NK Atletiek Amterdam

After returning from the nordschleife Saturday night i went to the dutch national championship track and field. The stadium of Amsterdam is really close to my house so i could get some rest before i went there. It was a nice competition but nothing really exciting happened. The only disappointment was that after the competition it started to rain and all the equipment had to go completely wet inside the truck. The next event is in Uden this Saturday.

Papendal Games 2008

Every year there is one track and filed competition in the middle of the week. This competition is held at the beautiful campus of Papendal. It was a pretty normal competition and everything went pretty smooth. The only thing that is different there is that a lot of cables are to short to reach the inside of the track. This needs some creative thinking to make al the right connections.

This weekend i have a weekend off and then i’m going to do photofinish at a dragon boat competition. ( That is completly new for me )

Gouden Spike - Leiden

Last Saturday i went to the gouden spike track and field competition in Leiden. Together with my colleagues of PB-Event we installed the complete sound system. The weather was nice and dry so it was easy to break everything down again at the end of the day. It was a long competition and Ron and i where really happy when it ended. During the opening the chairman of the organising club and somebody from the local city council where there to do the honors of opening the competition.

Next wednesday i’m going to the Papendal games. I will give an update on that as well. 

 

NK Teams Vught

Early in the season all the best eight clubs from holland came to vught to decided who has the best club team in track and field.

Starting at 6.15 it was going to be a long day. Together with Ron and Piet we prepared all the equipment to have a good audio system around the track. Everything went smooth and we had everything running around 10.00. At 11.00 the competition started with the first event. at 11.45 we had the official opening with the national anthem of the Netherlands. National anthems are always a exciting moment because u don’t want anything to go wrong at that time.

The most exciting moment in the competition is always the final 4 x 400M Relay with a lot of chaos in the area around the finish line.

After a long day of competitions at was time to get all the equipment in the van again and we where ready to go to the BBQ in front of the restaurant of the track.

results and more pictures www.athleticsonline.info 

FBK-Games Hengelo 2008

Some work at PB-event again. After a long winter period this was the first athletic event i worked. During the FBK-games an other company controls the sound system so i only had to switch to the right music at the right time. The weather was great and i was in a good spot to see the stadium. For more information u can check out www.athleticsonline.info. This new website is a new product of PB-Event and it wil display results, statistics and many more about athletics. This is the third website in the serie of www.shorttrackonline.info and www.figureskatingonline.info.

Aegon Challenge Cup, The hague

The Aegon Challenge Cup is an international figure-skating competition for juniors and seniors. During Figure-skating music is really important.

All the competitors brought there music on CD and i had to record all those CD’s on Mini-disk. We do this to check the levels of the music and to make sure that there is no skipping or what so ever during playback.

The competitors came from all over the world and u will be surprised what kind of CD’s they brought. Some looked like being towed at the back of the car from Italy back here. Or used during training sessions for the last five years. So playing them live from the CD during the competition is not a good idea.

Some CD’s i even had to process through the computer to make them a little bit more acceptable.

After the competition was over there was a gala. The gala is a show with al the winners in every category and the best dutch skaters. At the end of this Gala was the famous Dutch pianist Wibi Soerjadi performing together with the winner of the Ladies senior. He composed a special piece of music for this event. He was playing in the center of the ice while the skater was skating around him.

For results and more background information visit www.figureskatingonline.info

NK Cross

Last weekend the national championships cross country running where held in the south of Holland.
Friday i already went there to prepare some cable work because i had to cross 300 meters of open space.
This also involved digging in cables to prevent runners from falling.

Friday night the venue was surprised by the power of a storm in Holland some tents where blown away and we had to use a van to setup the mixer and the amplifiers. After some starting up problem due to the weather everything went OK.

Sunday there was less wind and even some sunshine now and then. All the systems worked perfectly and everybody was enjoying a nice competition. Fro more info visit www.nkcross.nl

During the break up of all the equipment i realized how much dirt there was. We had to clean all the cables to be ready for the next event this week the Challenge cup figure-skating.

Shanghai Golden Grandprix 2007

After a summer of athletic competitions the season is comming to an end.

I was very lucky this summer that it wasn’t rain that much.
2006 was the year of the rain. Almost al the summer events the speakers where covert in plastic bags to protect all the equipment.

hopefully the summer of 2008 will bring the same.

The shanghai golden grandprix is one of the last events of the summer.
This year i only went a few days to shanghai. Because the big stadium in shanghai was occupied we moved to a smaller stadium at the out-skirts of shanghai. A nice stadium That can fit around 20.000 people.

The stadium was completly new and there is still a lot to improve.
as usual we rented some sound equipment there. The people form the sound company where really coopartive but not really good in working in a athletic setup of the speakers. Most of the company’s are used to work in concert inviroment.
they only had a digital mixer for the system and that was something completly new for me.
after some explanation in the international languages of sound-engineers i figured most of the things out. after a few hours i was satisfit with the quality and up till now we didn’t had any complanes.

Working with a digital mixer has some advantages but i think for outdoor events it is not the best solution. When u have to deal with sun light and bad weather conditions it is not really usefull. The advantages are that uy need les equipment to do the same. Because the mixer can allready do effects like delay.

This weekend FBK-Games hengelo

this weekend i will be at the FBK-games in Hengelo a new post about this will be here soon

Festival Atletico Xalapa

The first big sound-engineering job of this sport season.

The 5th of may everybody in Xalapa (Mexico) focused on this international athletics event.

My job their was to control the complete sound system in the stadium.

Equipment list:
Midas Venice 240 console
Motorized equalizer
Shure LX microphones

24 Meyer sound line aray’s (active)
4 Meyer sound bass cabinets (active)

12 Meyer sound compact line array’s (active)

2 Denon CD players

Opinion on equipment:
The speakers where the same as last year so i was comfortable with them.
This year they where better because the power to the speakers was better than last year.
In 2006 the bass cabinets dropped out after a few punch because a to less power. (deu to the active system)

Great mixer this year last year i had a macky and i’m used to work with a Midas Venice 160 so it was like feeling home.

I had never worked with a motorized equalizer but i liked it very much because you only use one set of buttons for all the channels this safes a lot of space in the flight case.

To distribute the signal to the speakers they used a line driver of Meyer sound. This works pretty easy you can adjust the level all around and with a single button you can change the crossover point. There is also a temperature and humidity correction that is easy to operate. especially in a tropical country as Mexico this changes a lot when u have an event form 18.00 till 23.00.

The CD players where really good of-course because it is top-line of denon but for the work i have to do with itthey are not so use-full. I never use the scratch functions, effects and loops. but the big play and Cue button are adorable.

Overall conclusion:
Nice stadium good quality sound and using a mixer that you are used to helps that a lot.