USA - The Davidson Centre For Space Exploration in Huntsville, Alabama is home to an original Saturn V rocket, the machine that launched the Apollo moon missions back in the 1960s. The massive 300ft-long craft is suspended from above, giving the museum's visitors the opportunity to walk underneath the space vehicle.

With the 68,200sq.ft museum also housing a 350-seat auditorium and commercial kitchen, the Centre has been a popular venue for events of all kinds since it opened in 2008. So when Sutherland Sight and Sound (Sheffield, Alabama) was called on to provide lighting for a presentation programme at Davidson hosted by Oakwood College, the production company wanted to make it a truly cosmic event.

Josh Johnston of Sutherland Sight and Sound employed fixtures from American DJ and its sister company Elation Professional. Inside the Davidson Centre, the lighting designer use

UK - South London-based drapes specialist Cover It Up supplied the top-of-the-show circular kabuki reveal on the recent Dancing on Ice UK tour, which was produced by Phil McIntyre Entertainment.

Cover It Up's Elliot Stennett, production manager Andy Gibbs and the choreography team worked closely to find a solution for the big moment. The staging of this was conceived by Kim Gavin, and saw ice dance superstars Jane Torville and Christopher Dean emerge right in the middle of the ice and launch into their famous Bolero routine.

The kabuki measured 10m in diameter and was suspended directly below a truss of the same dimensions. The fabric was produced in sections, allowing it to be swiftly and easily cleared from the ice by skating stage hands.

It was stored in a bag that lived suspended in the truss for transportation, and had a double release mechanism operated b

Eurovision Clash - The date of the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest has been thrown into doubt. The UEFA Champions League final, the biggest match in club football, will take place on the evening of Saturday 22 May. 2010 marks the first year that the game will take place on a Saturday instead of midweek. The date is the same as the preliminary date announced by the EBU for the 55th Eurovision Song Contest. The song contest and the UEFA Champions League final are two of the most viewed television shows in the world. It would be almost impossible for the two events to take place simultaneously because many broadcasters are contractually obliged to broadcast both events.

UEFA announced that the dates for the Champions League schedule last December. Because 2010 is also a World Cup year, the Champions League final will not be moved to a later date. It is therefore most likely that the E

USA - Over 140 Robe moving lights have been installed into the new 3800-seat theatre and two ballrooms at the landmark MGM Grand Casino at Foxwoods Resort Casino, Ledyard, Connecticut.

The venues are part of a two-and-a-half-year, $700 million construction project resulting in the new facility, adding 180,000sq.m to the existing Resort to which it is connected via a moving walkway. It includes four restaurants, 825 hotel rooms, 53 table games and 1400 slot machines.

The Robe fixtures are an integral part of a lighting design by Tom Roach, Foxwoods Resort Casino's lighting manager, and the choice of moving lights was the direct result of a shoot-out between Robe and another leading brand. David Middleton of Stage Lighting Representatives represented Robe on the project, and worked closely with lighting suppliers and installers Barbizon Lighting Company to provide the units for

UK - ETC has reported "a hugely successful inaugural PLASA Focus", with the company's stand proving popular with visitors. The newly acquired Selador series created a lot of interest, with lighting designers excited by the opportunities the LED fixtures offer, says the company. The series is made up of three luminaires, fine tuned for strong colours, soft pastels or perfect skin tones.

Meanwhile, ETC's latest lighting control desk, Element, created a buzz, with associate regional manager for UK and Ireland Jeremy Roberts kept busy both days of the event giving demonstrations. The desk, which is based on Eos software, is a replacement for ETC's Express line of desks and is aimed at smaller theatrical venues and schools that depend on single desk operators or volunteer staff.

ETC's market manager for Europe, Erik Larsen, says, "We were delighted with the attendanc

UK - Orbital Sound supplied a comprehensive sound system for this year's Flamenco Festival, staged at Sadler's Wells in late March and featuring six companies in a non-stop two-week programme. The system included the new d&b audiotechnik T-Series loudspeakers, with 16 x T10s and T-SUBS configured as a mix of vertical point-source standalone cabinets and horizontal mini line array groups. This is the fourth year that Orbital Sound has been involved with the event, working with resident sound technician Tom Hares.

