paulears

A day or two can make the prices seem random. Your bank might also charge you currency conversion fees. Pretty much though if AliExpress show an order confirmation in your account in pounds this is what comes out of your account if it’s in dollars you wont know till you see the debit. Many people choose to use credit cards or PayPal and their charges often find their way into the pricing at some point. You can even find the customs declarations a bit random too. This is because many of these small businesses use another business to wrap, post and international paperwork. Value, might be what you paid or a real or imaginary cost price value. Vat if it is levied by customs or UPS or FedEx will be based on the sticker value. AliExpress bombard you with updates. Most unimportant but like one I’ve been waiting for, the dreaded customs delay notification. Your package was selected for proper inspection. It will be opened and this is where folk who import counterfeit products lose them. A Gibson branded guitar will result in you receiving a seizure notice. A fender, probably not. Some brands are on a hot list. The customs folk look for key brands. Lesser known products might be unknown and get through. Plug together bricks are fine. Lego branding is not. If they are seized tough. You can appeal if you wish. The problem with customs inspection selection is time for me. Often three weeks as they’re clearly not overstuffed.

How big is the camera? 11ft ceiling height means you simply use threaded rod from screw fix, maybe two lengths together and mount the camera to that - the power and video cable probably being the same thickness as the rod. A downward angle also means that you tend to get a more flattering angle on groups of people. I've never found video from a follow spot box that weird. Steep angles - say tilting down over 30 degrees from horizontal look a bit birds eye ish. A bit og graph paper and protractor should work to check maximum distance/minimum distance too.

Treat them like adults, but don't get angry when they behave like kids. Some will, some won't. Do a personal assessment of those who will be reliable and support you and which will be liabilities. Some may have volunteered, many won't have - and you can discover the old rule - can you sing, dance, act, learn lines, be reliable? If not, in the crew you go.

That's exactly why you must buy in bigger batches - they won't even remember what you had 6 months previously as they're standard parts that suddenly become unavailable, and then they redesign and start again. Things with gobos are a real pain. They don't keep the gobos the same, or put them in the same order - or even the right way around! Things like focus servos often get swapped and work backwards so focus is near far rather than far near. Zooms too. Always a pain.

Homework's probably had to be handed in, so that'll be a pass then.

Why not make the TV real and play some video - modern screens can be very bright, even if they face away from the audience? If you use modern leds, flickers can be much mor realistic than tungsten ever was. Most desks probably have built in effects that could do a fast LED random flicker effect?

Aliexpress is the most variable, and often difference are due to pound vs dollar transactions. The seller is working in dollars, and the price you buy at gets modified by a pound to dollar conversion fee. Sometimes you will only see pounds, but that can be aliexpress displaying the converted amount. My accounts are done by freeagent which reconciles my bank tranactions and frequently it has the invoice total entered by me but the eventual debit to the bank account is for a different amount. I tried complaining to the seller when it first happened but they are clueless - they don't know how we actually pay. Aliexpress run escrow for untested sellers so they've not even had the money till you confrim delivery or a date passes. It's actually OK once you get used to it.

