kerry davies

Mass spamming/phishing/PITA.

To drag this back toward Adam's intention can I remind people that self-employed people have a First Aid duty of care to themselves under the law, daft as it may sound. The scale of First Aid made available is determined, like everything else, by the Risk Assessment. Junior mentioned asking for the location of First Aid at new venues which is a pet moan of mine. When a venue welcomes the arrival of people who have never worked there before they have a duty to carry out an induction, however brief. Even if only to stop you peeing on the carpets or running away from fire exits in emergency the basics should be done OR ASKED FOR by the visiting worker. As for Adam's OP it lies in the grey areas not covered by Health and Safety At Work because the punters aren't working. Legally there is no obligation but of course morally there is. The problems arise when one considers indemnifying First Aiders when something they do goes wrong for the punter which then raises conflict with their civil duty of care to render First Aid. I have no immediate solution other than to thank Adam for raising the topic, several major UK companies have found themselves in the dilemma of trained staff failing to give First Aid to customers. There have been no court cases AFIK. I suspect it has to be tackled on a case by case basis by individual managements. HSE strongly recommends that cover for members of the general public ought to be considered when risk assessments are made. They do not mandate it.

Bit of a Catch 22. You could try increasingly warmer water and a nail brush or even a Karcher pressure wash but never a wire brush or you will wreck the surface. The green gunk may be Loctite, in which case good luck as they suggest acetone which will probably melt the surface. Once the surface has "gone" you have two choices really. Send them back to Prolyte for new Topline "lids" or paint them and use them only with Harlequin. I had some Alistage and kept it in good nick for years until it was loaned out and came back with surface chips. It was filled and painted immediately but just soaked up moisture in storage and blew the plywood. That went back for refurbishment but it wasn't cheap, hence the dancefloor suggestion.

Stair towers already exist and are not necessarily prohibitively expensive. There is also the possibility that a second tower with a bridge between the two provides the necessarily large working platform which also reduces the need to move it. Tallies cost up to £4K plus and the Monkey Tower is not cheap. For that sort of money you could cover the entire space in tower scaff so there is leeway. Did you guys know you can hire or buy individual treads to create your own staircases? If the original tower was purchased locally then a mooch around their warehouse is always worth it. I found some odd bits of kit in back of my old supplier that became a set I was praised for in The Stage. I didn't tell them it virtually designed itself, they thought it was "inspired".

Let's take a step back folks. Dan went and mentioned moving lights and rigging those without being able to haul via roof bars takes nearly all things like Zarges and Tallies out of the equation. It makes two persons and a moving head a just about impossible load for anything but a tower scaff. I know it is a small space, it is on the website, and I appreciate it is 99% empty black box but hanging moving lights and training young people sets all sorts of limits as to what is available. The Monkey Tower will take the weight but the demo should include hoisting it with the lights on board. I would still probably go for a wide tower scaff at the appropriate height for students because in teaching and examining one would spend longer than normal up there. Stability is all.

Though the arguments around fatigue with Tallies are blown away by AAP MI's which mandate two people push-pulling, one in the basket and one stood to one side supervising. Where they really fall apart though is on a stage with a set and you can't deploy all four outriggers fully. If you need four staff with at least two trained by AAP and wide open spaces to move a Tallie with someone aloft they lose the flexibility that made them useful alternatives to towers which cost a fraction of their price. I don't think that they have got anywhere near sorting out anything on raked stages and the MI's don't cover rakes and slopes.

I knew I had seen a topic on these, it was 2010. Simon Lewis's estates department had bought one so a PM to him might answer your query.

What Stuart said. It sounds as if he has the gains too high at the desk and is compensating at the speakers. It is a typically DJ fault, turning what he controls full up and swamping the PA. Bands do it too so not just DJ's. Do him (and you) a favour and find a soundman who can mentor him and perhaps show him how to set this system up. I am long retired and haven't been there for a while but whenever I fell over in The Uplands Tav I don't think I ever hit the floor before I bounced off a sound man.

Close but no cigar, Simon, you forget the Lord Frost "Command Paper" launched yesterday, rejected immediately by the EU and heralding a trade war according to the Independent. The NIP has 31 pages of annexes listing the EU law that Frost and Johnson agreed would apply in NI back in December and now they want to tear them all up. The faintest suspicion that a UK government is willing to start a trade war in the middle of a pandemic with the people who supply half our food is way beyond scary. I think that the VAT on an active speaker may soon be the least of your concerns.

The difficulty faced by managers on construction sites include the incredibly wide range of workers on them. When we were talking about the Safety Passport Scheme it was hard getting people to understand that we had as many graduates as numpties working on major events production and the numpties did not last beyond day one. That meant we would bore our client group to death with the standard building site two-day course. The demand for the scheme came from firms who saw a hundred or more guys turn up at a venue then spend half a day doing the in-house induction scheme .... over and over and over again at each different venue. The key to all these cards and tickets is not that those who hold them are thus competent but that they have had a certain curricular instruction. They cannot claim never to have been told. The site manager is the one responsible for ensuring competence and I took fork lift keys etc off more than one ticket holding hazard. The Sion Jenkins case reinforces this, the employer representative is responsible under Management of HASAW. Cards are a short-cut to assist managers but they can never be gospel and do not relieve those managers of responsibility.

