paulears

the trouble here is that the land concerned has signs up saying things like 'Waveney district Council - no ball games" yet East Suffolk, who are the latest incarnation of Waveney say they don't own it and suffolk county Council do. they refute this, as Wveney have their signs up. Land registry jokingly suggested that if I fenced it off at my expense and nobody complained for a few years, it would become mine - and it's HUGE. I'm after them paying for the paintwork repair on my van when a tree fell on it. So there's no invoice, sadly. I like the idea of inheriting the land though.

I'm trying to take action against a council- but one is district and one is county, and both are blaming the other, so two months on, I'm getting nowhere. I can't even take them to court because you cannot name two different organisations. They share a building and for GDPR reasons will not even share my case, plus I cannot visit because "The have no customer facing portal" in the buiding, which actually means a reception desk and front door!

Just a heads up. Here's a close up of a NC3FXX female neutrik, in a sealed packet. I just bought 10 males and 10 females for £18. Didn't know Neutrik had a factory in Hong Kong. I just put one on and I cannot feel or see a difference to the ones I have been getting from CPC apart from the solder buckets are gold coloured, not the usual nickel type colour. the MXX types also have the gold coloured pins. I'm imagining many will be angered by these, and the other half interested to find the source so they can avoid them. I cannot tell which is which. Feel free to rant by PM and I can tell you where to send your angry comments. I've tried to break one and make it crackle or disconnect, and I can't. Probably best to view any cheap ones on Ebay with some scrutiny, once people find out about them.

Now that I use FreeAgent for my accounting, I'm made aware of far more things than my old system. one that's shocking me a little is how much outstanding money I always seem to be owed. FreeAgent matches the bank payments to invoices but shows me an outstanding balance in the corner and the amount is annoying me. I'm not earning huge amounts of money, but the balance continually owed rarely drops below many thousands. I'm guessing this has always been the case, but I'm now more aware of it. FreeAgent also tells me how many are over the 30 days, and again, far more are now later than that. Is this just my mix of clients, or are all us self-employed people facing increase amounts of money carried forward all the time?

If the law is set to one side for the acting/entertainments industry, then why are we endlessly bombarded with all this quota stuff? Auditions are horrible enough, but, most times, they cast the right people. I've often wondered why artistic decisions are 'interfered with'. If somebody goes for a job as a technical or crew member, my current reading is that nobody cares at all about any ethnicity, gender or even age - they just pick the person who will fit in and can do the job. The notion that I cannot pick Jane, the best fit for the job because I need a new Joe is gone. Maybe casting all male for historical accuracy is good and interesting, and maybe casting all females has a point? I just hadn't realised there was a legal cop out to enable us to be selective in this way.

Yes - I thought that. The people clearly should have had a training session thrown in with the commissioning. Trouble is, sometimes you end up with highly clever and complex systems and keen, but green people working them. Feedback is a good example of the level 1 issues - normally caused by poor operating. One I visited had the entire system set up so that you pushed the faders ALL to the fullest position and that's where they 'lived'. No concept that all those open mics would be a major issue. It seems wrong to have to ask on a forum. Me? I'd ask what the supplier is doing? I assume that if it's misbehaving you'd be on the phone to them first step?

Ironically, I'm using the cases from my old ones, and the contents are outlay in the skip. If you have a pair of working ones, you'll get a few pounds for them, but their value now is really tiny, unless an idiot buys them. I have a working pair of 250s left and I looked at a boom and thought I'd stick them up, then thought about what they'd add, and left them sitting on the floor. Sad, but they're now dinosaurs and just a problem waiting to happen if you trust them and use them.

I think you need to let us have a few details. Are we talking about a bodged up done on t cheap install, or a professionally installed expensive one? I'm assuming the cheap option as if it's a proper install the supplier would have provided commissioning and at least basic training. Trouble is church installs are getting so complex nowadays that they require trained ops to run them. Sadly, they are never one button and they work products, so ....... What does it do you don't want to happen? And What does it not do you need it to do? And of course What is it? Makes and models. We have loads of members who can help, and some could be local to you and then you could have a chat, but we do need some help. Crackles, hums, feedback, sound quality, radio mic issues, programming, etc etc. What kind of issues? Plus, of course budgets and things.

I’ve seen an ad for female actors for a tour. My understanding is that unless certain criteria are fulfilled this is not on? It’s one of those things where all the male parts are played by females.

When is the day too long? If you are an employee, then your hours will be human. When you are on a day rate, or fee for the job, end to end it's very much different. I have a rule that says if I cannot be home for midnight, then they pay for a hotel. great but I've broken this rule so many times recently because budgets are tight, nil hotels available, or unexpected late ends that I'm starting too worry. I cannot drive safely past midnight now unless I stop every twenty or so miles. luckily, we've discovered this short-term driver insurance that is cheap enough to use on my van. one of the others pays a few quid and drives. This was never possible before, but now this seems to work - but last week I got into bed at 3.30am, then was up at 7am to be at a different venue for 8am. I then worked through to around ten PM. I really can't do this now - just too old, but I have no real alternative, just how the diary works and frankly, the money is important. I just cannot do 15 hour days any longer. What gets me is the driving afterwards - this is where I worry. Being up and active is fine, but it makes me unsafe on the road.

