paulears

Two runs of that cable is 300 quid! You could get a decent multi for that and put the receivers where they should be.

I think the car is probably worth more than 1% Tom?

A lot of us have experience with the Twins FX creations. Always interesting and innovative.

You would need to do the current OFCOM test to ensure compliance - it would almost certainly determine the risk small and managed - but the onus is on the operator to ensure the exposure is safe. I stuck 50mW in transmitting 100% duty cycle at 850MHz and the result was 'no further assessment is required' - so that seems OK?

It is indeed advertising but it’s allowed if people ask a question. As most answers are older but say you can’t get them, this could be a useful source if you really need them?

First rule - do not talk to actors about bad things. As a Stage Manager (which is such a vague term it means little) just do your best. remember that in much of pro theatre and TV, the entire thing can be falling down around you, but if your bit is going well - the bad bits are SEP - somebody else's problem. Do your job as well as you can do it. You need to lose the 'feeling responsible' thing - you don't get paid to take on a producer, or director's responsibility. In fact, if the show gets terrible notices, it's still valid on a CV - just one of those Stage Management ticks in a box. I've done quite a few shows over the years that have been terribly produced - poor advertising, poor technical, poor performance and they're still CV fodder - IF - you actually collect shows. I wish I had. I never collected names, dates and programmes - I cannot remember hundreds I must have done, but were just not memorable. You sound very stressed about it. Don't be. You manage what you have got. If you think a project, ahead of start date, is clearly awful - you walk away, but pride wise - if you start, you see it through, warts and all. I worked on one show many times - a touring singer - always as far as I could see, paying people but the box office never being enough for my rough calculations on what everyone was paid. Too many performers, too many vehicles with set and kit and too many musicians to make it pay - then he er, got arrested and I think went to prison for certain activities - which he denied, but apparently the jury disbelieved. It's still a show you worked on, for the CV if you collect these things. As a Self-employed theatre and events person, most of your jobs come from your contacts. Nobody has ever asked for a list from me since 1994. Nowdays it's called networking, but that's where your name comes from. A friend of mine does sound - equipment and him as engineer. He has done this for some terrible band - truly dire. One off gigs that you know will never happen again. It doesn't hurt reputation - he holds no responsibility for performance quality. Maybe dark glasses and a disguise would help him not be seen cringing, but it's nothing to do with him. Why are you feeling guilty? It's a job. complete it, take the money and say no next time.

I guess we all have worked on bad shows at some time. My first professional show folded after 6 of it's 8 week run when the producer/director/top turn owed so much money, he did a runner. All that matters is the standard of what you did. If you did your best, then it goes on the CV as a show you Stage Managed. It's common for keen amateurs to start charging and put shows on that rely on the individuals so much. If you like, a show with beginners or the inexperienced being directed by somebody not up to it. However - this would have been one of those where your job as Stage Manager should have rung warning bells. You got a script, and the things you needed to do your role. Were they typical of a professional production? from what I gather the script was dire - nothing set, sound or lighting was properly planned - yet you took the job? An accident waiting to happen. Taking a job, because that is what it was, is a choice. You took it. The quality is NOT your problem and if the words are terrible, the sets badly created with poor sound and lights because there's no proper planning or design - you just manage the beast. You do the job. If people ask for money back, tht is NOT your problem. Be grateful you don't have to wear the bad costumes and speak terrible lines, and are hidden in the wings, unseen and walk away at the end with some money if you are lucky, put the notch on the CV and treat it as an experience to avoid again. Don't work withe the person again and move onto the next job. If you desert it before it folds - that's something the producer will use to deflect blame - so that is possibly risky. Wait for the thing to fold then go.

That Screwfix one won't work - it's line powered, so unless you can externally power it and then remove the line power before it gets to the radio receiver no good. However, decent passive splits with modest insertion loss work pretty well in practice because it's rarely signal level that is the issue, but the signal in the nulls - so two decent antennas with clear paths with different path lengths and sensible separation work rather well. I have two racks with Sennheiser DAs in one and two 4 way passive splitters (RF comms ones) in the other rack, and with side of stage antennas up and separated - at the desk, when you've done some patching - you can't ever tell that chX has to be the passive split and channel Y is obviously an amplified split.

