For Sydney's New Year's Eve Celebration, The P.A. People provided data and communications including Clear-Com Eclipse Matrix, V-Station Panels, and Tempest Full Duplex for communications, network time-code, audio transport and much more.
Throughout the various key sites Clear-Com's Eclipse Matrix systems were deployed, including one Omega, two Medians and a Pico. Paul Barrett, communications manager for The P.A. People for the event, used Clear-Com Eclipse Matrix units in a distributed fashion to allow easy deployment of over twenty-five Clear-Com V-Series key stations. These were deployed and connected either directly or via the V-Stations native IP interface. Over forty duplex repeaters were used for the event, with all units interfaced to the Eclipse Matrix systems. These duplex's provided coverage to the 200 + radios for the event.
In addition to the Eclipse Matrix, Clear-Com's full duplex Tempest system was used at the Sydney Opera House, notorious as one of the most challenging RF venues in Australia. The P.A. People utilised Tempest's new roaming feature which allows beltpacks to move between bases without any user intervention and according to Paul Barrett, the Tempest performed flawlessly.
The P.A. People also provided the complete communications package for the recently completed How to train your Dragon Australian / New Zealand and US tour. The system included a Clear-Com Eclipse Pico matrix at its core, along with a 30 beltpack Tempest wireless system, a 20 pac HelixNet wired system as well as four analog RF radio channels.
"The RF environment for the Dragons tour was nothing short of horrific," commented Chris Dodds, managing director of The P.A. People. "All the control systems for the actual dragons were based on WiFi system, there were literally tens of radio mics and in-ear monitors in the standard analog UHF band, and then we were asked to provide 30 full duplex beltpacks. We chose the only product that we knew of that could work in that environment; Clear-Com Tempest. We deployed the system with Clear-Com remote antennas flown from the grid and it worked flawlessly for the twelve months it was on the road."
(Jim Evans)
