November 2004

The first major event for the month was the Transmission Party, held at one of the stadiums at the Homebush Olympic Park. (Remember the Sydney 2000 Olympics? It was in all the papers!) Once again we were working, broadcasting the party live to air on Triple J. Things didn't go quite as smoothly as I'd hoped as everything I was told about the set up turned out to be completely incorrect.

Our view of the dancefloor at Transmission.

The Tech Area ended up about a 100m cable run from where we had to set up and when we arrived they had provided no sound feed or power. We ended up cobbling stuff together to get to air, but It ended up a pretty dirty feed, only saved by the fact that you generally won't hear a bit of buzz once the DJ starts.

The radio station provided a CD of station ID's to drop in over the music for the night. These were recorded with no energy at all. Greig reckoned they sounded like the funeral announcements on country radio stations. When we tried to play them over hard thumping dance music, they sounded like crap. Next time I'm gonna tell them to listen to loud music in their headphones while they record them so they sound excited and will cut over the music more.

I also did a quick "charity job" for the Blind Citizens Centre. They hold their annual fete and I always set up a PA for them to use on the day. It's always a challenge working with blind people - not because they can't see, but because I can't read braille. They have a small studio where they record radio programmes for the blind. All the controls are labelled in braille, covering the normal text. I can never work out what is what. On occasions I have turned up to do some work for them only to find that all the lights in the studio had blown and I couldn't see a thing. Of course, they hadn't noticed.

I also managed to completely lose my voice for a few days this month. I can only assume that it was another one of those viruses that go around the office, but I haven't ruled out picking up an infection from my ear-plugs at the Transmission Party. I had an ear ache a couple of days after the party and while it calmed down, the infection moved to my throat.

Apart from that, the only other thing of note that happened during the month was another of Jimi's now regular BBQ's. Nothing much to report there because I was mute at the time so didn't really talk to anyone.