I finally got in - but it looks like the current server is a migration of an old one - so looks like I changed host at some point in 2012. It will probably be on an old drive somewhere - but I'm not home till mid Jan. From memory, it only used 4 DMX channels and the manual was a pretty basic thing. I seriously doubt it would help you. What do you want to know?

If I can get into my server, I'll see if I can find it - I'm using a theatre network and lots of ftp links are disabled - I'll have a go. Paul

Yep, that's us. 72 channels down D54 still running fine. D54 could catch you out when you used miswired mic cables - that was always a head scratcher!

Connect just one antenna and see if the LED stays on the one with antenna selected. If it continues swapping, do you hear the switching between noise free and noisy signal from the antenna-less channel? I've got one that does this, and it seems to be a fault in the LED circuit as I've satisfied myself the actual RF switching os working properly and the display is all that is random.

A local engineering firm - the fabricator type will either have or being able to get this kind of thing- process machinery use this kind of thing motors with attached gearboxes.

Have you noticed that even the BBC now consider a 'prop' to mean 'not real'. Sort of as if it means pretend, or just looks like something. A prop can be a real thing, or a simulation - with props, as in property. It comes across that a prop will always be safe because it's a prop. Prop swords or knives might be plastic and the knives might have a spring loaded blade, but they could have a solid blade that hopefully is not sharp, but a prop knife could easily stab somebody, even if blunt. A real candle can be a prop and set things on fire and so on. The prop gun was real. No contradiction really. Years back when I did a little work with somebody who was an armourer, all the guns (semi-automatics) had chambers that were smaller than real ammunition and had a bore block that prevented a real shell bing chambered. I suppose with so many real guns in the US, they consider real weapons acceptable.

2m lengths fit in my van, 3m lengths don't. That's a good enough reason for me!

It’s very difficult to store pyro now, with MEQ making storage of a longer run quite difficult to manage. My explosives licence is tied in with the staged delivery and maximum storage limits, and its takes a lot of effort and monitoring, clearly NI has different rules on explosive material, but the licence and therefore responsibility is with me, and I get regular inspections and the Police Officer in charge of licensing is a great fella but takes his job extremely seriously, which I think is good. Deliveries from Le Maitre are very carefully staged for the Christmas period, but we do occasionally run out, when weather delays a ferry, or lorries get held up. We also cannot substitute, as the individual product reference numbers are on the licence, along with a description of what they do. I’ve done this for quite a while now and am completely out of touch with what the rest of the UK do, but I cannot help thinking that if the MEQ storage laws in Belfast are what is deemed ‘safe’, maybe that means that in England, Scotland and Wales, you’re all doing something more dangerous, but far less controlled?

I've got three pairs of 215s and a pair of 415s. I have custom earmoulds, on the MU scheme which are the most effective, but the expanding foam type - the ones where you squidge them, pop them in and they slowly seal are nearly as good, and the small amount of leakage, quite livable with. I'm on the second set of moulds - the first were made with my mouth closed, and as we sing in every song, this means head up - and when I open my mouth - my ears change shape and the seal breaks, so I had a second mould session done with my mouth open. These are perfect. The 415s, with their bass extension and double drivers seems sensible, and playing music through them, they are better sounding - BUT - and it's a decider for me, they make the bass end indistinct. I have a 5 string bass and if I play an Eb on the B string - if I miss, not looking at my left hand and accidentally play a D, I cannot hear it. Turning up the HF on that channel in the personal mixer to boost the harmonics helps, but tuning is easier on the 215s. I also always now choose transparent sheathing because sweat finds it's way in somehow, and you can see them getting greener, then buy new cables before they die. The black cables I used to use just died and cutting them open, you find the green. If you are really on a budget - I tried making some from the two part putty you buy on ebay. Two little balls of putty you mix in your hands, then split into two. You make a cone with it, and take your 215s, and wrap them in cling film. You stick it in your ear making sure it goes down the ear canal, then smooth the rest into your ear folds and then get somebody to press in the 215 into the soft putty properly seating it. don;t move for a couple of minutes and then pull it out. prise out the 215, discard the cling film and then drill a small hole down the sticky out bit that goes down your ear canal. I used the clean end of a biro ink tube to go through the hol, keeping it open, and used a tiny dab of CA glue to keep it in place, cutting it off flush. Then the same glue to keep the 215s in the mould. They are actually slightly softer than the proper moulds, and just as good at sealing - the downside. The only stuff I could find was blue. Oddly, nobody ever asked why I had these blue moulds. The pro moulds took over once I had them, but the blue DIY ones are still the spares in the case.

