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G3 vs. Sweat


MondoBurger

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I was on an indie short last week using G3s and COS-11s on the talent. On the male actor I had no problems. On the female talent i had consistent dropouts even from 8 feet away. I swapped frequencies, swapped batteries, swapped transmitters, swapped mics, nothing really helped. The only difference between the two was that the man was wearing his transmitter in his back pocket, and the woman was wearing a neopax waistbelt. It was 32 degrees celsius, she was sweating a fair bit. Can sweat really cause that much interference with G3 transmitters? Was there something else I may have missed?

I've never had dropouts like that with this equipment in the 6 months since I bought it, and we were in a rural area with very little RF activity going on.

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Get this all the time in Theatre on sweaty dancers - nothing to do with G3s specifically. If the TX antenna is pressed against a sweat-soaked undergarment or skin, it can soak up RF quite noticeably. If the end-cap's missing of the antenna and the bare wire is visible, even more so as it 'shorts' to the conductive sweat. The Theatre trick is to surround the antenna in something like foam to space it off the costume or body by a couple of millimetres. We use white cylindrical foam about 1cm in diameter that's used in the construction industry for some sort of sealing around door frames. The key is that material doesn't absorb liquid itself. You cut it the same length as the antenna, and poke a metal skewer up the middle to make a hole for the antenna, slide it over and keep it there with a little bit of tape. It can be visible under the costume in a film situation, but it certainly helps. In an emergency, you can roll up a tiny bit of thin bubble wrap to do the job.

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almost 100% sure the talent was on not one of the skinny type... adding a body mass barrier and sweat makes for a difficult transmitting situation, common problem with all kinds of Tx. If possible try to place the Tx facing towards you and separate the antenna from the skin, like said before

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Yes, If the transmitter's antenna was in contact with bare skin (especially sweaty bare skin) this will significantly decrease the RF signal (and range). Otherwise, how did you determine 'clean' frequencies and inter-modulation? The G2/3 receiver's on-board scanner is inadequate for optimum performance/range IMO, especially in highly populated RF environment.

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