sunray

If you are going to keep repeating it, I think we should point out that this statement is not really accurate, the reason they do not need a licence is they use the licence free shared 2.4GHz band, with all the potential pitfalls this has of shared RF frequencies. Yeah I keep seeing this comment and forgetting to respond! All wireless frequencies are "radio" frequencies. Whether the devices transmitting and receiving on a given frequency band are analog or digital is largely irrelevant to whether or not they need licensing. Radio mics using the 2.4ghz "wifi" band have their place, however they often don't co-exist in a friendly manner with nearby wifi networks. I've only handled 2.4GHz mics once and vowed never again. They were sat on a table at the back of the hall alongside Trantec S4.4 CH70.The Trantecs showed all 4 leds lit but the digitals seemed to drop out whenever they got to a critical bit. It didn't help having a hall full of 800 senior school students with Iphones trying to connect to them.

And I bet you kept adding more rather than starting again.I find it far too easy to start with a thought and get too blinkered to see an alternative. Hope it goes well.

It's very easy if you have a lot of height available.Fly the additional bar level from the flybar at one end of the additional bar, add an additional line to a fixed point in the tower. I'll try to invent some figures: length of drapes and height of border 4m distance between fly and additional bar 4m required lift 8m this means the additional bar can be flown in to floor level flown in to floor level with the whole of the drape on the floor. fixed line stops one end of additional bar dropping lower than 4m above stage.

Are you telling me that you've never had a wine and nipple party? You've never lived. Are you offering??? I'll bring the wine... any preference?

OOPSObviously finger problems at this end, but come to think of it they were usually fairly prominent on the lead actress chest and there have been some comments in the past by some of the older women... perhaps that's where it all started going wr(.)(.)ng. Oh yes you can...... it's called panto. Well Darlings latest update... 3 of us walked home after our social gathering on Friday, 2 are women well into their 70's, so I walked a different way than intended to see them home and there was some chat about the events which had unfolded. Apparently I made some comment about the affair being wrong, Maggie has just phoned to warn me to be careful as Mahgerie [correct spelling] has been seeing a married man she worked with since before she retired. And 2 of the others who always appear to be avoiding each other at meetings seem to find lots of jobs for each other... So it seems I'm starting so get the gossip now after only 5 years.

We've had a bit of a social gathering with wine and nipples and it seems the director and leading actress were having a ... lets say an adventure together, sadly our lead actors wife is the leading actress and their daughter is lead dancer directors wife is coreographer/prompt and owner of the dance group. All 5 have withdrawn from the show and pulled their assets. It's taken a week for this to be made public and despite the rest trying to work through the problems and reinstate it we've now decided it's too late to get it back on track in time for the narrow window for hall time.

I share your pain.

Yes very complex, not least due to the parrallax error created by the rear silvering of the mirrors. 'Portion' can be by brightness or by parts of the beam, depending on the beam type, state of focus [whether focussed on the ball or the final image position for example] and position of the light source. In the case of the additional lens in the Patt23 the basic beam had a vague focus at the position of the ball. I've been trying to come up with with a description of the beam and the best I can do is compare it with a blowtorch flame with the outer flame and the focussed blue inner, although it then expanded after the focal point. Where the centre part of the beam hit the balls mirrors the final image on the walls was a small version of the beam [a bright spot with a lighter halo]. But the outer edges of the balls reflections had almost no bright spot. Of course there were squares on the ceiling close to the ball as in the above pictures. In my Disco days I used a 500W slide projector [with a selection of slides] fitted with a 300mm camera lens which was quite successful but not really bright enough for anything beyond 15ft so it was generally used to project on the surface behind the DJ rather than the hall.

I have an ex BBC full size PC card which I believe was used as 4 stereo pairs in and out on a big D type [37 or 50 pin] if it's of use. Sadly no software/drivers with it but I dare say findable.

Basically the mirrors spots will be portions of the original light source. So as you say a point source narrow beam will give the best small spots if that is the effect you desire.Our school patt23's with the additional lens produced a small bright spot with a ring which faded away rather than stopped dead. Moving lights closer to the ball normally produces bigger reflected spots.