I've still got that 1971 catalogue with the greenish price list. Pretty much they were how you learned what things actually did, as books were very behind in the library - so I remember being quite scared when I jumped into Fred Bentham expecting him to be a friendly, affable fella and discovering a rather grumpy intolerant old grump. He didn't seem to like youngsters at all.

I rather liked the Mini 2 5a version. I was allowed time from school at 14 to spend time at the old Lowestoft Theatre Centre where I happily stayed gir many years till it morphed into the Seagull Theatre and lost it’s charm. The advisory drama fella for the county council was called Terry Deary, who went on to write some Horrible Histories. The Mini 2 was pretty reliable, all 18 channels of it, but the faders attracted dust, when I misunderstood Strands instructions about a smear of Vaseline to sort out stiff faders. They meant on the slide bar, not the track!

If the mic is a lav - when it starts to crack - pull the mic out. If that silence the cracks, the mic is duff - or the DC that supplies it is intermittent. I've had some turned on 24/7 for longer than 7 years - all perfectly fine.

Ah I assumed wrongly that the purple conduit now on every phone post would mean they were dumping comped completely not just the phone element! I get it now cheers!

I have got a little confused? I simply assumed at some point my suppliers, BT and Talktalk Business would tell me they have to install the fibre line, which already goes to the pole. My assumption was they’d give me a new box inside, with a small adaptor with an old fashioned master socket type outlet for my analogue devices? It appears I misunderstood? I’ve had nothing at all from either company, and due to a fault, TT only just installed a new cable to the premises. My alarm automatically switches to 4g when the phone line drops, or there’s a power cut.

My venue used to have huge gas heaters. The gas supply people capped them off because when we turned them on the seafront burger stalls lost their gas pressure which is dangerous, so the solution was to disconnect our 2.5” feed!

My new system for the summer can go very loud, and I had a choice of coverage - we started with it flown high, but struggled with the front, and low we struggled with the back - even though it has compensation on each cabinet for distance (it drops the HF in 3dB steps) In the end - with 1400 capacity and 36 rows on one level, we picked a line for the average audience number and that means that the mix position is just out of the main beam. Every visiting sound folk are shown this, and so few take any notice. The last one was excruciatingly loud - lots of complaints at the interval and from row W forwards towards the stage it was just painful. Why they needed to be that loud really is beyond me. However - I know now how loud the system is capable of without trouble - which makes me wonder why one show a few weeks before blew one of the sub drivers. I was on stage, so didn't notice but the next show soundcheck revealed the problem. At that point, one of my lot remembered seeing one of their people coming out of the covered pit. What's in there? The amp rack! I suspect that some front of house guys really have got hearing damage. However - I think others really believe certain music has to be that loud, or its not a good show. As our get-in box push is VERY long, so many visiting crews leave the PA on the truck and use ours. Last year - we allowed them access to our amp rack ins, this year they get two channels on our desk, next to our lighting guy who now gets to pull their levels if they start to take the P. Some complain - next visit, they get the box push.

I don't know - for somebody my age to NOT have the minibus category is rare - but lost my licence in the late 90s for a year for an unfixed medical condition. After a year, they gave it me back - minus the minibus category, so you can lose the 'grandfather' rights. I was allowed to keep the motorbike category that I passed in 1977, on a 125cc - so could legally buy and insure a supervise. That has to be madness!