try directional aerials, remember that they are also polarised, and while they have more gain, they are also more intolerant to polarisation errors.

 

Working near the distant end of the performance envelope is risky!

[Jivemaster]

If you use starquad cable you can use a mic at the end of any reel of cable that you can buy or carry (prob up to 1000m) cable is certainly the safest way of getting signal from place to place. The issue with wireless is that the conditions when you do tests may be fine but when the seats are full of excited people standing and waving about the local RF absorbtion will have just increase greatly and your system may fall over as wireless is lost.

[ingeborgdot]

Well, I guess I need to start looking into how to get cable down to the field.

[csg]

we regularly get up to 500M line of sight range from our 500 series Senny G3 systems fed from Lintec Yagi. 500M is also easily obtainable from good quality old VHF kit like Micron which regularly pop up on ebay for peanuts.

 

Generally with getting good range, you want lower frequencies, correct tuned directional antenna and correctly spaced antenna ( to make maximum use of the diversity systems null point avoidance). For this avoid any Digital systems that work in the GHz band.

 

I would have no hesitation in reliably getting 120M / 400 foot from a second hand 100 series senny G2 or G3 kit operating in the VHF or lower UHF providing you are in reasonably open conditions. The same will hold true for lectrosonics / vega / shure rigs that are probably more common your side of the pond.

 

You also have the advantage of slightly higher power limits on HH transmitters too...

[Bobbsy]

For you budget, afraid so.

 

If you look at how this sort of thing is done on television, you'll notice that they don't rely on the basic radio microphone. Rather, the signal from the reporter's mic is relayed the short distance to a much higher powered (and almost certainly licenced) transmitter. Sometimes this is a large "walkie talkie" size pack worn on the reporter's belt or, more often, incorporated into the video feed from the camera. This, in turn, is received by a specialist antenna, often directional, receive antenna.

 

Seriously, a cable will be you best bet. If you run into problems with "the last few feed" perhaps you can look at putting a radio mic receiver at the end of the cable and using RF to get from the interview point to there--I know they can get fussy about a cable snaking along where players and coaches may be walking.

 

However, just to add to your problems, don't forget that you probably need two way communications so that you can be cued when to start your report! :)

[GaryNattrass]

I can concur that when I have done TV broadcasts we have a G3 on the camera and the presenter within a few feet of it most of the time, the camera will be cabled or on a gigawave diversity radio link system

[ingeborgdot]

I don't know why I didn't think of this before. I will have a camera on the sideline with the reporter. The camera will have XLR inputs for sound. I am running the video up through a Balun that includes sound. Muxlabs 500053 to a 500052-Pro-BNC Balun. What if I would get a wireless setup and hook it up to the camera which will only be several feet away from the talent. It would then run into the camera, into the balun, through the cat 6 cable and upstairs. Then I would take the sound from the Balun and into the mixer. Anyone care to comment?

[paulears]

I would have no hesitation in reliably getting 120M / 400 foot from a second hand 100 series senny G2 or G3 kit operating in the VHF or lower UHF providing you are in reasonably open conditions. The same will hold true for lectrosonics / vega / shure rigs that are probably more common your side of the pond.

 

They don't do G2 or G3 in VHF versions, and 120m/400 ft seems very risky as a reliable link, and my own experience suggests this may not be repeatable at different locations. With aerials with gain at one end, the system may have spare capacity for the link to be solid.

 

120m at channel 38, for example with dipoles at both end has a path loss of about 70dB in free space. adding a bit of gain at one end helps. I can't find the receiver sensitivity for G3's, but using Shure's -105dBm figure, with a bit of gain (3dB?) in the aerial system the VHF one looks less risky, and has better margin in the link budget to cope with any additional losses over UHF. If you use UHF ch 38 with a transmitter power of 30mW, for example, and 3dB of gain at the receiver - the Shure receiver will have enough signal at 120m distance - 127dB being the figure the path loss needs to be to drop below what the receiver needs for a fully quieting signal. On paper, the path should be viable, but these calculations are based on free space, and as one end is going to be low down There are lots of compensation adjustments to distance in urban and built up spaces, and they're pretty severe - often dividing a calculated range by ten, or even a hundred in some cases. While it seems plenty of extra path loss could be coped with - 50dB's worth is 'spare', this is easily eaten up once aerials move out of 'free space'.

 

So the physics says 120m might work, if all things are good. Funny how we can get a phut walking across an open stage!

 

The maths comes from this:

 

The received signal strength (link budget) is equal to R=Pt +Gtot –L

 

For a known receiver sensitivity value, the maximum path loss can be derived by L=Pt +Gtot –R

 

Pt = Transmitter power in dBm

Ag = Total antenna gain in dB

Cl = Total connection loss in dB

Gtot = (Ag - Cl) Total gain in dB

L = Transmission path loss in dB

R = Receiver sensitivity in dBm

[ingeborgdot]

What about my last comment. Does it make sense?

[paulears]

If you can get the receiver on the camera, problem solved. As long as the camera audio goes down the cable with the video - you've sussed it.

 

Neat idea, and probably we should all have realised there would be a local wired camera! I could have saved the brainpower on the maths!

[ingeborgdot]

Well, if I would have used my brain in the first place we wouldn't have had to go through this.

 

I do have a question though. When you say if you can get the receiver on the camera? Why would this matter? You are the expert here, I am the student, learning from you. I just need to understand what you mean. Thanks.

Recommended wireless mic system to make this work now?