RF Plan - Theatre event

[Dave Pullmer]

Hi! I’m doing sound for a theatre performance and wanted to hear people’s thoughts on an RF plan for the event. I have a couple ideas but was curious to hear others out.
 

Only 3 of the performers will be mic’d, moving all over the 46ft x 46ft space. Location is exterior in downtown Vancouver. Performance is 30 minutes and will be performed 3 times during the day, unfortunately there won’t be any rehearsals at this location.

 

I run a RF Venue diversity fin, and part of me thinks that keeping it simple would be just raising the diversity fin high up to cover the entire performance area. But being that we’re in close proximity to our more congested RF environment downtown, I’m thinking of other options.

 

The other route I’ve been thinking of doing is remoting the passive fin portion of the diversity fin to one far end of the performance area, and raising a sna600a dipole off my cart to potentially give me more of a zone coverage.

 

Would be curious to hear people’s thoughts on this. Cheers. 
 

 

 

 

[Jeff Wexler]

Remoting antennas and mixing log periodics and di-poles (which is what the RF Venue single unit does) is often a really bad idea. To weigh in  on this it really depends on the type of diversity the wireless you plan on using utilizes. Most systems either use antenna diversity or receiver diversity, some systems can utilize either one or the other. There have been mixed reports from several people regarding the RF Venue single unit  ---  everyone agrees it is a really nice tidy package and easy to use, but performance has been less than stellar. There is even more evidence that separating the 2 antennas and spacing them very far apart (in an attempt to cover larger areas) does not always yield good results. I hope someone who is more knowledgeable about RF than I am will chime in here.

[Johnny Karlsson]

My thoughts: 

I have an RF Venue diversity fin, and have used it with good results in certain situations. That said, the horizontal dipole is omnidirectional, which may not work so well if there’s a lot of RF in the area. I have never worked in downtown Vancouver, but if it’s anything like downtown Los Angeles, I would try something different as a first choice. Especially if it’s exterior. Hopefully you’re not on a rooftop, because that’s even worse. Same thing with the SNA600 - Omni.

 

So what would I try? Something more directional. Probably a pair of LPDA fins. Bandpass filters would likely also help.

 

Another idea; RF Venue makes a “spotlight” antenna that when placed in the middle of the stage floor, gives you a dome shaped pickup pattern, which allegedly will pretty much limit picking up anything outside of this dome. I haven’t actually used this one, so I can’t say how well it actually works, but theoretically it may work for something like your scenario.

[Dave Pullmer]

Thanks Jeff - I use my diversity fin with a PSC RF multi and Lectro SRCs. I’m primarily a bag mixer, and boom op, and have only used my cart set up around 10 times so haven’t had a chance to really push it and see what it is capable of (or not).

 

Johnny, thanks for the message. I’m leaning towards remoting 2 LPDAs on stands to cover both ends of the area. Indeed I am aware of the spotlight antenna but I don’t think anyone has one here in town. 
 

Going to see if I can get my hands on band pass filters and will try to run my SRs in ratio mode. Normally I wouldn’t be planning things out this far in advance but given the live aspect and lack of rehearsal Im trying to get a jump on making the set up more bulletproof.