I know this thread is old, but
I liked the counterweight system a lot more then the electric system. First off, I was trained on both...but could only use the counterweight so it already my favorite.
And, the electric one we had was annoyingly loud, and the director liked to have several different drops, and the way the theater was built, you had to fly the drops out to move anything on or off.
The control for ours had a lovely bright orange data cord on it, great for tripping people, and keeping wheeled things from passing behind the person use it.
The control system required you to use the "useful" touchscreen (that had very small buttons, IMA) to go from scene to scene.
Because of the lovely cord, the fly person couldn't watch what they were flying (like you would if you were in line with the batten on a counterweight) so we resorted to sitting on a ladder.
It wasn't exactly what I would call quick.
The scenes could have 4 linesets move at once, instead of limited with the number of people.
The linesets didn't know where they physically were at, only how far they had gone from the top so they wouldn't always hit the same spot.
The linesets used RS232 to communicate with the computer, so if the lineset hit its mark, but the computer hadn't gotten to it, the lineset didn't know to stop, so it just kept on going.
The computer did use (feet).(inches) but (feet).(tenth of a foot) so when decided how high something was supposed to be to clear, we had to constantly go through and figure out what it was.
I know some of those things are more building/show specific, but thats my experience with it.
I liked the counterweight system a lot more then the electric system. First off, I was trained on both...but could only use the counterweight so it already my favorite.
And, the electric one we had was annoyingly loud, and the director liked to have several different drops, and the way the theater was built, you had to fly the drops out to move anything on or off.
The control for ours had a lovely bright orange data cord on it, great for tripping people, and keeping wheeled things from passing behind the person use it.
The control system required you to use the "useful" touchscreen (that had very small buttons, IMA) to go from scene to scene.
Because of the lovely cord, the fly person couldn't watch what they were flying (like you would if you were in line with the batten on a counterweight) so we resorted to sitting on a ladder.
It wasn't exactly what I would call quick.
The scenes could have 4 linesets move at once, instead of limited with the number of people.
The linesets didn't know where they physically were at, only how far they had gone from the top so they wouldn't always hit the same spot.
The linesets used RS232 to communicate with the computer, so if the lineset hit its mark, but the computer hadn't gotten to it, the lineset didn't know to stop, so it just kept on going.
The computer did use (feet).(inches) but (feet).(tenth of a foot) so when decided how high something was supposed to be to clear, we had to constantly go through and figure out what it was.
I know some of those things are more building/show specific, but thats my experience with it.
