Optical Audio keeps 15th Pacific Games ceremonies on cue
Published: ASIA
PAPUA NEW GUINEA: The opening and closing ceremonies of the 15th Pacific Games, held in Papua New Guinea (PNG), was supported with communications from Clear-Com. Australian special event communications specialist, Optical Audio, shipped ‘nearly triple the specification’ of equipment to ensure the event went off without a hitch.
When the public tender to supply comms for the games was announced, Optical Audio technical director Jason Read and his team submitted a proposal. ‘I think we won the contract due to our research into local frequency licensing laws,’ recalled Mr Read. ‘We touched base with NICTA, the government body in charge of spectrum in PNG, and went through their chain. We had spoken, got pricing on short-term licensing, and designed our comms system to suit the available bandwidth. When we finally landed in PNG and had the first meeting, it was good to put names to faces. They said, “whatever you need, we’ll make it work, because you’ve taken the time to find out how we do it here”. We took the time to find out what they could provide us, instead of just asking for what we needed.’
After securing the tender, the logistical nightmare of quickly getting the equipment to Papua New Guinea began. ‘It was a really quick turnaround,’ furthered Mr Read. ‘There was just three weeks between the contracts being signed to when the doors on the shipping container closed. We were investing a lot in Clear-Com, and were putting orders in on that day to get stuff shipped in time. We were dealing with equipment that’s made-to-order that had to be air freighted to get it there in time. Some of the key components left a week before.’
The system designed by Optical Audio comprised a Clear-Com Eclipse-Median matrix frame at its core, fitted with an IVC-32 card for IP connection, three MVX-A16 cards for analogue I/O, 14 FOR-22 cards to interface with four-wire systems and CCI-22 cards for the partyline. Additionally, 22 V24LDXY V-Series 24-key lever panels and two V12LDXY V-Series 12-key lever panels were connected via IP. The team employed MS-704 master stations, 20 RS-701 series beltpacks and a two-channel Tempest wireless system with five beltpacks. All major IP links were run with fibre optic cabling, except a mustering tower in the warm up field with no way to cable up to it. Optical reportedly solved this problem with a microwave link to a V-Series lever panel.
‘We took a lot of infrastructure that hadn’t been captured in the tender,’ offered Mr Read. ‘We read between the lines based on experience and over-specified everything we could think of. We knew that being in Port Moresby, we couldn’t run back to the shop or sub-hire from a local company. It all came down to having enough of everything there and having spares and redundancy. It paid off. We ended up with a few but not many spares, and anything we didn’t have we came up with a solution for.
‘The Clear-Com gear performed perfectly,’ added Mr Read. ‘It all performed, all the redundancies came online when we did full checks. It was all smooth sailing.’