Remembrance Day 2020

[Hilary Watts]

You're a true gent Paul - although I would love to know what the post said!

Hilary

 

[Junior8]

Well, yesterday it shrank to something sensible. Then the government guidelines came out this afternoon & were far less restrictive than anyone expected, so this evening it's grown again. Sorry J8 - you've lost your money!

 

Oh well these things happen...

 

 

 

[skinda0]

This year we were planning (pre-lockdown) to light up our local church in red for the 11th, and as now the regular remembrance services have been cancelled in favour of a smaller gathering, I was thinking that this would be a fitting tribute. I am struggling now though to find any information as to whether this could still go ahead now a lockdown has been introduced? The event wouldn't have been advertised as a 'switch-on' anyway so crowds wouldn't gather.

 

Has anyone else had similar conversations recently that may shed some more light on the situation?

[sandall]

Providing it's rigged by no more than 2 people, socially distancing, & the switch-on is not advertised, there seems no reason why not. Work (whether paid or volunteer) is allowed.

[Biskit]

In my 'day job' we are looking at lighting up our prominent (local authority) buildings for Remembrance Sunday, using a combination of installed systems and supplemented by a contractor who is doing poppy projections on the outside of the building. There will be no timed switch-on or anything so no intention to attract people to come and look - it's for the benefit of social media really, and was all booked prior to the current lockdown.

 

Meanwhile my local remembrance event has had the go-ahead, though there is suddenly doubt over whether I will be working it anyway as new organisers (the local Town Council rather than the RBL, with the parade element being cancelled this year) have found someone who will do it for pocket money apparently... which itself is a serious concern to me as local resident if nothing else!

Edited November 6, 2020 by Biskit

[sandall]

Meanwhile my local remembrance event has had the go-ahead, though there is suddenly doubt over whether I will be working it anyway as new organisers (the local Town Council rather than the RBL, with the parade element being cancelled this year) have found someone who will do it for pocket money apparently... which itself is a serious concern to me as local resident if nothing else!

Unfortunately there is always someone willing to do it for pocket money. Well, ours happened, & TBF the "official" part was pretty well-organised, with all participants (mostly masked) on 2 metre spacing. Of course it was a different story once everyone started chatting at the end.

 

Lessons learnt:

1. Bring your own sanitiser (I had expected the "Sanitising Stations" to be on the lines of what you meet at your supermarket or GP surgery, not something the size of a roll-on deodorant).

2. Forget the idea of only 1 person touching each bit of kit - that goes out of the window as soon as the organisational goalposts start moving. You can't rig in surgical gloves & fabric ones get wet very quickly.

3. At least one hitherto totally reliable bit of kit will fail during setup, but will be absolutely fine when back at base.

4. However dry the ground seems at the start, every cable & mat will be covered in mud (that happens every year).

[sunray]

Meanwhile my local remembrance event has had the go-ahead, though there is suddenly doubt over whether I will be working it anyway as new organisers (the local Town Council rather than the RBL, with the parade element being cancelled this year) have found someone who will do it for pocket money apparently... which itself is a serious concern to me as local resident if nothing else!

 

Lessons learnt:

You can't rig in surgical gloves & fabric ones get wet very quickly.

3. At least one hitherto totally reliable bit of kit will fail during setup, but will be absolutely fine when back at base.

4. However dry the ground seems at the start, every cable & mat will be covered in mud (that happens every year).

My reply relates to previous years, 2020 was the first service I've missed for over 30 years.

3 of the 4 venues I've done have required a radio mic due to activities all round the mic. last year a brand new battery with 2023 date died after 20 minutes or about 3 minutes into the service, luckily I had a spare mic, changed its channel and forced through the crowd to change it.

the last venue has bushes along the side where I ran speaker cables so I tried to leave them on top... but there were always children playing and they always ended on the floor

 

Meanwhile my local remembrance event has had the go-ahead, though there is suddenly doubt over whether I will be working it anyway as new organisers (the local Town Council rather than the RBL, with the parade element being cancelled this year) have found someone who will do it for pocket money apparently... which itself is a serious concern to me as local resident if nothing else!

 

Lessons learnt:

You can't rig in surgical gloves & fabric ones get wet very quickly.

3. At least one hitherto totally reliable bit of kit will fail during setup, but will be absolutely fine when back at base.

4. However dry the ground seems at the start, every cable & mat will be covered in mud (that happens every year).

My reply relates to previous years, this was the firt service I've missed for maybe 30 years.

