Although designed primarily for sporting activities, the College wanted to gain maximum functionality from the new hall by also using it to stage occasional theatrical productions and other high-profile campus activities. With budget and storage playing an important part in the overall design of the system, plans to use a truss and rigging system had to be rejected in favour of finding a more cost-effective and space-saving solution. A.C. Lighting Projects Division opted for PCM’s versatile Unibar electric winch and track system.
As another criteria was that all walls had to be kept free of system equipment for safety reasons, the Unibar track system was suspended from the hall’s three major roof support beams. Each of the three Unibar tracks incorporates an electric chain winch at one end, a return pulley at the other end, and a series of drop pulleys along the specially designed track. Similarly, to avoid the lighting bars colliding with cricket nets when flown out, each Unibar has pre-set limits and is then individually controlled from a panel situated on the hall’s viewing balcony.
The winch system’s three tracks each raise and lower 2 x 6 metre, 6-way 15 amp internally wired lighting bars. For maximum versatility, the light bars are detachable when not in use via quick release karabiners, and can be replaced with sandbags. Control of the lighting bars is then supplied by 36 ways of 10amp installation dimming, whilst mains connections are made via Tourmate Multilock multicores and control is by DMX. The College then added their own lighting control desk and lanterns to the system.
(Ruth Rossington)