The VAT thing does cause some confusion, but in practice the things that happen are fairly consitent. If the value of the goods is under £135 then VAT at 20% should be added via the supplier, and is pretty standard on aliexpress. Aliexpress will add the 20% UK VAT to the checkout. The supplier cannot provide you with paperwork, but you can get an Aliexpress invoice from them that will show a UK VAT number. HMRC instructed them to do this, folloing brexit. If you have an old account with Alibaba, the more business oriented side of the company, and have lodged your VAT number with them, then usually goods are invoiced net of VAT. If the goods are sent via air freight, then my experience is that 25% will have incomplete paperwork and UPS/Fedex or whoever deliver the package here - including Parcelforce, will add the VAT at 20% they paid on your behalf, plus a handling fee of between 12 and 15 pounds. On payment of this,they deliver = although Parcelforce often forget and deliver the item, only to ask a few weeks later for the payment. If the goods are delivered with no VAT, if you are VAT registered, then the correct system for you to use is where you aacount for the VAT unpaid immediately in your accounts and then of course, they cancel out - leaving a net £0 balance. However, depending on dates, you could end up paying it and having to wait for the next quarter for the effective refund. Other Chinese suppliers may invoice directly, rather than through Aliexpress or Alibaba, and it's 50/50 on VAT not being charged. It's common to have to pay the freight and handling, then of course you recover the VAT, but lose the handling. On the subject of approvals for lighting - forget it. even where it seems there is a valid EU/UK approval, it's invalidated by the construction method. The power supply, for example. It may well have a real and verifiable approval, but it will be inside a casing with different optics, electrical componentsand mechanical components. The approved power supply not be an approval for the whole thing. As the actual light you buy is effectievly a customised item, there cannot be an approval that is of any use. Therefore you have a problem, or number of problems. If you buy them for your own use, or for your small hire business, then public and product liability insurance would be the way to go forward. They usually have a requirement that the equipment was safe - so the idea for your own electrical safety test is a sensible step. Accepting any approval paperwork is utterly pointless. You need to determine if you can use the equipment safely. Then you take the responsibility. If you are self-employed, then as a sole trader, it really is on your head. The subject of copyright doesn't really impact with most chinese lighting equipment because as far as I am aware, they are not counterfeiting specific systems or even copying things like attribute distribution. Consider the original bee-eye designs that are rights protected. The clever optics, the colimation tubes, all that stuff - the Chinese bee-eyes simply have a non-circular lense that rotates and passes in front of a multicolour LED. There is no attempt to sharpen the beam or even control it, and the effects these produce are very different. One fixture might them add the front rotating unit to a zoom servo mount. As far as I can tell, just pretty stock, bolt together modules. Brands of course are simply made up, as are model numbers. If you buy rom china, then I would never dream of returning any product that cost me less than £100 - it's just not economic. You factor this in. The upshot is that it is ALWAYS a gamble, even with my established supplier. I have £500 of radios I cannot sell, because they never produced the software I need to program them. One copyright feature that does happen is when a Chinese company have an OEM contract with a UK brand, and they make them sometimes publicaly, sometimes in secret. Around 5 years later, the contract expires and they will sell whatever complete units they have assembled from the bits they have. The may well carry a real brand. this is tricky. Technically, it's not a counterfeit, it's a grey import. unapproved, and unsupported by the UK brand. This is a very strange area. Serial number checks will show it is not 'genuine', as on the UK importers serial list. One firm in the UK tell some of my customers their product is not real, or is a counterfeit, but they're not. Selling these I find very difficult - people could get a great price, but it always comes and bites back. I rarely do it apart from a few customers who know the system. So - will your chinese purchase cost more by the time it gets to you? Yes, probably it will. 20% plus fifteen quid is a good guide. If you don't get this charged, it's a bonus.

I've had people provide their phone, but not their password - saying I just have to keep tapping it, and even one who could not make the tracks play. "Is it on the school server?" - yes. "er, you're not in school any more?"