Not being derogatory about 100V at all, I have probably installed more permanent 100V factory PAs and hotel room calls than anyone on here and we had a proper TOA set in the community festival kit. There is just such a thing as horses for courses and taking a basic 100V line system then adding lots of expensive bits to model the sound is over-egging the pudding. (Hows that for mixed metaphor?) The best glitch I ever had was a squiffy 84 year old woman eating cake and telling 15,000 punters just what she thought of the mayor who was busy opening the event using the main stage PA. They were both onstage and could not hear what was going on so when the guest of honour dashed on and wrestled the mic off her it was hilarious. I got to the amps just after Jeremy Beadle got to the mic. Last I heard was; "He's after my cake!"

Why worry about quality when using 100V? If quality is an issue then use different kit. Why add complexity and more layers of kit when they can't even use the switch on a cheap mic? If 100V is called for surely the less fancy kit in a field under the control of stark raving luniacs (the general public) the better? This is more or less the same as the topic on not overdriving dance school PA systems, give them something they can't break, a boombox in the dance school scenario, and they will still have a pretty good go at it. Keep It Simple.

I used to use the AKG P70/170's out of drum mic kits for all sorts of acoustic instruments with fair results live. They are about £60 or so, robust and handy but I don't know if they would be satisfactory mics for recording. Also PM sent.

Hi Daniel, welcome to BR. The bottom line here is that it appears that you are neither qualified nor experienced enough to do the job and so are almost certainly not insured either. Listen to the advice from others and tell them they need to give you some money to hire in experienced, insured help otherwise safety becomes an issue.

I think this may be a case of overthinking and adding complexity when an extra pair of willing hands may be the simple, safe solution when dealing with 100Kg weights.

Is more ground clearance not an option? We used rolling riser legs in this sort of dual purpose role.

If you are looking for just a basic understanding then Chris Higgs is your man. If you have heard the phrase "he wrote the book", well in entertainment rigging it refers to Chris.

I agree that the amendments to the Act make all sorts of things now non-licensable, Richard, but that never stopped an LO banning it. DCMS states that plays are regulated entertainment "broadly speaking" and that "broadly speaking" premises which show plays need a premises licence and that you must contact your local licensing authority to learn what they regard "broadly speaking" to mean. Even Gov.UK sets out conflicting advice that is not always compliant with the latest statutes. The amendments which you quote also state that circus is no longer a licensable activity but Tom has explained that made not a bladder of difference to the LO. I had plenty of examples where insane LO's demanded crazy things but they are not the only ones who can stop an event. The list of "statutory authorities" is almost double what it started out as.

Again welcome to BR Lee but do fill in your profile and location because it helps when people respond to know a bit about you and your background. Having said that you may already have guessed that I am just another random old pedant on the interwebby thingy so take this as intended, advice and nothing more. I am not exactly brain dead but as soon as one moves past simplistic loads I hand it over to a man who has spent five years studying the academic side and ten more working out how to apply it to the events business. It isn't just something you do a bit of digging on, for instance, a cousin of mine went to Uni in the 60's and proudly showed off his paper on "The Moment of Inertia of a Cornflake". That being an unloaded cornflake with one suspension point so I understood it. Multi-hang entertainment trussing, invented since the 60's, when loaded with some of those loads being dynamic, is a whole other galaxy to a simple cornflake. I daresay that there are plenty of BR members who could do the job but few enough who could teach others and even fewer who could do it via this forum. The NRC itself specifically does NOT assess either; Specification or design of rigging equipment or Structural design or engineering

Dominic, it is the entertainment which is regulated not the scale of that entertainment. A play with a paying audience of one is officially licensable. A decent explanation is HERE. The reason it is complex is that the 2003 Act was designed to be a "light touch" but was seen by some as taking away power from councillors on licensing committees. The government provided courses to train EHO's saw about 50 of the 550 Licensing Departments send anyone at all. This is why it is vital to get in touch with the relevant local Licensing Office(rs) in plenty of time. Their interpretation counts and, as Tom can confirm, they can vary wildly from one authority or one individual to the next.

When the 2003 Act was under consultation the intention was to simplify and standardise licensing with a "light touch" approach. EHO's and councillors on licensing committees saw it as a reduction in their authority, fought against it and we have the Jobsworth mess we have today. Government set up courses for the LO's and their staff and out of 550 authorities had fewer than 10% express an interest. That doesn't help the OP but the responses are about right, God in his heaven can order a re-opening for business but Councillor Bloggs might well have other ideas, best to ask him.

You can search for (oil) lamp glass replacements and hurricane tubes though they are a few quid. If it doesn't need to be heat proof then perspex tubes in a variety of diameters can be adapted for under £2.

You might just get away with a single fixed camera for games like football or hockey with fixed central goals but if you look at those linked videos the corners are missing. Wingers and rolling mauls need not apply. Even for schoolboy games in Wales they start off with a high angle halfway line tracking camera, a long lens one alongside it for close ups and two hand held touchline cameras. You will only succeed in frustrating the customer so I would show them those videos then ask if they are prepared to invest the money for such limited results.

1. Listen to Junior8, he has it spot on. 2. No matter what you do it will still go awry if done enough times. 3. Don't make a big thing out of it going wrong if it ever does. 4. Never ever forget that the audience does not have a script and won't know whether it is "right" or "wrong" so can it actually be right or wrong? In response to Sunray, a well-known panto had similar occur. Early in the run the SFX of Mr Toad driving into the canal was miscued and a smashing greenhouse effect was used which was such a hit with the kids they had to keep it in. They also had to keep in the original cast double-take to the audience.

Are you suggesting using real steam? I would have thought CO2 might be a safer option. I think you need to give a bit more of your current thinking so people know exactly what they are about to critique. (It may well be me being dim, happens a lot.)