Robin D

The school I volunteer at are dead set on buying a rack of 8 or so radio mics ahead of a show next month and have asked me for recommendations for model and potential suppliers. I've used various models of both Trantec and Sennheiser in the past but what is the current perceived wisdom, and who is likely to come up with the goods in the available time please? Particularly concerned about robustness and availability of spares. I've argued that hiring continues to be the better option but ..... :-( We are in East Suffolk.

Many thanks for the offer Tom, but it appears from other responses that it's not appropriate for tap.

Many thanks good people of Blue Room.Hardboard and tape it will be. I assume shiny side up?

it is a school show in 6 weeks time, and yes I'm aware of the politics, but as a volunteer, stay well clear. However, it's the kids that lose out if we can't find a way through and as I volunteer for them, rather than the staff, I would rather find a painless solution. Thanks for all the advice. ?

I have a school show in March where the director wants tap dancing. The floor is four year old planked wood or laminate that's recently been recoated. The school admin and caretaker do not want tap shoes on it. What options do we have with a budget of just over zilch please? Is Harlequin flooring the right stuff for tap? If so can we hire it and how do we lay it please? I can see a purchase price of about £35 per 1.6 sq metre. We would need about 40 linear metre?. Would laying a number of sheets of 6mm ply, or even hardboard suffice as an alternative? If so, what's the best way of laying them please. Or a cheap roll of lino perhaps? Thanks in anticipation for your knowledgeable input.

Good point Tim.?

There are I believe two questions here. Projection angle is the angle from which you project onto the screen. That can be anything that the projector will deal with and still provide a correctly proportioned image. Viewing angle is the view any particular audience member will get and every seat will have a different view. Your image needs to be far enough away and large enough to allow all four corner seats of the auditorium to view it. If a restricted view, you would need to sell seats based on that arrangement. Large auditoriums may use multiple screens to solve the viewing angle issues, but to be fair, its usually the width of the seating that creates the issue, rather than the height. In my experience. the worst view is often the extreme ends of the front row that have to look left or right at quite an angle, and often look up as well and are much nearer the screen. That can be quite uncomfortable. Hope I've correctly identified the real question you were asking.

Use NDFR Calico, flax, twill or similar. Sagging might be a visible issue though so you would need to be careful with lighting. You could consider using fire treated 3.6mm ply if t needs to be flat. Something like My link. Other brands and suppliers are available.

You may find a lump of foil lined board attached to earth on the loop side of the amps etc provides enough of a Faraday screen.

A question.. does it need to be an English banknote or just look like a note with a big value? Panto in the past typically use the Bank of Transylvania, Timbuktu or completely fictional name. No copyright on the £ symbol as used all over the world.

One at a school I volunteer at does that. Turn it off, unplug it and leave it overnight and there is a 50:50 chance it will start correctly next day! About as useful as a chocolate teapot if the power gets cut in a run in to a show day final rehearsal. Yep... been there. A student unplugged it from a multiblock to plug their phone in to charge it! :unsure: Fortunately I had my trusty Smartfade ML in the back of the car and was able to substitute albeit with programming changes up to the last minute and still a bit of busking! Not the best lighting, but I don't think most of the audience will have noticed!

If it didn't matter then, it will not now. Might conceivably become an issue if they decide to massively extend the system.

I know of two, both in schools, one of which was 26 years ago on a Furse hardwired system that was old then. The patch was lovely to use and easy to trace or untangle flying cables. Much easier than 5A or 15A.

Try Handysaw DS which is a particularly sensitive scene detector. Most video editor software has scene detection, some of which you can set the sensitivity of. It would give you a scene to play everytime there was a 'change' in the image, so you may find you already have something. I uses some old specialist software, plus Nero for quick stuff. Both allow you to set the sensitivity of the scene detection.

I had one only yesterday with :unsure: Another had a covering letter with the To: address as a completely different company and addressed to someone completely unknown in the company being applied to?