On the whole, my Chinese experience is now long, and very much positive. I do have a few Alibaba contacts where I don't use their system as my initial trust was fine and there are cost benefits. The only downside of doing direct payments outside the Alibaba system, apart from the money security is that their rules mean they WILL declare the costs accurately and of course VAT will be charged UK end. This is a minor inconvenience as I'm registered so the input tax cancels out, but the people who deliver it all charge for paying the VAT on my behalf - on a grand or two, £15 charges is OK - but not on daft things like parts or batteries. Aliexpress, that anyone can use is quite trouble free, and the only disputes have been the 'absolute bargains'. Since covid - I've moved into marine band radios, and quite often I get offered models I keep in stock at silly prices from 'companies' with no previous sales. They are such bargains, I buy them! Occasionally I get the goods and they're just a few extra at increased margin, but usually they don't turn up. The trick is they post something and the tracking shows it delivered, back to their Chinese address. I think they bank on people not noticing the delivery shown as next day, expecting the typical 2-4wk wait, so by the time you complain, they're gone! Aliexpress have refunded me on every one of these fake purchases, so it's just annoying, but there is the chance of a bargain - it does happen. Some of the lights have been really good - the beam style bee-eye designs can do an awful lot - washes beams effects and the 90W things with a couple of gobo wheels have been pretty solid. The cost now of proper European brands is out of my reach because I need maybe 6-12 as an order. For fifteen hundred pounds you can produce some really nice stuff, and if you use them yourself, you tend to take more care of them. I've just been ordering replacement lamps for some Vipers. I know a cheap Chinese LED fixture is NOT a viper, but for the price of a lamp, I can buy a fixture that will last longer than that lamp! Lots of people are scared or just reluctant to buy direct from China, but if you do your homework you can get some really nice stuff nowadays. Reliability seems pretty good. I also keep an eye out for counterfeit items. If they're modestly priced, I buy them and compare them with genuine products I have. A few are truly dire, but lots I need to take home from the office because they're so good, if I got them mixed up, I would not be able to tell. I know the view of BR members on counterfeits, so I will not make the mistake of promoting any of these, but one thing has emerged from my radio sales experience. Clearly many products sold at premium prices here are indeed made in China, yet carry Made in Japan (or other territory) labels. One brand I cannot get a dealership for, but can buy from them as an agent, is fiercely protective. The ones I bring in from Germany are here, grey imports, and customers warned about the dangers by the UK franchisee. However, they are actually made by a brand I buy large amounts from. I got one in from a customer and was amazed that I had this product sitting on the shelf. Same unusual programming port, same charger, identical software, bar the branding. The UK product had a new splash screen with their brand name, but with this unticked in the software, MY brand re-appeared. The colour was black, not dark grey. I'm left with the firm opinion that they are made in China, and simply programmed in Japan. That sucks. I've discovered the same thing with another big American radio brand, and two other 'Japanese' brands. The common theme seems to be five years from discontinuation of a model. At that point, I get offered stock. Happened numerous times now. I have discovered that Sony and Panasonic have a common microphone used on their broadcast cameras. An OEM product made of course in China. From time to time the counterfeits are clearly simply pretending to be something they are not. In the video I mentioned about the language barrier. I got offered some microphones for Icom radios. I needed some mics for my Kenwood hire stock, so I asked a question. Me-Can you supply these for Kenwood? Them-You want for Kenwood? Me-Yes - must be for Kenwood? Them-OK we can do I ordered ten. This is what arrived.

I thought I'd pop this video up as some people might find it interesting - should you buy Chinese lights, and how exactly do they produce them. Maybe something in it will be useful?https://youtu.be/Or_DiI45Mss

I mentioned I was doing risk assessments - one made me think a bit. It was talking about practicals, in our case mock candles, run off dimmers. The risk assessment details indicate that I have determined that the construction and state of repair were fully compliant with bla bla bla. I wasn't there and have no idea how they were constructed, but I have to be the one who states they are safe. Too often, the status of equipment, scenery, constructions and things like this do have to be considered. Georgia is starting out in this industry and could possibly be in the position of having to make these decisions, so I really understand the questions she asked. The snag (and it has been a recurring topic on here for at least 20 years) is that asking the question proves that your risk assessment and conclusion could be troublesome if something happens. I know I bang on about Judge Judy, but she uses her logic perfectly on the TV show. How can you prove competence? Difficult. However, you can prove you are not competent by simply asking. Competence to do the risk assessment must be an internal thing. I'm ancient now but constantly add to my collection of knowledge. Whenever I have to make decisions, they are based on history mostly, rarely the internet. In panto rehearsals, I have two big thick crash mats. With both, one routine is safe, with a big margin of over-the-topness. I am asked if we can do it with one. No rules on this, so I look at them and start to think one is fine, then I notice what the routine is actually doing, so I'm thinking two really is necessary. Then I note the sight lines compromise the routine, so I figure the only test will be me. Old, really bad back and over-weight compared to the turns. So I try it on me. The result makes me comfortable with my decision - one will be fine. If it comes to Judge Judy time - what will happen? I would explain what I had done, and how I tested it, and based on that test, determined the result, and I would stick to this decision. Form completed, my test and conclusion included in the notes box - move on. Health and Safety cannot be something a forum can decide for you. It's vital you rely on things you personally can justify.

