# Fly System Warning System



## hslighting (Mar 1, 2012)

In my school the student lighting designers are in charge of our fly system, assigning another student as the Fly Master. For our winter production we had to fly in a large projection screen for one scene, and used the safety procedures used during flying-based shows under the old lighting designer. Under the current system, in the case of a runaway during the show, the fly master would call a "Code Red" on Clear-Com, and the SM would flip on Red-Gelled worklights on our 1st and 2nd electrics while the LD turns off all other stage lights. This would alert the actors to follow the evacuation procedures outlined in a briefing "Run like Hell" 
But I found several problems with the setup. 1. The LD and SM would not have enough time to do these procedures before the batten comes crashing down
2. The 4 work lights supply a dim source of light to allow for safe navigation off the stage
We are very safe when flying, The Fly Master and the ALD (with full view of the stage from the FOH booth) are always on a com channel with only the two of them and have a system of calls to make sure the stage is clear before the batten is even unlocked, but we must be prepared for the worst and i do not believe the current system is effective. Keep in mind, being a public HS we have a limited budget, but does anyone have any suggestions?


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## gafftapegreenia (Mar 1, 2012)

Honestly if a runaway starts the traditional method is to yell "HEADS" as loudly as possible in a tone of voice that conveys the imminent danger. 

Now, a safe fly system should be in proper balance long before a show starts. If the system is properly balance, that is, the weight on the arbor is equal to the weight on the batten, a runaway will not happen. Just unlocking a lineset should not send a batten on a runaway. 

If you are flying such potentially dangerous out of weight battens during a show there are bigger problems than wether or not a red light system is effective.


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## hslighting (Mar 1, 2012)

everything is balanced during the load in with a parent who is a rigger and the stage cleared but being a high school theatre the plan was created as a worst case scenario just in case there is any sort of error, during rehearsals and load ins the customary "caution on stage, lineset blah flying in" is always used, followed by by a "thank you " response and thankfully the heads call has never been used. I was just wondering what sort of system should be used during the actual performance, just HEADS or a more complex system


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## Footer (Mar 1, 2012)

gafftapegreenia said:


> Honestly if a runaway starts the traditional method is to yell "HEADS" as loudly as possible in a tone of voice that conveys the imminent danger.
> 
> Now, a safe fly system should be in proper balance long before a show starts. If the system is properly balance, that is, the weight on the arbor is equal to the weight on the batten, a runaway will not happen. Just unlocking a lineset should not send a batten on a runaway.
> 
> If you are flying such potentially dangerous out of weight battens during a show there are bigger problems than wether or not a red light system is effective.



Agreed. Here is what you do in case of a run-away during the show: not have one. In a true run-away, the arbor and the piece move fast enough that the flyman usually does not have enough time to yell heads, let alone get on com. Along with that, if you have a run-away lineset mid show you have suffered some sort of catastrophic failure onstage and all bets are off at that time. I could not imagine telling a cast "if you see this light come on, get off stage because something is going to probably fall on your head and kill you". The fact that you have discussed this at all and have such an involved plan in place is actually kind of disturbing. Now, when you are hanging scenery and such when out of weight linesets are the norm, its one thing to have a plan, but this situation should never occur during a show with talent onstage. 

Finally, the last thing you want to do if something goes seriously wrong is plunge the stage into darkness. If something goes wrong, worklights go on and main rag comes in. The situation is dealt with and if the show can continue it does.


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## hslighting (Mar 1, 2012)

Thanks for your quick response, thats the kind of thing i was thinking


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## Morte615 (Mar 1, 2012)

It's good that you have an emergency system in place even if it's for an unlikely event. I like the fact that you have a light based system so that others who are not on headset can see that something is wrong and head for cover.
I would recommend for simplicity and to make everything go faster would be to rig an E-Stop on both stage left and stage right. This E-Stop will do everything that you stated above, it will activate the work lights, douse the other lights, and potentially set off an audible alarm to make sure everyone knows that something went wrong. And if you are on a motorized fly then it can cut power to the motor's just in case.
Of course the 2 people on the E-Stop can then get on the Comms and notify the SM and director what happened and then they can get on and restore order. The nice thing about this is you don't have to worry about 3 or 4 different peoples reaction time as long as 1 person sees something happening and hits the E-Stop then everything happens instantly (or as instant as you get with electronics.)
Of course this system should be tested frequently. I suggest whenever you test your emergency lighting you test this system also. It is fairly inexpensive and any licensed electrician can install and should not take more than a day or two (depending on what type of cable runs are needed) Your dimmer system may already have an emergency system in place, I know that ETC's Sensor, Smart Pack, and DDR racks do.
I use similar systems for my Haunted Houses in case something goes wrong (or even just to open and close the house) the E-Stop is hit; all music stops, show lights go off, work lights come on. And the staff know what to do from training.

