The new Terminal, built at a cost of ITL 125 billion, is 170m long, 80-100m wide and 20m high, with a covered surface area of 55,000sq.m. It replaces the temporary building constructed in 1997, with the aim of comfortably accommodating more than 12 million passengers a year who use Fiumicino for domestic flights and who, according to recent estimates, are due to grow to 17 million by 2005.
RCF’s association with Rome’s airports stretches back around 25 years, to when the company first started supplying sound equipment to both of Rome’s airports - Fiumicino and Ciampino. One figure that the audio team from Reggio Emilia (home of RCF and now Mackie Designs Italy) is proud of is that, over the years, RCF has supplied more than 10,000 loudspeakers to Rome’s airports.
The building’s designers, CEA (Consorzio Engineering Aeroportuale), appointed ELCA - a long-established Rome-based installer and Mackie/RCF’s agents in the area - to produce the sound system for the new terminal. As with all large contracts of this type, the local agent worked closely with the technical team back at RCF, which was headed up by Antonio Ferrari. Together they produced the project specifications to provide solutions to the inevitable environmental problems. In the case of Terminal A, the main problem was the variation in ceiling height throughout the building, which precluded the use of traditional ceiling speakers in many of the public areas.
The project was initially handled by the internal audio consultants at the ELCA agency, who undertook the measurements of the ambient acoustic parameters of the new terminal building. This was the start of a design and installation process that would last for a whole year.
The solution that emerged was to use the Mackie Vision Series of loudspeakers; ELCA installed 12 specially-prepared PA151s - 11 positioned high along the length of the terminal building above the main entrances (main picture), with another covering the escalator (inset) - to cover the main terminal concourse. In this way, the system provides an overall sound that is clear and concise for public announcements.
The PA system is managed by an RCF RX-3000 programmable matrix system, designed by RCF to address the need for sophisticated audio management systems in modern commercial, industrial and civil complexes of just this type. The RX-3000 is a completely programmable matrix, expandable up to 32 inputs and 138 outputs; each input can be routed to one or more outputs, according to the configuration and defined priority levels. Modular in structure, the system can easily be expanded subsequent to installation in order to cater for changing or increasing demands. The system at Terminal A is divided into six zones, each of which uses 8kW of power. For this installation, the majority of ceiling speakers installed were RCF PL80/81s, placed at 4m intervals.
Other installations successfully using the RX-3000 system include Rome’s Grand Hotel, the Stazione Termini (the city’s main railway station) and the headquarters of Telecom Italia.