The 2009 Festival kicked off with less than 24 hours to load in and test the system before the first performance, involving two teams working back-to-back to get everything in place. Tom Hares elaborates: "Every year is different with one exception - it's always demanding. On the Friday night before the festival started, we had 120 children on stage in Dan

South Africa - More than 200,000 men from all over South Africa congregated for the Mighty Men Conference 2009, one of the country's largest annual Christian events, to listen to minister Angus Buchan, farmer, writer and missionary of Shalom Ministries.

For the first time, though, this year's gathering was also broadcast live on local and international cable networks, posing considerable challenges for the event's audio crew. The crew for the event relied on Aviom's Pro16 monitor mixing system as a solution for stage monitoring to minimise stage volume for the live broadcast.

"Since the event was being recorded as well as broadcast live around the world, we needed to ensure as quiet a stage as possible," explains Nik Fairclough, owner of Northwind Recording, system designer for the event. "All guitar and other amps were below the stage enclosed in gobos.

UAE - April 2009 saw celebrations for the opening of Goboland Middle East MFZE. Based in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE, this new branch of the Belgian gobo manufacturers has been established to serve the burgeoning Middle Eastern market and the demand for its gobo services across the busy architectural sector.

"The Middle Eastern market has been expanding exponentially in the past few years," explains Goboland managing director, Ivo Dielen. "The volume of business this has created for us has necessitated the opening of a branch 'on the ground', so to speak, so we can bring a more customer-facing service to our new clients here in the Middle East.

"The projection of gobo images onto the exterior of buildings is a powerful advertising tool which has become a tour de force here. The number of projects and advertising ventures which incorporate gobo projection has seen t

USA - In a significant audio upgrade project at the Evangelical Covenant Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the first Soundcraft Si3 digital console sold to a House of Worship was recently installed to help deliver better quality sound for the 750 worshippers who attend services and participate in ministries every week. The church has been established in the Grand Rapids neighbourhood since 1979 and continues to uphold the history of The Evangelical Covenant Church.

The church decided to upgrade the audio system after their original analogue system started to deteriorate; a 48-channel analogue mixing console was originally installed in the church, the digital Si3 replaced it with minimal infrastructure changes, immediately providing 64 input channels.

"There were a lot of factors that we needed to decide upon prior to purchasing a digital console, however we knew we wanted

UK - Innovation Productions has embraced line array technology for the first time, adding a new Martin Audio W8LC system and control to its hire fleet.

Managing director Andrew Pygott made the decision to purchase 16 of the mid-high enclosures, along with eight WS218X subs and a pair of DX2 processors, based on recommendation. They have also configured the drive racks to accommodate six new Martin Audio MA5.2K amplifiers, with an MA12K driving the bottom end.

Pygott said the system was purchased as soon as his company knew they had won the contract to supply sound reinforcement for this year's Isle of Man TT Races during the first fortnight in June. Each night a concert will be staged in the Villa Marina Gardens in Douglas, but it is Whitesnake - the main headliner during the week-long Festival - that will provide the W8LC with its first serious test.

While Huddersfield-base

China - Lying at the Western end of China's Great Wall, Jia Yu Guan has been a strategic transport nexus since the days of the Silk Road. This historic city, placed at one of the major crossroads of civilisation has added a grand new theatre to its already bustling streets.

It's a measure of the speed with which complex projects can be completed that the Jia Yu Guan Grand Theatre opened just 16 months after builders first cut turf. An ambitious project by any measure, the fact that this prestigious arts venue was completed during the final year of China's massive construction project for the 2008 Olympics makes it all the more laudable. That and the fact that Jiuquan Iron & Steel (Group) Co, has chosen to endow the theatre with top of the range technical equipment including a d&b audiotechnik PA system.

"The main theatre seats just under 1200 people," explained Danie

UK - Tim Riggs has set up AV Crew Finder (www.avcrewfinder.co.uk), an operation designed to help freelance crew and production companies find each other, and also to save time and resources for all clients.

Riggs has many years experience in the conference and events market, having worked for many of the major players in the industry. "We only supply and recommend experienced and reliable staff and everyone on our database is vetted to ensure they meet our strict criteria," he says.

"We also provide clients with freelancers C.V.'s and PL insurance. We do not charge freelance staff to find them opportunities but do invoice a small fee to production companies to cover our costs."