To comment to the posts above mine. Being ready and having systems in place for any and all types of emergencies is NEVER a bad thing. Yes the more unlikely events may be thought of and then set aside but by sharing an emergency plan for any and all items is ALWAYS a good idea.


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## MNicolai (Mar 1, 2012)

Gaff is right. The presence of any kind of super-alert system is unnecessary and ineffective.

It's not crazy to have a response plan in place -- that is, a procedure everyone knows for how different kind of emergencies are dealt with on stage. Chances are next to calling 911, those plans are above your pay grade. That's more the responsibility of a facility supervisor. Schools have a bad habit though of treating their theatres as classrooms, which is why there are tornado response plans that send audiences of 800 to the dressing rooms. The plans made were made for groups of 20 and didn't take the intricacies of a theatre's operations into consideration.

The greatest problem with your red light system though? If you've got a runaway, by the time anyone utters the words "Code Red" -- even the flyman, whatever's going to happen will have already happened. Not to mention only 3 of the 500 people in the room will know what it means.

Anything shouted should be one syllable. "HEADS" is standard but in the heat of the moment whatever loud obscenity that happens to come out of the flyman/loader/rigger's mouth will be equally effective.


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## MrsFooter (Mar 1, 2012)

Just out of curiosity, are you prepared for something like this, too?

Tap Tragedy


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## hslighting (Mar 1, 2012)

with our budget we would be lucky to own enough equipment to inflict that kind of damage.
thanks for the input guys, I now know that HEADS should be the most immediate warning but a new system to be turned as soon as possible like morte's E-stop idea would also be good since this is a school environment with many students working backstage and the initial heads call may not be enough to warn everyone working throughout the stage


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## Les (Mar 1, 2012)

I guess the irony to me is that the red light system is supposed to be sort of a discreet way of letting the actors know what's going on with the audience being none the wiser? But when everyone runs off stage and a batten comes crashing down, I think the cats out of the bag. I agree that "HEADS!!!" yelled directly by the flyman will be the most effective. In the event of a runaway, you will have only a couple of seconds between the point when the flyman realizes there is a problem, and whatever is going to happened has already happened. Honestly, even yelling "heads" may not give enough time, let alone hitting an e-stop button and/or following a chain of command. That in and of itself is 3 seconds. I know that not even considering the amount of time it takes for the message to get to the red lights, it would take me personally a couple of seconds to process what to do when I see the red lights turn on. Your actors will see it and probably think "ok?? Oh yeah, evacuaSPLAT!"


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## BGW (Mar 1, 2012)

Okay, here's a stupid question. Folding backstops (basketball nets) in most gyms have what is essentially an autobelay to slow the rate of descent should the electric winch fail. Couldn't those devices be fitted to battens to catch them in a worst-case-scenario situation? I know they might not be suitable for battens that need to flown very quickly, but wouldn't it make sense to have devices like that on at least the electrics?

I'm also having trouble understanding the whole e-stop idea. How on earth is that going to be effective? Whatever has broken loose will have already crashed down onto the stage before people can even remember where the buttons are. The only use I can think of for e-stops backstage (besides for _motorized_ battens) would be to kill the central dimming power if someone were being electrocuted. That I could see the need for. There's always the possibility of someone coming into contact with a frayed cable and people not knowing how to shut of the power.


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## josh88 (Mar 1, 2012)

The problem with an e stop on stage for something like that is that anybody could trip it and override all of your control at any time, granted in that scenario it's good, but high school students tend to be drawn to big red buttons. On top of that by the time someone who knew what was happening could get to it and hit it they could have just as quickly probably reached a switch for work lights. 

I have to agree with gaff that the threat of a runaway during a show shouldn't even cross minds, yes safety is good and plans are good but preventative safety and proper balancing and handling of lines shouldn't allow that to become an option. Yes you should know what to do and procedures for a runaway but with proper training that level of danger just shouldn't happen. In any type of serious emergency you always want as much light as possible.


