RF Venue reassures St. Nick’s at Ground Zero reopening
In a moment filled with both sadness and celebration, the re-establishment of Manhattan’s Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church took place on 4 July 2022, with the original structure having been damaged in the 9/11 attacks. St. Nick’s predates the World Trade Center, having been founded in 1916 by Greek immigrants, and was one of the first stops in the US for arrivals from Ellis Island where they would light a candle and give thanks to the seafarers. The new structure features a distinctive transparent dome.
The reopening event would see a procession circumnavigate the new church building three times, each time employing 17 channels of wireless microphones used by clergy and other VIPs to commemorate the event, while operating within one of the densest RF environments, with it being home to dozens of law enforcement facilities, government agencies, media enterprises and more. The stakes were high, and interference was likely, but New York City-based One Way Event Productions knew where to turn: RF Venue. In this case, it selected five RF Venue Diversity Fin Antennas, one 4 ZONE active antenna combiner, and a pair of RF Band-Pass Filters, used along with a Shure Axient wireless microphone system.
“We knew RF was going to be a challenge,” said Miguel Peguero, head of production at One Way Event Productions, noting that a much smaller event on 2 July with fewer microphones had some areas with no coverage, prompting the use of far more microphones and transmitters for the 4 July event. “The procession would be circling the new church building three times outside, with stops along the way during which church leaders, media, and VIPs would make speeches and announcements using wireless microphones. We had 17 transmitters ready to go.”
One Way Event Productions’ audio engineer JP DaLeo used Shure’s Wireless Workbench to coordinate frequencies for the event, but the potential for interference and dropouts remained significant in the RF-heavy environment. And as many event producers do, Peguero called Don Boomer, senior applications engineer at RF Venue, who made some very specific recommendations.
One Way Event Productions included the deployment of five RF Venue Diversity Fin antennas, placed at every corner of the new building and pointing down towards the walking path. These were run into additional RF Venue hardware – a 4 ZONE active antenna combiner, with a pair of RF Band-Pass Filters implemented post combiner. “Everything worked perfectly, with not a single dropout,” he said. “The new church is literally built on top of the headquarters for a major transportation authority, plus T-Mobile’s 5G was being rolled out in the area, so you know the RF was everywhere. But we had zero interference, zero dropouts. We had strong signal going into the receivers. It was an important event for a lot of reasons, and it had to be perfect. Thanks to RF Venue, it was.”
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