Altair wireless comms

[cedd]

Hi all

I've spent a good amount of time looking around various wireless comms systems. The situation is that my regular amateur society are getting fed up of wired comms. Our wings are very small and crowded, and in the current show we've got motorbikes, a barn and lots of children running everywhere (It's Whistle Down The Wind by the way...). Wireless comms would be a real godsend.

 

We've looked in to hiring them, but we'd need to do a 2 week hire and the prices for a 4 beltpack system start looking quite high pretty quickly. List prices on websites for hire look to be around the £500 per week mark. Clearly there might be space for some haggling there, especially if we're going to be a regular customer. Nevertheless we've always taken the view that if something can pay for itself in a few years, it's worth buying. More to the point, I've started wondering if these might be something I want to add to my own hire stock anyway and maybe if I can agree a reduced amount for hire to the society, it might work out in everyone's favour, especially as I think there are others locally who might want them too.

 

I've done a bit of digging about Altair systems, as they seem to be the most affordable. They're quite attractive because they also occupy 1.9GHz not 2.4GHz, which we've pretty much filled with radio mics and show control wifi. Whilst the rep assured me it'd be ok, I'm not too sure I want to risk show comms in an already busy area of spectrum.

 

The system I've been looking at includes the basic beltpacks, which have 4 pin mini XLR's on them rather than nice chunky 4 pin regular XLR's. They do a more robust beltpack, but I don't think the budget will stretch that far. How have people got on with these connectors?

To me the beltpacks look a little fiddly. I'd want to see a larger mic button as it seems to be hidden among all the others. As a Metro/Stonewood/Granite/Whatever user normally I'm quite used to being able to reach for my beltpack in the dark and finding the mic switch by touch.

 

Another thread on here had somebody commenting that Altair systems maybe weren't that reliable. Does anybody have any views on that front at all?

 

The other option is the HME system, which is a very different beast. Firstly it allows more than 4 beltpacks to be connected (but with a limitation on the number of open mics), it's also 2.4GHz which isn't a huge selling point for me, the betpacks look much more robust and come with removeable rechargeable batteries. A slight downer is that the base station isn't a wired comms master station as well. Ours is dying and we're still looking to interface with the theatre's wired comms, so the altair ticks a few boxes there.

 

I'm looking at an ex rental Altair system at the minute and trying to weigh up if it's a good investment for me to make. I've needed my own comms system for a while now and can do wireless for not much more money than a wired system if I go for this ex rental one. Clearly though if it's not going to behave, or is going to fail in time, it's not a sensible investment to make. I'm pretty sure I have a good base of people who'd be interested in hiring it though. The bigger picture is that if I don't, my society may be looking to invest in a system at some point, so the advice will be useful anyway.

 

Cheers

Chris

[J Pearce]

A cheaper option is available if you can bear half duplex.

Hook a PMR base station into the tecpro comms using an AD913 4 wire interface.

Use one frequency to transmit from base station to the handsets, and another for all handsets to transmit back to the base station.

It can work very well for receiving DSM cues and giving the occasional clear, and is markedly cheaper than full duplex wireless cans with a frequency each.

[constabeats]

I've used Altair a lot recently and they are reliable. Our Wireless Master also operates as the legacy wired master which has all the traditional wired TecPro packs from it. The Headset connectors on the Altairs aren't so great but these are used in a college theatre! Range is very good on wireless packs. Although The cans master does Have a very loud beep in it when any call buttons on the network are pressed - which isn't great for us seeing as it is in the auditorium.

 

Sorry bringing up an old post!

[ClaireL]

From an occasional user's point of view, I don't like the altair wireless belt packs at all. The mini xlr frequently falls out mid-show (it doesn't seem to have a 'click in' like a standard xlr), you have to look at the beltpack or count down the buttons to find the Talk one, and if you're going on stage with it on in a scene change, you have to put a bit of black lx over the flashing led. Also I've seen at least one belt pack that had lost the Talk button and you had to stick a fingernail on the hole.

 

0/10 for me not checking the OP date :-(