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk


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## Footer (Mar 1, 2012)

BGW said:


> Okay, here's a stupid question. Folding backstops (basketball nets) in most gyms have what is essentially an autobelay to slow the rate of descent should the electric winch fail. Couldn't those devices be fitted to battens to catch them in a worst-case-scenario situation? I know they might not be suitable for battens that need to flown very quickly, but wouldn't it make sense to have devices like that on at least the electrics?



99% of runaways occur when the batten is in at the deck and the arbor is at the loading rail. In normal operation for a batten to come screaming into the deck from the grid either someone unloaded an arbor at the operating rail or there was a catastrophic failure. The thing you are refering to is to keep the hoop from slamming to the ground if the single point of failure... fails. Battens have at least 5 lift lines therefore should be able to recover from one cable breaking. 

Added to this, the only safety system that is pretty standard across most theatres is a rope that you can cut to release a fire curtain/wall. I have never seen an e-stop system that turns on worklights, starts an alarm, mutes the PA, and all that gack installed in a theatre. I have put in e-stop systems for automation but nothing beyond that. I know there are shows (Cirque rings a bell) that has systems like this in place but it is way overkill for your day to day theatre.


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## Clifford (Mar 1, 2012)

I'm going to second not having big red buttons in a high school theatre. Generally, the better students will be mature enough to not touch it, but there are absolutely going to be times when you're not in control of the building. Other staff and/or students will be in there without proper technical supervision, and someone is going to be compelled to hit the big red button. 

More times than not, when I come into the theatre when others have been in the building, the e-stop button on the winch control panel has been pressed. They weren't using the winches, they don't even have the key to activate the panel; they probably weren't even doing any tech work. But naturally they had to hit the big red button. In the same theatre, the pull rings for the fire curtain are big, red and mounted on a big, red plate. Despite being clearly labelled, we had a freshman pull one and the curtain came in (to everyone but him) unexpectedly.

Like everyone has said already, it won't be helpful in the situation it's designed for (and it might even create more danger). And in every other situation when it gets activated by a curious freshman, it will be annoying, a delay and potentially hazardous for anyone working in the building.


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## BGW (Mar 1, 2012)

Footer said:


> 99% of runaways occur when the batten is in at the deck and the arbor is at the loading rail. In normal operation for a batten to come screaming into the deck from the grid either someone unloaded an arbor at the operating rail or there was a catastrophic failure. The thing you are refering to is to keep the hoop from slamming to the ground if the single point of failure... fails. Battens have at least 5 lift lines therefore should be able to recover from one cable breaking.



Okay, so you're saying most runaways are from just a few feet above the stage. I'm sorry, I don't know much about counterweight systems. We just have manual dead-haul winches. Wouldn't it be hard to have a runaway if the arbor and batten were properly balanced?


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## urban79 (Mar 1, 2012)

If they are balanced is the big issue here. However if you are removing scenery, soft goods, fixtures, etc, without removing weight, the arbor is high in the air, and suddenly much heavier than what's on the batten. Batten flies up, arbor crashes down, often hitting something else at the top or bottom.

Now, if you don't have a loading rail - every school in northern NY that I've been in - you have the possibility of the opposite happening...

Chris


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## BGW (Mar 1, 2012)

Ahh, I see. So the arbor is the thing to watch out for (not that you should ignore the soaring batten!). I was mostly thinking of autobelays in terms of our old winches. Some of the worm gears seem mighty loose, and if one were to let go....big trouble.


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## josh88 (Mar 1, 2012)

BGW said:


> Okay, so you're saying most runaways are from just a few feet above the stage. I'm sorry, I don't know much about counterweight systems. We just have manual dead-haul winches. Wouldn't it be hard to have a runaway if the arbor and batten were properly balanced?



what footer is saying that a majority of the time you have a full runaway when all of the weight that is on the arbor is up in the air at the top near the loading rail and the batten is at the floor, yes the batten is close to the floor, but presuming you've emptied the batten of weight and not the arbor you've got a whole lot of extra weight pulling towards the ground now, meaning it will come crashing from the ceiling to the floor and the batten will be going up to the grid. The point was that it doesn't often happen the opposite way, with the arbor already near the floor so that it's the batten coming in instead.

generally speaking you are correct that it is hard to have a runaway if they are balanced, that was what footer meant by a catastrophic failure. If they are balanced and nobody changes that weight something would have to fail, something that significantly and quickly alters the weight on one side of the system or the other.


