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[Brad Ferguson]

I was booked on this gig as the RF tech.
The venue was the Air Canada Centre which is located practically directly under Canada's largest antenna: The CN Tower.

The gear:

14 channels of Shure UHF.  (8 channels UA, 6 channels J4)
4 channels of Shure UHF-R.  (L3)
8 channels of Shure PSM600 (HA - HE)
4 channels of Shure PSM700 (HF)

= 30 channels total.

So after doing a complete scan, plunking in all the in-ear channels that I needed and the TV stations in the area, it did it's calculation.  I first set it up to calculate a "more robust" frequency scheme.  Average results -- I could only get about half the channels I needed.  I then set it to "standard", and got the same results.

I then tried "more frequencies"  It then gave a result stating that I could get everything except a couple of channels of the PSM600 (I only needed 4 out of the 8 so all was well.)

Assigned everything to the frequencies given and everything worked out 100%.  The only problem I had was with the artists that had PSM600s -- I'm no genius (or are I?) but I found that they were receiving too much RF signal, because they were quite close in proximity to the transmit paddles, and once they got more than 15' away, the problems went away.

So all in all I was happy and there were no problems whatsoever on my end!

[Michael 'Bink' Knowles]

One thing I am hoping to see eventually on Wireless Workbench is a window option that shows a timeline of RF events marching slowly across the screen. That way when you hear something strange or your talent suddenly points at their head and glares at you, you can glance at the screen and see if there was a disturbance in The Force. You would be able to quickly narrow the problem down.

SmaartLive's Spectrograph screen was what made me think of this future feature. Hopefully.  

-Bink

[Brad Ferguson]

This weekend is round 2 with me and between 12 and 16 channels of Shure UHF-R.  Should be much easier though since we're not sitting directly under a 1815' antenna.  

[Mac Kerr]

Michael 'Bink' Knowles wrote on Tue, 03 April 2007 12:00

One thing I am hoping to see eventually on Wireless Workbench is a window option that shows a timeline of RF events marching slowly across the screen.

AFAIK Wireless Workbench already does this. The waterfall plot is frequency vs time. The problem is that WW is not a spectrum analyzer, it is a scanner, so it is only looking at 1 frequency at a time. It is not likely to notice any short term anomalies.

Mac

[Michael 'Bink' Knowles]

Quote:

...The problem is that WW is not a spectrum analyzer, it is a scanner, so it is only looking at 1 frequency at a time.

Yeah, I'd like it to be a full RF spectrograph bound in frequency range only by the limits of the antenna head end. Oh, and I want world peace.  

-Bink

[Mac Kerr]

Michael 'Bink' Knowles wrote on Tue, 03 April 2007 15:52

Quote: ...The problem is that WW is not a spectrum analyzer, it is a scanner, so it is only looking at 1 frequency at a time. Yeah, I'd like it to be a full RF spectrograph bound in frequency range only by the limits of the antenna head end. Oh, and I want world peace.   -Bink

It's a piece of free software that uses the tuner of one of your mics to scan. It is as full spectrum as that tuner allows, but it will only ever be able to look at one frequency at a time, so it takes a minute or 2 to scan the whole band. It will give you a good freq vs time waterfall display, but only of signals that last long enough to be caught by the scan. Real RF spectrum analyzers that look at the whole band all the time are expensive. While I'm sure there must be one that will give you a log, I'm not familiar with it.

Mac