If I may respond here with my moderator hat on (and ex-educator). The comments here really do spell out the situation. Safety is NEVER about working to the regulations. So there is no legal specification here, it is the result of your risk assessment. Speaking from experience, I had a student fall from a 1.2m decking and break his ankle. I had made the assumption that 1.2m being the height of a stage was perfectly safe with no rail, but these are students and safety is NOT inbuilt into them, and even experts do silly things. We have had some moderator reports on this and while our viewpoint may seem harsh and unhelpful, it probably helps prevent injury. Remember that falling off a Juliet balcony can put people in wheelchairs for life. It should always be remembered that you would also need to justify your actions in court. There could be examples where a 2m balcony could be deemed safe and a 1m one unsafe - the risk assessments are essential, and focus the mind. I've actually spent hours today doing dozens and my name and my ticks in boxes are what I would have to defend to a judge. Georgia isn't unique in wanting this info - but what she wants does not exist. If you even found one on the net, what would Judge Judy say when the person breaks their neck? One thing - we are a pedantic bunch and "get away with" is never recommended. In fact, sometimes we do fly close to the wind, when we understand and can control the processes - but we are never trying to get away with it. It does sound like what is being sought is a 'permission' to do something you want to do by following some kind of rule, and nowadays, there are rarely rules like this. Many have been removed to put the onus on the responsible person - Georgia simply has to look at the thing she wants to do and justify her decision. It cannot be sidestepped, which is probably the best policy. In context - we used to have a fire officer visit and try to set fire to the scenery. It failed if the theatre burnt down. Now, the fire service make the responsible person the one who decides if it is safe. The advice here, though perhaps not what the OP hoped for, is valid. Paul Mods

Indeed - I'm at this very moment trying to find a slot in production week for the dancers to record their tap routine. As the music for this is tracked, it's a sensible thing to do, because miking live tap rarely works very well now levels are higher, and the music more punchy. Even worse is when the choreographer does stuff upstage. Faffing around with miking feet might be sensible for a Michael Flatley number, but not ensemble - where in my case I've only got 8+2. Mr Hippy's solution is the only repeatable one nowadays.

I read the topic, looked down and took a picture. Not really very good, is it?

I'm struggling to picture this - you have a 10 x 4m presumably aluminium or steel staff tube grid, ground supported on 4 vertical staff poles? 200Kg as a total for the whole top grid seems quite low, considering the actual metalwork is probably heavier than that - so the 4 support tubes are carrying a permanent higher load. A typical 10m steel tube with 3 supports - 1 centre, one at each end flexes quite a bit with a mid span distributed load - but 200Kg for the 10m length would be pretty normal. If your grid is based on 1m 'squares' then that's 1000Kg for the five 10m lengths is it not?If you only have three longitudinal tubes up top then you have 600Kg? Purely from the ones I have seen, 4 verticals for 10m length is a bit of a stretch. My studio has smaller dimensions and the longest unsupported span is 6m between the vertical ground supports and my just over 100Kg weight deflects it around just under 10mm centre span - as in not uniformly distributed. I'm not clever enough to calculate the capabilities of your system, but a second opinion could be worthwhile. I work with a firm of engineers quite often, and up in a roof, I asked him one day what could I hang from a useful point in the roof steelwork. He looked, then said how much do you need? I asked for 300Kg - a random figure I thought sensible. Immediately he said no problem - did I want a piece of paper? I asked why he was able to say yes so quickly. He pointed to the junction of the steelwork - with bolts and said if you'd asked for 2 tonnes I'd have said yes just as quickly. The steelwork was even at first glance capable of much, much more. I don't even have the skill to roughly assess in this way. Seeing them in an aircraft hanger with scissor lift and water bags is an interesting thing to watch. Your 27Kg panel seems to be a non-issue - but is that 200Kg a total support capacity for the entire thing, or just on each length of tube?