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## urban79 (Mar 1, 2012)

Yeah, and for an example of what it can end up doing:

Runaway

I put this picture up (thanks Footer!) on the wall by the fly rail, just as a gentle reminder of what can happen if we're careless...


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## Footer (Mar 1, 2012)

josh88 said:


> what footer is saying that a majority of the time you have a full runaway when all of the weight that is on the arbor is up in the air at the top near the loading rail and the batten is at the floor, yes the batten is close to the floor, but presuming you've emptied the batten of weight and not the arbor you've got a whole lot of extra weight pulling towards the ground now, meaning it will come crashing from the ceiling to the floor and the batten will be going up to the grid. The point was that it doesn't often happen the opposite way, with the arbor already near the floor so that it's the batten coming in instead.
> 
> generally speaking you are correct that it is hard to have a runaway if they are balanced, that was what footer meant by a catastrophic failure. If they are balanced and nobody changes that weight something would have to fail, something that significantly and quickly alters the weight on one side of the system or the other.



To add to that, when the line runs, the pipe slams into the grid after the arbor breaks though the bottom of the rail. When it does that it can break sprinkler pipes and can possibly break lift lines sending the pipe back to the deck. That is what happened here: http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/...cancelled-iowa-due-damage-runaway-batten.html


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## gafftapegreenia (Mar 1, 2012)

I didn't say that a safety plan was a bad idea, just that the Code Red system was ineffective and convoluted. As someone who HAS experienced a run away, there is little enough time to shout "HEADS" before its all over. (And let me tell you, you do NOT want to see a run away. Seeing a brick fly past someone's head just narrowly missing them will shake you to the core. Do everything you can to prevent runaways.) Being attentive to ones environment, such that you say, hear the screaming of the lift lines as the batten starts coming in, is just as effective as yelling "HEADS".

I do fully support a show emergency plan stating that all the lights come up, the curtain comes in, and whatever other unique circumstances your theatre may demand as suggested by the others. 

Now what can make runaways even more fun is when the arbor crashes and bricks fall off of it, in this situation the runaway lineset can then go back in the opposite direction. 

And WHY ON GODS GREEN EARTH has a school ever been built without a loading rail? I've seen, and worked in, schools that only have a lock rail. I will NEVER understand it. Sure its cheaper to build but is it really that cost effective once one considers all the pain and potential for disaster that exists from operating a system without a loading rail? I was lucky enough to go to a school that had a mid rail and loading rail and even not having a mid rail feels like a bad idea. 

Yet they just keep building schools without loading rails.


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## MNicolai (Mar 1, 2012)

The scary thing with counterweight systems is that you can get a domino effect of problems. Let's say you've hung a 250lb loudspeaker array from a batten and you've done it via one length of chain between the loudspeakers and the batten. Let's say the speaker stack falls because of a bad link in the chain or an undersized shackle. Here's what happens:


> Step 1: Initial Catastrophic Failure -- the shackle fails, the loudspeaker array crashes to the floor.
> 
> Step 2: Newton's 3rd Law -- the arbor now weighs 250lbs more than the load on the batten, arbor comes crashing in and the batten goes shooting upward.
> 
> Step 3: When the batten hits the grid, or when the arbor hits the floor, the two separate from each other because of damaged lift lines and the pipe comes crashing to the floor.




The opposite type of failure is possible which is where the batten is suddenly too heavy for the arbor. Let's say you've got something heavy hung from a batten and it's all the way at the grid. While it's at the grid, some putz starts taking bricks off of the arbor because they thought they were told to empty Line #7 instead of Line #17. They have really good rope locks, so they get 200lbs of bricks off before the rope starts to slip through the rope locks and the realize their error.


> Step 1: Putz removes bricks from wrong arbor making the arbor 200lbs lighter than the arbor. The rope slips through the locks and the batten comes crashing toward the floor while the batten goes upward.
> 
> Step 2: The arbor hits its upper limits with A LOT of force and the screws at the top of the weight stack weren't tightened down so while the arbor stops moving, bricks are propelled upward from the arbor, leave the arbor, and start showering downward to the stage floor.
> 
> ...


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