3 of the 4 venues I've done have required a radio mic due to activities all round the mic. last year a brand new battery with 2023 date died after 20 minutes or about 3 minutes into the service, luckily I had a spare, changed its channel and forced through the crowd to change it.

the last venue has bushes along the side where I ran speaker cables so I tried to leave them on top... but there were always children playing and they always ended on the floor

 

 

Meanwhile my local remembrance event has had the go-ahead, though there is suddenly doubt over whether I will be working it anyway as new organisers (the local Town Council rather than the RBL, with the parade element being cancelled this year) have found someone who will do it for pocket money apparently... which itself is a serious concern to me as local resident if nothing else!

 

Lessons learnt:

You can't rig in surgical gloves & fabric ones get wet very quickly.

3. At least one hitherto totally reliable bit of kit will fail during setup, but will be absolutely fine when back at base.

4. However dry the ground seems at the start, every cable & mat will be covered in mud (that happens every year).

My reply relates to previous years, this was the firt service I've missed for maybe 30 years.

3 of the 4 venues I've done have required a radio mic due to activities all round the mic. last year a brand new battery with 2023 date died after 20 minutes or about 3 minutes into the service, luckily I had a spare, changed its channel and forced through the crowd to change it.

the last venue has bushes along the side where I ran speaker cables so I tried to leave them on top... but there were always children playing and they always ended on the floor

 

 

Meanwhile my local remembrance event has had the go-ahead, though there is suddenly doubt over whether I will be working it anyway as new organisers (the local Town Council rather than the RBL, with the parade element being cancelled this year) have found someone who will do it for pocket money apparently... which itself is a serious concern to me as local resident if nothing else!

 

Lessons learnt:

You can't rig in surgical gloves & fabric ones get wet very quickly.

3. At least one hitherto totally reliable bit of kit will fail during setup, but will be absolutely fine when back at base.

4. However dry the ground seems at the start, every cable & mat will be covered in mud (that happens every year).

My reply relates to previous years, this was the firt service I've missed for maybe 30 years.

3 of the 4 venues I've done have required a radio mic due to activities all round the mic. last year a brand new battery with 2023 date died after 20 minutes or about 3 minutes into the service, luckily I had a spare, changed its channel and forced through the crowd to change it.

the last venue has bushes along the side where I ran speaker cables so I tried to leave them on top... but there were always children playing and they always ended on the floor

 

Edited November 9, 2020 by sunray

[sandall]

Seems to be an echo here !!

[sunray]

Seems to be an echo here !!

Oh sorry, I don't know what happened there, I didn't notice it at the time.

[Biskit]

Meanwhile my local remembrance event has had the go-ahead, though there is suddenly doubt over whether I will be working it anyway as new organisers (the local Town Council rather than the RBL, with the parade element being cancelled this year) have found someone who will do it for pocket money apparently... which itself is a serious concern to me as local resident if nothing else!

Unfortunately there is always someone willing to do it for pocket money. Well, ours happened, & TBF the "official" part was pretty well-organised, with all participants (mostly masked) on 2 metre spacing. Of course it was a different story once everyone started chatting at the end.

 

Lessons learnt:

1. Bring your own sanitiser (I had expected the "Sanitising Stations" to be on the lines of what you meet at your supermarket or GP surgery, not something the size of a roll-on deodorant).

2. Forget the idea of only 1 person touching each bit of kit - that goes out of the window as soon as the organisational goalposts start moving. You can't rig in surgical gloves & fabric ones get wet very quickly.

3. At least one hitherto totally reliable bit of kit will fail during setup, but will be absolutely fine when back at base.

4. However dry the ground seems at the start, every cable & mat will be covered in mud (that happens every year).

 

Well in the end they went for the pocket-money option so someone turned up with a couple of 100V horns on a stick, running off a very noisy building-site style generator spluttering away in the back of their van; while I had quoted on the basis of a significantly larger system (which is what I had been asked to provide) and using mains power with battery back-up. Annoyingly, as there were only a few dozen people in attendance this year, they just about got away with it this time, but they definitely won't next year assuming it's back to 'usual' with 1000+ attending. Anyway c'est la vie!

 

Other than that, the event appeared to run well. They had proper (staffed) sanitiser stations at all entrances to the park area, signing-in sheets, and QR codes for the NHS app. Dignitaries were appropriately spaced out while queueing to lay their wreaths, and they retreated to an area to the side which had been marked out for 2m distancing having had their turn. I made a fairly hasty exit at the end but I imagine the social distancing probably broke down to some degree afterwards. Most 'audience' were wearing masks. There were only two people speaking: the vicar, and a chap from the RBL who introduced the wreaths and spoke the words "they shall grow not old..." etc. They did stick to their own microphones (usually they'd share one) and remained a good 3 or 4m apart the whole time.