The success of connecting 2 antennas together is only ever successful when the field strength in one location is very strong, allowing a feed through to a dead spot - as in a room with rebar in the walls. The success is usually totally reliant on signal strength - so if you have a base station antenna, with moderate output, you can point a distant yagi, with gain at it, then feed that to an omni antenna in the shielded space. If the idea is to 'collect' the RF from low power handhelds at a distance, you cannot use a directional antenna and will totally lose the gain they provide, which is critical. An omni in the 'good' space will capture tiny amounts of RF - passive systems are very lossy and inefficient.I suspect the measly few Watts of RF from handhelds all over the place will just not be enough to make the system work. For what it is worth, a decent second hand repeater need not cost thousands for an analogue system. Budget wise - maybe £700 for a rack mount repeater, a cheap cavity filter and antenna and some cable? maybe a couple of hundred quid. Put the antenna up high and check there is a path to the current dodgy area and everyone gets decent radio anywhere within range of the high up antenna. A licence will cost you £75. Without spending some money, the system will just be unreliable. You'd need reprogramming costs of course. Of course a simple test would prove it - you haven't said if it's UHF or VHF - but two dipoles and a bit of cable will prove very quickly if it works, or sadly, doesn't. The antennas just need to have your frequency centre of their band where they are the most efficient.

The video is 75 Ohm not 50 Ohm, but I thought I'd try one with a bit of RF and it is incredibly lossy, and a rotten VSWR - mine just flashes below 5:1 and it flashes. I suspect the transformer saturates - but the reality is that what you would be doing is just making a balun - unbalanced to balanced converter, but cat5/6 cable, even the screened stuff is just not designed as RF cable. 2.4GHz down Cat6 with a lossy balun at each end is just very inefficient. In fairness, VSWR isn't really a good way of measuring the efficiency of this system, and my analyser is only rated to 1.5GHz. I'd expect something like mismatched satellite cable to perform better than two baluns and cat 5/6, but I have a pile of these receivers in a rack on stage, and do miss the battery and RF indicators - but the sound position is 40m from the stage, and with wifi signals all over the place, the benefits of that location made it essential. Have you thought about a cheap wi-fi camera you could point at the receivers and watch it the other end on a phone or computer?

New bod. First day. Tribute band. Half an hour before doors, they ask for spots. New bod attached to old bod, sent up vertical ladder into roof space. One spot very wobbly. No point getting cross. Training was this does big and small, this does off to on. People will wander around. Don’t let them get dark. People will shout at you if you mess up. Bass guitar is big red thing, guitar is white smaller one. Left is right, right is left. what could possibly go wrong? it was the diagonal, white painted for visibility, girder running at head height across the route from stage to follow spot box that got her. Flat enough to leave no damage once you pick yourself up from the floor. A Scotty in Star Trek moment every suffers up there.

For one nighters, follow spots seem to be the one thing they are dumping, due to costs. The riders seem to say no follow spots, regularly. Even though ours are no charge items, they don’t get used because the shows don’t use them everywhere else. The few that are left mean that there’s little point investing in new follow spots, let alone clever ones. Last two years we have hired in, and for over half the period they remain unused. It also means new ops remain new, so when they’re put to the test, they fail embarrassingly. Even worse, so many shows seem to have been produced by musical theatre people who don’t like hard edges, and want them as soft as hell. I don’t think a remote operator with a camera, as long as it’s good enough to cheat the levels accurately, is a problem. However, like the American Air Force discovered in their multi million dollar refuelling aircraft, a poor video screen and something small and distant to aim at accurately doesn’t work well together.

Quite apt considering today's news, but I did a big event with members of the Royal Family present (Prince Philip and Some other senior more elderly Royals) There were only three of us, plus a bunch of Royal Marines. A very senior type - assistant Lord Lieutenant actually came and found us and took us to the catering. We got the same as the guests and an open bar. The Marines were legless by the time their fanfare was due and played it perfectly. However - this was just once in fifty years. The rest of the time, it's been none or rubbish. In my band years, if the food supplied was crap, then I'd just go off and find food locally - I don't drink, so food is more important.