Skills covered by the service include: general audio visual technicians, specialists in video and audio, lighting technicians and designers, cameramen, video editors, project and p

UK - A grandMA light console, grandMA video and one MA NSP all running over Ethernet are at the core of lighting and visuals control for the Wild Rose production of Cirque de Glace. The show is a new concept in ice presentation, combining acrobatics and circus artistry with the elegance and magic of ice dance, performed by the Russian Ice Stars.

Lighting was designed and programmed by Tim Routledge of grandPA - the UK's first programming house for the grandMA control platform. He also specified grandMA video which supplies digital scenery and backdrops throughout the show, bringing to life a story recalling the creation of the planet, evolution and humanity's journey to the limits of technology and beyond.

Chief LX Graham Shearing is touring with the show and overseeing technicals. He first used a grandMA console on the previous 2007/08 season show, Beauty and the Be

China - The Chinese HK Audio distributor Melody Development is now offering regular seminars to customers and partners. This training familiarises dealers, technicians, and sales staff throughout China as well as Melody Development's workforce with new products, teaching participants how to best use this equipment.

Melody Development's chief technician Chen Ziqian usually conducts the seminars, held by turns in the different provinces of China. The recent workshop took place in March at Jinan Shandong province. Chen Ziqian presented the HK Audio product range to 120 attendees, focusing especially on the HK Audio Contour Array system and the HK Audio P:RO series. The presentation's highlight was a live demo of the systems and individual cabinets' audio performance that left quite an impression on the audience.

Melody Development is very satisfied with the results of the worksho

USA - Medialon is organising a Training Session on its show & media control software, Manager V5, prior to the InfoComm 09 Trade Show. The two-day course will be held on 15 and 16 June in the premises of Electrosonic, Orlando, FL.

During the session, Medialon engineers will provide students with the technical skills required to set up and programme a show control system based on the latest Manager V5 software release.

The course is aimed at show technicians, freelancers, and end-user technicians who are responsible for programming and running show control systems in live events or permanent installations.

(Jim Evans)

USA/Canada - Paul Mitchell has a hair salon network of over 70,000 around the United States and Canada, as well as having a presence in 44 countries worldwide. Its professional training arm, Paul Mitchell the School, has a 20-year history, with new sites constantly opening around the US. Its Wichita, Kansas school has recently installed a Turbosound audio system.

The educational facility covers a total area of 12,000sq.ft, which is divided into various areas for specific activities. In The Clinic hairstyling instruction area eight compact passive two-way Impact 55Ts and two TXD-118 subs have been installed, whilst the General Classroom, Core Classroom One, Core Classroom Two, the Wash House area and the office, halls, breakout room and restrooms are covered by varying amounts of TCS-C50T ceiling speakers, numbering 28 in total.

"As a preferred vendor for Paul Mitchell Sch

USA - Bandit Lites was named the best large business in East Tennessee by the Knox Area Chamber Partnership. Bandit took home the prestigious Business Excellence Award on 1 May at the Knoxville Convention Centre.

This award is presented to an outstanding firm in East Tennessee that has clearly shown leadership, innovation and quality. Past winners include Scripps Networks and Pilot Travel Centers.

Chairman Michael T. Strickland said, "All of us at Bandit Lites are humbled by such an honour and promise to continue to earn the accolade. We are truly blessed to have the great opportunities we have and will continue to be a business that everyone can have pride in."

(Jim Evans)

Finland - Formed 33 years ago, Eppu Normaali is one of Finland's longer-established rock bands. With their stock of PA equipment improving and expanding over the years, drummer Aku Syrjä set up sound hire company Akun Tehdas as a subsidiary of the band, to rent out the equipment when the band was not on tour.

The company has become a major player in the Finnish sound rental market and, already owning a DiGiCo D5 Live console, saw the SD8 as the logical next step for its inventory, which is taking pride of place at the front of house position on Eppu Normaali's current European tour.

"The price:quality ratio of the SD8 was just right for us, as well as the console's compact size," says Antti Salminen, Akun Tehdas / Eppu Normaali system tech and monitor engineer. "Currently we also have one on hire, but this summer it's likely that we will purchase a second one.&

USA - A short drive north of Houston, Texas, Devasco International specialises in highly customised welding and metalworking solutions. It's an innovative and creative environment, but with a large staff, a 62,000sq.ft warehouse and plenty of industrial-grade machinery, it's not among the quietest. So when controller/treasurer David Scott took up the task of designing audio systems for the company's various buildings, he knew he had his work cut out for him. Scott selected a variety of loudspeakers from Community Professional to cover different functions throughout the facility.

