FLEX ARRAY DAY!

Flex Array Day – North Weald Airfield 21-05-08

There are few places better than the English countryside on a summers day with a blue sky, lush green trees and grass, a group of friends and the sound of a really big sound system overwhelming the gentle thwock of willow on leather (that’s the traditional way of describing a cricket ball being hit by a cricket bat) . And last Wednesday Turbosound, having finally found an outside location where we could make noise without too many issues, took a Flex Array system upto North Weald airfield just to the north of London to show to some interested parties from both Europe and the UK.

North Weald is an old Second World War fighter airbase, famous for its pivotal role in the Battle of Britain. Now as a modern civil airfield, it is home to numerous light planes but also to various historic and interesting aircraft as well. For more info have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Weald_Airfield Anyway from our point of view it is ideal, close to major London airports, easy to get to, in a sparsely populated area with a motorway down one side meaning we can actually run a system up and show people what it is capable of. We were located by Hangar 39 (thanks Dave!) which gave us access to power, cover and hard-standing. In the image you can see the M11 to the left of the picture just some 200-300m away. The white line across the ground is for scale and is approximately 70m indicating the distance from the clusters to the perimeter road.

On to the set-up. The system was 6x TFA-600H per side flown from self supporting aluminium truss towers with 0.5 tonne motors. We ground stacked 4x TSW-218 subwoofers per side. Each side was run four-way from one amp rack with 2x T-25 and 3x T-45s and LMS-D26 digital controllers run with Turbodrive PC control.

The TFA-600H were running fully active (Tri-amp) with a T25 on HF, a T25 on HMF and a T45 on the LMF 10"s. Each TSW-218 was run by one channel of a T45.

The Hang weight is 246Kg plus the weight of the FB-600 (about 25Kg). the hangs were positioned some 10-12m apart.

Both Hangs and control rack in the centre.

Images of the TFA-600H hangs, showing the integrated hardware and the single point pick-up FB-600 flybar – Using the towers and 0.5 tonne motors that were used upto 11 TFA-600H could have been safely and easily flown

Rear views of the speaker hang, showing the back panel and basic guide to setting rear angles using the central “spine” system. See close up of the setting guide



More to Follow

My thanks to JP from LMC, Martin Reid and myself for the photos used - sorry but I can't be bothered to remember exactly who took what!