Strobes look absolutely nothing like an explosion. you need pyros, or some time in your editor to create animations. The physics of the explosion are nothing like a lighting strike - which is the closest natural effect to a strobe discharge. In addition, explosions are a point source that expands rapidly, perhaps taking seconds to reach the edges of your video frame. A strobe lasts a very, very short time. I'm not sure what you mean by a 'white' explosion. strobe discharges can also be so short that the camera doesn't even see it, or worse, a portion of the screen does and the other doesn't;t giving a bright band of light!

those top boxes, for their spec (which seems to avoid using the RMS term) do seem to be able to go quite loud. What they sound like that loud, I have no idea. the subs worry me more - they go down 6Hz lower than the tops, so while having lots of forward power with the cardioid pattern, the actual air the 12" driver shift isn't that gut wobbling bass you might want for a soul weekend? Purely a guess, but I think I can predict the kind of sound you're going to get which will encourage stranger eq settings and a heavy fader hand which might make them all sound a bit harsh. At what volume point do these fairly compact speakers switch from high quality mode, to wedding DJ mode? I get the impression that you want one of us to say, ah - excellent system it will do fine, when for a soul weekend, it might be a system we would not have picked - all things being equal. This is why you're getting the hire something else posts. I'm not certain, but I'm sure we were in a theatre in Cornwall somewhere that had a QSC system with very similar tops and different conventional QSC subs. They sounded very nice on our 60s tribute, but for more contemporary music with deeper bass requirements I'd have hated it. My view is probably loud enough but the wrong choice for Soul Music. Moderation: I'll tidy this topic up and remove the duplicates and comments about duplicates

Just an update on the Chinese ones - somebody is selling them on Ebay for less than two hundred quid at the moment - which is frankly a great price. I've just 'rep-purposed' a Sennheiser rack - I found some original handhelds in my store and I already had a number of channel 69/70 receivers I didn't send back in the first buy-back - so I used the system I bought and have to say the results equal the ones I've had with big names on them at a tiny percentage of what they cost. It came in a nice Ali case, two log-periodic antennas with stand adapters. 8 BNC-BNCs for feeding the receivers, plus some BNC/TNC adaptors if your receivers have TNC - two shortish BNC-BNC for the antennas - 2m ish? and a decent in-line PSU, with IEC mains input. Wide band enough for channel 38 and channel 70. I have to say I won't hesitate buying another. Price wise - most of the usual suppliers with the VAT/Duty/delivery charges work out at around the UK £250 mark, but the fella on Ebay is doing them for much less - no idea how! they ship from Singapore oddly, which also means a slightly longer delivery, and in my case, a wait of a week with customs. Worth getting one if you have multiple systems.

Does strike me that if you sealed the mouthpiece up, you could drill and escape hole and not inhale anything? So you could use a real one safely?

They sell these in America - just propellant - probably available here tooplacebo inhaler

The trouble with many of these systems is the power handling, if you delve into the specs. 250-300W RMS into 8 or 10" speakers seems common, and I've noticed that people are starting to buy 4 tops and a couple of subs, leaving 600W max per side for the paperwork 'max'. If these weren't line arrays, but ordinary boxes everyone would be saying they're too low powered. 600W is not exactly huge amounts of end volume , and almost certainly near this point they're going to sound rough. I did see Bishopsound's advert about Glastonbury, then noticed it wasn't a live stage, but a stage run by DJs. Not surprised they got fried, as we've all seen dance music kills speakers of all kinds of quality brands when Watts is more important than quality. Our band have had all kinds of line arrays supplied - and few of them have enough boxes to even be considered line arrays - but two 8 x 8/10" drivers on a stick and some subs isn't really a replacement for a multi box conventional PA, but is being sold and packaged as if it is. The Bishopsound Chinese package is typical. two grand for four 600wRMS boxes - so at least a bit louder. Their other boxes handle 1kW for half the price, so the line array, for an even match should be 4 boxes a side at 4 times the price. At this price range, supplying a system that is quieter almost guarantees the user will wreck it - like back in the Bose 802 days. as each one pops, the user upped the fader making more pop, until there were none left.

the first thing I'd do is stick a meter onto them - case to real ground, case to neutral at the very least. Seeing anything gets them taken out of service - at that point you decide to have a look yourself, or pay the bill and lose the time. If the case is live then usually it's a very simple fault to find and fix. If you're not comfortable, then ask an electrician. Despite many domestic electricians being hopeless with theatre/events stuff, they should be able to find a fault like this and when fixed, test it, and give you a sticker and a bit of paper to keep others happy.

I'd avoid digital conversions like the plague - analogue SD is immediate, simple and reliable. Nothing worse than a delayed conductor monitor.

