Mobile Stage System Rigging

Can anyone peg what's going on with the corner blocks up left and right on this rig? Looks like a desperate attempt to provide some degree of vertical or horizontal stability to the prefab roof system. I have to believe this falls outside of the manufacturer's guidelines for this staging system but I'm not familiar enough with these prefab mobile stages to know just how far this misses the target.

Hard to say, but I would make an educated guess that it is not the approved method based on the down stage lighting truss being used in a diamond configuration, which is proof there was a lack of knowledge when this system went up.

Looks like they just used it to hang some banners to me.



To boot it also looks like they used a hinge plate so they could drop everything at once.

Purely cosmetic. IMO.

Are the vertical trusses at the corners doing anymore than supporting the banners, and being braced by the roof?

I'm interested in the way the chain sling attached to the manual chain fall suspending the PA is being used. The stage provider should have intervened.

Who built this stage? It's not an Apex (I know the designer) because they have banner kits for this type of thing as well as dedicated suspension points for PA.

www.apexstages.com

Hard to tell from the photo but it looks like the DS truss is hung from some hardware store cable winches.

soundman said:

Hard to tell from the photo but it looks like the DS truss is hung from some hardware store cable winches.

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Yeah, that and the RCF PA makes me think I know the sound & light vendor... if it's who I think it is they got the gig on lowest bid and traveled 1100 miles to do the show.

soundman said:

Hard to tell from the photo but it looks like the DS truss is hung from some hardware store cable winches.

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Those are “overhead electric winches”, which you can find for $150 on Amazon from any number of generic China brands. What they’re really intended for though is for helping you work on your car in your garage.

I was almost not going to report them to the municipality but then I tracked those winches down and now I’m preparing a letter to the event producer, cc’ing the municipality and OSHA.

I think I tracked down the manufacturer of the stage. Probably E-1 Machines, but you wouldn’t know they have the skillset to design engineered structures based on the quality of their website. Nonetheless, I have to assume the stage apparatus itself is fairly safe but is being used in a risky manner.

Also...








Side stage:
(Mind you, this event gets set up annually about 2mi off the Gulf Coast, where it’s very common to get a nice breeze from...)

Say no to drugs... and shoddy rigging.

mobile stages take so much time to assemble and disassemble

Mother Nature can strike them pretty quick.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

FussyEater said:

mobile stages take so much time to assemble and disassemble

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If you're not trained correctly, sure.
I deploy 50 a year, this is not the case with me or my crews.
Compared to a conventional 4 or 6 poster they are far faster.
No bracing or counterweight is typically required and I can travel all over the US and Canada with my engineering documents.

RonHebbard said:

Mother Nature can strike them pretty quick.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

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Not funny at all.

Did anything ever come of this, Mike?

it looks like these folks are still in business - 3 city tour planned for 2020 (good luck with that, tho) ... https://www.funkfesttour.com/

Might be interesting to pre-alert the cities they are planning to play so that a careful inspection visit is made during load in.

Contact Funk Fest Tour – [email protected] or 704.414.3811

I ultimately didn't report them. I was slammed with work at the time and didn't get an opportunity to draft a letter. Fortunately there are plenty of photos on FB of the same rig this year, but at this point I would be shocked if that AVL provider survives the next 6 months.

@Ben Stiegler That's a different Funk Fest. Guess nobody has the trademark on it. The AVL provider is separate from the producer in this case. I know they've used that rig with other festivals. OSHA's probably a more effective avenue for this scenario than the municipality.

I'm so sorry but I don't understand a thing about this and can't help you. I'm just a guitarist who plays on these stages)

jupitergod said:

I'm so sorry but I don't understand a thing about this and can't help you. I'm just a guitarist who plays on these stages)

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You should probably bring a helmet with you on the next gig...

To continue my story... Yesterday I hadn't time to post the full comment, so: I'm a guitarist who plays in a small musical group called the Glimpse. We're not very popular but we've played a couple of small concerts near London. The audience kind of likes us and our music and songs are nice. Once we had such a crazy situation related to the stage... We arrived an hour before the performance and saw that part of the stage is still not assembled, we were told that there was a breakdown and they can't do anything. My friend called the company with a quality mobile stage and they brought us and installed the stage within 40 minutes. It was simply impossible.

jupitergod said:

My friend called the company with a quality mobile stage and they brought us and installed the stage within 40 minutes. It was simply impossible.

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That's not even that fast for something like an SL100.
With 3 people, 30 minutes is easy.