I wonder how parents, who fund the school would feel with them, given the option to hire or buy would consider it money well spent. The trouble with these kinds of machines AT ALL PRICE LEVELS, is that they are NOT reliable, frequently clog, have a short shelf life for things like heaters and pumps when designs move on, and become the person who tries to repair thems hate. Most venues that use them have a graveyard of broken ones. Those most popular big stage low smoke machine (The Glaciator) was a real pain (and still is for those who have to fix the damn things). You will use them very rarely, because the teachers hate them, the caretaker/building supervisors hate them, and for school use are 100% a hire in product. If your school do not have a hire policy for performing arts/music, ask why? Hire companies exist because the people who need the products think it cost-effective, and in a few years if you work in the industry, you will hire too. In my view, and I am not a health and safety zealot, dry ice is a substance that should never leave a lab environment. It is dangerous, difficult to store, fails virtually every risk assessment unless amazing precuations are put in place, and it is NASTY stuff. Schools have some responsible mature students, but always some real idiots, and the protection of these fools and the people they put at risk is paramount. The snag here is that you are a student. Everything you do is somebody else's responsibility, and Japan has very strict laws on the protection of children. If your teacher is not an expert on smoke, haze, fluids, chemicals and the law, (as most simply cannot be), you are heading for danger. I wonder if the teachers has explored the conditions of your fire detection system. Smoke and haze requires very different smoke detectors, with the requirement to disable temporarily the fire alarm and evacuation system. Is the person in charge of safety going to be there every time you fill the place with smoke and the alarms start going off not just in your area, but everywhere doors and corridors lead to? Low smoke is really hard to make work. What is great at rhearsal fails miserably when the audience are in and you get temperature inversions from the body heat and all your low smoke heads for the audience, making the entire stage area vanish. Schools and smoke really mean finding a competent adult to manage it properly, and that might not be the teacher, and certainly not the students. Pulling a $1000 smoke machine out of the store after 3 months and turning it on can be dissapointing when it coughs, chugs and produces no smoke at all. Some poor devil has to strip it down clean it and hope the pump fires up. Refrigerent units need periodic regassing and hate being moved roughly. You might also have not noticed what aircon you have? Can you switch it off to get still air? Does it have smoke detection, will your smoke shut down the entire facility? These problems are not your call, and probably not even your teacher's. Students are responsibility-less. It is ALWAYS somebody else who takes the blame. Treat the people who are telling you no as correct - we have been doing this topic for 30 years. Nothing has changed apart from the students who got grumpy may now be the teachers saying no to others.

A friend of mine has it pretty well, I think. He’s in a chair, permanently. All he would like is to be able to go to the toilet in a pub or restaurant, and not have to phone in advance to check it’s possible. He doesn’t want to access areas only normally available by spiral staircases or ladders, he doesn’t want to go into orchestra pits or beer cellars. He doesn’t even mind rough ground as he has click on bigger wheels and gizmos for his chair as he like going to parks and national trust places. He doesn’t get cross when he cannot get to out of the way places. He especially hates going places where he needs others to help him in and out. If he cannot do it alone, he feels he’s a burden, so he doesn’t ever press his ‘rights’ but he just wants a wee.

The theatre emplpyees - as in those paid PAYE for at least three venues I am familiar with who take people on for between 6 and 12 weeks have never supplied their people with PPE of any kind. Boots, most already have. Headwear and hi viz from a heap at two places, the other have no safety equipment of any kind. Sometimes hired in kit will come with specific safety items such as gloves or perhaps eye protection. One venue would not even know they should supply it. I used to get cross, now, the self-employed contractors supply their own, and the PAYE folk who know, do the same. A few should know, as college should have covered it, but don't seem aware at all. Bar staff have hearing protection - theatre steal those. I'm afraid that now at my age, I worry about those I am responsible for. The rest have to manage.

Thanks for the update - I'll close it now as it's run to the end. Best wishes!