14 RMG200A voice range horns provide a powerful paging system that covers the main warehouse, easily delivering 94dB of voice intelligibility where it's needed to overcome the din of a busy machine shop. In the company's training facility, a pair of SLS920 three-way boxes deliver music and voice performa

Peru - During their last world tour Iron Maiden visited Peru for the first time and played the Estadio National Jose Diaz in Lima. RCF's TTL33-A line array modules and TTS28-A high power subwoofers were used as the delay and front-fill systems for the show.

Rental company, Guillermo Riera e Iluminacion Profesional EIRL was confident in choosing RCF TT+ High Definition Touring and Theatre series to do the job for this large event which attracted more than 30.000 fans.

A significant number of TTL33-A active line array modules were installed in front of the stage to reinforce the sound for the first rows while the two delay towers, each composed by 10 TTL33-A and 3 TTS28-A subs, delivered a powerful and accurate coverage for those sitting and standing in the far distance away from the main stage.

Guillermo Riera, owner of the rental company, said: "What impressed me the mo

USA - San Diego based Sound Image has acquired a new Adamson PA system that includes 24 x Y18, 32 x Y10 and 12 x T21.

SI wrapped up its first tour with the new system on John Legend's North American theatre tour over the winter. "Touring with this show is a little more difficult because on a day to day basis the system has to be very versatile," comments Gary Sanguinet, SI's crew chief. "Everyone bends over backward to make it work because we see that this artist is going somewhere and we want to be there when he arrives."

"We feel that Sound Image and Adamson have a similar approach to the way that they treat their clients," says Jesse Adamson, Adamson Systems Engineering's, director of marketing and sales. "They are a service focused organisation and they do a great job. I had been talking to Dave about what Adamson and Sound Image could do

UK - Adlib supplied sound and lighting equipment to several stages and performance areas at Radio One's 2009 One Big Weekend event staged in Lydiard House & Park, Swindon, Wiltshire. The two-day event kicked off the Festival Season in style with a line up including Snow Patrol, Kasabian, The Prodigy, Lily Allen, Dizzee Rascall with Calvin Harris, The Wombats and more.

This year the Adlib team - co-ordinated by Dave Jones - supplied sound to the second In New Music We Trust stage; the Introducing Stage for up and coming new talent; The Headroom Tent, a live broadcast interview station for artists participating in the event; the Live Lounge Acoustic Stage and the Switch Stage which was upstairs on an open top double decker bus. Lighting was designed and supplied for the Introducing Stage by Adlib Lighting.

It's the third year that

Poland - Riders on the Storm (Jezdziec Burzy), the Jim Morrison tribute musical, recently experienced a surge in attendance after nine years of residency at the Rampa Theatre (Teatr Rampa) in Warsaw thanks in part to a Meyer Sound M'elodie line array loudspeaker system recently installed by Lomianki-based Polsound.

Chief sound engineer Marcin Pawlot reports that the Meyer Sound system has made a night-and-day difference. "The old system was almost 19th century in its sound quality," says Pawlot. "Now, the band sounds more natural and musical despite our using even lower SPL than before. The actors' voices are more intelligible as well, with much higher gain before feedback."

The new system comprises left and right hangs of six M'elodie line array loudspeakers, each with a single 700-HP subwoofer to provide powerful low end. A pair of UPJ-1P VariO l

South Africa - Mark Becker has always had a taste for adventure - and now he deals with it by flying a two-seater microlight aircraft high above the waterfalls and coast of Southern Africa. Through his company Free To Adventure, Becker takes people in the microlight up the coast of Mozambique for diving trips to reefs or into the heartland of Africa to visit the waterfalls, and a couple of years ago, he decided to start filming the trips - in HD video

"HD video cameras were getting smaller and cheaper, and I thought - I could fix these to the microlight itself and get some amazing shots as we fly," he explains. "And it works. But the video was the easy part, relatively speaking."

Whilst filming for his documentary Flying The Falls, about a flight to the waterfalls of Northern Namibia and Zambia, he was plagued by the sound of the wind. "It's com

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