I've always been slightly uncomfortable with questions like these from students. nothing to do with the student asking the question, but with the competency of their teachers who surely should have sorted this out on first mention. I remember these kinds of questions always coming up and the staff would listen, then advise, guide or just laugh hysterically. I get the feeling that some of the teaching is quite wrong, or misguided - especially when students understandably get convinced that things are 'illegal'. The reality is that so many things just aren't illegal at all, and some perhaps even should be. We all have the risk assessment requirement, and over the years, I'm very comfy with them when they are decent and well thought through, and yet I get very angry with the bad ones. The senior Police Officer at Hillsborough is in the news again today, and is going to be re-tried. Why we don't teach this kind of stuff in education I don't know. Being able to really consider a potential risk should be part of the courses, but it just gets warped with the usual H&S mumbo jumbo into something comical in many cases. Every day, thousands of people throw lighted matches down. On my pier, almost each week there will be one small outbreak of fire due to it. In paperwork terms what would that be for the 'likely to happen' box? Probably an absolute 100% certainty that fire will break out. Knowing this you put control measures into place. If we assume the throw away match is in a school/college production, then any competent person in charge could simply make sure sand, water, extinguishers or other solutions are present with people responsible enough too be tasked to control this scene. Like Hillsborough, the person in charge needs the broad enough shoulders to carry out their job, and take the blame. I suspect I would have got a spare fire extinguisher and a bucket of sand and given one of the students the role of fire warden. I would have signed the risk assessment, and made sure I monitored it. Why do modern teachers leave it to students, or just say no because of H&S? in this case, we have the student trying to make decisions that really should be made by somebody on staff.

I suspect that as the HMRC are going through the various industries bit by bit (and have made my camerawork for the BBC a virtual impossibility now as I cannot meet the requirements) eventually they will go after live events and theatre. Realistically, we're all told what time to start and finish. We often get branded clothing to wear, which sounds suspiciously like a uniform to outsiders. Our normal practice of being told to do things by the people running the shows would be very difficult to argue as us working independently even though we think it is. Somebody is calling the show - as in to an outsider, managing or supervising. We get breaks at set time, if we miss a break we might get an extra payment. How would we argue we are independent. We cannot substitute without it being sanctioned because the replacement would be hard pushed to function. All this stuff screams to HMRC that we are employees. I have no idea if it helps, but I have never done an invoice for years that does not have a list of supplied equipment itemised on it - even if these things are at £0.00. My clients NEVER get just me, they get things too, and I hope this history will help in the future.

I made one - commoned them up with two 22Ohm resistors providing some isolation. Kenwood radios, Tecpro comms. Volume controls needed to be balanced carefully. The only thing is that the Kenwood radios have very non-flattering audio compared to the Tecpro. So on the plus side - very easy to tell which is which, but the volume on the kenwoods needs to be watched, because a loud SCHHHHHHHWPPPP noise when the squelch opens on a weak signal is painful! I used a coke bottle cap, drilled 3 holes, stuffed the bits in and filled with ordinary epoxy. Used a 3.5mm socket on the first version and it kept falling out. V2 was with a cheap pair of in-ears and I cut the plug off.

I was confused at first by the notion these weren't bright enough, then you mentioned 20m throw to the stage - that's a huge distance and at that distance I can't see anything being that much use because of the travel and the beam spread. Surely you want something with a lens out front - wash lights from front of house positions have never been very useful. There are a few RGBW fixtures that have ordinary lens tubes, but is this what you have in mind? I assume a new bar in a sensible place is out of the question?

This is rather an ancient topic, and so much has become flaky. Some theatre still have very old and complete licences with many layers of detail, and others have become diluted when attached to the premises licence. As the licence for each venue must be shown to the public, you should be able to read it. My experience from travelling around is that the big regional theatres have carried on the tradition for showing the iron, even when there is actually no legal requirement to do so. I presume you went to a show, and they didn't do it - and this is what interests you? As the drive for 'correct operation' is often driven by the insurance companies, it would be strange to stop a process that doesn't really cause any grief. Add to this the fact that dropping the iron at the interval is a great way to do repairs and make noise on stage without annoying the audience and you can see why many drop the iron automatically. Sometimes, the decision to drop the iron or not is taken by the person in charge on practical grounds. As in my venue, showing the iron has not been a requirement for years, if somebody wishes to put a loudspeaker stack blocking the iron track, I usually go with it with few fears, but equally, the risk assessments of a show with fire eaters, for example mean blocking the iron track would be simply foolish. Why not just wander around and find their premises licence and take a sneaky photo of it?

I've ordered a similar product from China with a couple of log periodic antennas. I'll let you know how well it solves my problem when it arrives.the Chinese suppliers have a few very similar products I note.

Tried ages to find this topic - and it doesn't appear in search results and it doesn't appear if you search a members posts who have contributed - how strange? I've been at a big band week at a big holiday centre - I couldn't help thinking of this topic when I saw the five trumpets sitting in the tier behind the trombones, with their bells maybe a foot from the trombonists ears? not a one nighter either, the same band for three nights doing 2 x 60 minute sets. none, as far as I could see wore protection, and from where I was, it was pretty loud and that was probably 6-7m away. Protection seems to have not hit the big bands yet it seems. The 18 of last night has become 22 tonight.