 

I have to say I am quite glad that I'm not spending this week cleaning mud off my cables! One year, when it was particularly cold (but dry) my cables came back visually very clean, which I was understandably happy about. That is until a few weeks later when I found all the cables which had been on the remembrance job mysteriously soaking wet, indoors, with other cables and equipment completely dry just inches away. It took me ages to figure out it was because the cables had been coated with the salt which had been liberally spread everywhere on the day, and it was re-hydrating itself by drawing moisture from the air on my cables. So I had to clean them all anyway, several times, before this annoying phenomena stopped.

[sunray]

So what is wrong with 100V horns on poles?

Well in the end they went for the pocket-money option so someone turned up with a couple of 100V horns on a stick,

The Remembrance service I've done for the last 10+ years was as a direct replacement for a Black cabs on tripods system when the organiser was at an event I was covering with 100V horns on poles and commented how clear and distinct it sounded.

I had quoted on the basis of a significantly larger system ... using mains power with battery back-up.

Just how big do you need to go for little job like that?

[alistermorton]

To be fair, Ray, we don't know how big the event would normally be, the area it needs to cover, or the topology. It may be that two horns on a stick was just about enough this year but that ordinarily it wouldn't have been enough. I've been to plenty of not particularly large events where the sound coverage was woeful, which can really spoil something like a remembrance day service.

[Biskit]

So what is wrong with 100V horns on poles?

Well in the end they went for the pocket-money option so someone turned up with a couple of 100V horns on a stick,

The Remembrance service I've done for the last 10+ years was as a direct replacement for a Black cabs on tripods system when the organiser was at an event I was covering with 100V horns on poles and commented how clear and distinct it sounded.

I had quoted on the basis of a significantly larger system ... using mains power with battery back-up.

Just how big do you need to go for little job like that?

Ok fair enough perhaps I was being overly dismissive in that comment. There's absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with a 100V horns system done properly - apologies if that's what you took me to be suggesting. In fact I used such a solution very successfully for many years at another local remembrance event which I did in a previous job. This one is (usually) a really big one though, by many times the largest in the area, with full brass band involved, a choir leading hymn singing, a soloist singing the national anthem, on an enormous and sprawling site, around 500 people in the parade alone, several thousand generally attending. The PA usually carries the band, choir and soloist, in addition to the spoken elements. They did tell me things had been (obviously) scaled back but asked me for the same provision as usual, as they were still anticipating the site being quite full, albeit with people spaced out rather than packed in. Miscommunication between the usual organisers (RBL) and the Town Council who took over this year (I was told afterwards that part of the criteria for determining whether remembrance events could go ahead this year was that they had to be officially organised by a local Council) meant I wasn't told that all the musical elements were removed. As I say, just one of those things.

[sandall]

Yours sounds very much the same scale as mine in normal times, though we probably get spectators in hundreds rather than thousands. There was a bit of a tussle with the organiser over doing anything that might attract a crowd (which ended up as a score-draw), but as I've been doing this one much longer than anyone else involved I was largely left to make my own decisions, ending up with 2 (smaller) side-firing boxes, rather than 4 front-facing ones.

 

I've also used a couple of horns many times. For years I did a very busy London square with no power & the only parking being the cab-rank (which always involved a bit of negotiation), so I used to run a couple of horns from a 12V TOA amp in the boot. The horns were great for cutting through the traffic noise. The only problem I remember was having to explain to the Bishop one year that the fact that he'd got his timings wrong & was running early didn't mean that Big Ben was going to do the same!

[sunray]

The event I've been doing for the last 10 years or so is a garden about 60m x 30m with bushes down both long sides, This area fills like sardines with >1000 people, at one end it ajoins a park and generally about 1500 people form a semi circle, more like a semioval.

I've covered it with a pair of 15W horns at each end of the garden facing towards the middle and a pair of 30W at the end of the garden to cover the public.

 

120W amp powered by 30V worth of 7AH gel batteries. No matter how much I've tried to sound check before the parade arrived the opening word by the vicar has always been vastly too loud.

A brass band plays before and after which I place a single radio mic to relay to the public area but after that it's just speech and the buglar.

 

This has always been the job where I'm asked for my details and have picked up many jobs from including a big open day [3 days] with 5 zones: main central system, 2 arenas, display area and a fill in, all linked from central and spec'd as EVAC. All done with horns apart from display area and that was only because the first year included some displays with music. As it grew in popularity the Sunday numbers had to be limited to 15000