I've just remembered from my school days we had an additional lens which dropped into the colour frame [ or possibly the GoBo slot] in the patt 23 which gave a strange non-focusable spot. Our mirror ball was about 2 ft diameter and the light bars about 15ft away and the beam created a shadow of the ball with a haze around it. The centre of the beam on the ball was incedibly bright but the intensity faded rapidly by the edges of the ball. Very much like focussing the sun with a magnifying glass.

I was asking the same as David.

So the progress so far... 4 trees built on £10 skates from Lidl complete with a weight to improve stability, tree trunk and branches but only one decorated so far. Kitted with battery, GU10 at differing heights and a switch . 2 rehearsals had us changing the switch to a button and deciding to reduce the original 8 moving trees to 6 and 2 static. Looking very good and the routine works well. This afternoon came the announcement the show has been cancelled...

Unless you have a huge budget AND what you use them for has dramatically changed, why not keep & cherish them until you can no longer buy spare bulbs? By then it is just possible that there might be affordable LED equivalents with a lifetime of even a tiny fraction of that of a decent halogen Fresnel. We all talk about the availability of bulbs, what about gel? Until about 6 months ago it seemed the choice in gel always seemed to be getting bigger, Lee have discontinued one range, some colours in their standard range have been discontinued and my supplier says that some whilst on the Lee's list are not currently available until (if) they make some more. Obviously other ranges / suppliers are available but I can only see colour choice going down. Well that's just simple economics, if colour ABC123 nas not sold for a certain period of time, I wouldn't expect them to make anymore.

Are you making the frame alone or are you covering it?

Yes shiny side up, much noisier.

Totally correct, it took me a long time to realise it though. I made 2 cables a very long time ago, I'd like to say pre 1990 with 100 m of 25w 7/0.2mm cable and 4off 6 pin din plugs at each end. I didn't know what it was for when I made them but they came back occasionaly to have new plugs fitted.

As a little follow up to this I put in a system before Christmas for a U3A meeting with 8CH of mics, 4xCH70 S4.4 RX with fixed aerials approx 1/4wave & 4xCH38 S4.16 RX with standard detatchable 1/2wave rubber aerials, the 2 stacks of RX's were approx 20m from the performance area and all showed virtually a consistant 4 blobs of signal strength except the CH38 RX with CH69/70 aerials which showed 2 or 3 blobs of signal. I confess I was a little surprised it made susch a difference at that distance and even swapped aerials with another RX to make sure that was the cause.

I find that whenever I supply anything to Schools there is ALWAYS a request to remove discarded equipment in lieu of Weee requirements and to state is on the invoice/receipt, it's amazing how creative they can be and what they ask to be taken away. For a Dimmer pack I removed a smoothing iron, Burco urn, vacuum cleaner and 2 floor standing fans, all documented. With a new thermostat in the urn and a mains switch in Henry our local church found a home for both. The rest went straight for WEEE recylcing as they were well beyond help.

Yes hardboard is noisier than 3 or 4mm ply to walk on.

Totally my experience too, except I only have cheaper mics without the battery monitoring facilities, I start hearing when there's a problem and get a spare 'out there quick'. Likewise I think rechargeables are too much hassle now.

OK Thanks. I caught what he said about the code and assumed ... I have used a Showmaster in playback mode and thought it displays the chase step, it was a while ago to I may have remembered it wrong.

Hi Erik.I didn't realise it was your video, well done.On the Cobra I have to enter the 4 digit number to to program scenes, you intimate it is not required on the Showmaster. These are not 'difficult' and the manual is fairly easy to understand. In fact I find I do all the programming at home from a script rather than at the venue and it seems to work out OK. The issue, for want of a better word, is lack of practice due to me only using the desk ocassionaly. The Cobra doesn't have the same detail in the display either so there is no indication of step number which I find makes it easy to lose track of where we have got to, especially for editing. The irony is I was very close to purchasing the Showmaster but then the Cobra came up on Ebay for £55 and believing it was the identical product...

I don't know but now the question has been raised, I intend to change the battery before the next use and will try to look at the connector.

Again, it's nice to find someone who has the same thought process as myself.One of the Schools I do some work for purchased 12 Eurolite LED PAR64's summer of 2017 but being a School found the process of plugging 12 lamps into 10 sockets too difficult and 2 were hung on the same bar as the others and even linked in to the DMX but not powered. Come the end of year show 2019, 5 of the fittings had failed and simply plugging the 2 spares in revealed the difference was astounding both in colour and brightness.