# Don't touch stuff, it's not yours.



## Toffee (Apr 4, 2007)

Well our ASM for a show a while back was in the booth sitting on the couch with his friend, which he most likely likes. (He is an old ME from a while back) He wants to show her the lights that were designed for the show even though he shouldn't be touching the board since the ME wasn't there and he has no idea about the stuff for this show. Well the hang was huge, basically all our dimmers on our FOH positions, PA Bars, PA Ladders and electrics were all used. We had maybe 20 not used. Well the board op (ME of the show) wasn't there and she likes to work with warm up cues, so the first cue is a 5 minute warm up cue for dimmer checks. Well he bumps it and boom, down goes the theatre power. Bad thing is we were about to start up a saw in the shop. >.>

So our TD comes walking out and looks at us and goes what happened. We all deny it, then we see our old ME. The TD walks away to check out what happened and the master capenter and I look at him. He of course denies it, we only find out later what happened. But our TD wasn't to happy that he had to flip our main breaker.

Just goes to show you, if it's not yours. DON'T TOUCH IT. Also goes to show warm up cues are bad.


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## Footer (Apr 4, 2007)

Warm up cues aren't bad, they are essential, especially if you are working in a theatre that likes to turn the heat down at the end of the night and turn it back up 30 min before house open (....not that I have been there before...). You might also want to look at your power in your theatre. I know that hitting everything up at full causes are rather large inrush, but it should not blow your main breaker. Sounds like to me you have your phases overloaded, or at least one phase overloaded and you need to (or your electricians) spread out the load over each phase equally.


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## koncept (Apr 4, 2007)

i'll have to second footer on that one. i don't think i have done any shows without warm up cues after i learned about their added value. my advice would be to have an electrician come in with a clam on amp meeter and measure the power draw from your dimmer rack on each phase. and then make the necessary adjustments. another thing that you can do is get the info on your dimmer racks backplane (where the dimmers get their power) so that you know what circuits are where and what phases they belong to to help balance them on your end better.


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## What Rigger? (Apr 12, 2007)

There's a great t-shirt that applies to this situation:
"Hi! Get the hell away from my rig."


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## Chris15 (Apr 13, 2007)

Slightly dumb question: Is a warm up cue basically everything to full?


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## soundlight (Apr 13, 2007)

Lots of people define it as different things. When I use one, it's generally a slow cue to about 20 or 30 percent that gets dumped a few minutes later.


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## koncept (Apr 13, 2007)

i do what soundlight does except give my self a light check in there too. so there is time of 60 to take it up to like 75ish depending upon the layout and then walk the stage to check everything, then with an autofollow drop it back down to the 20 or 30ish area as warmups


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## GeneralDoom (Apr 17, 2007)

it seems that reseting breakers before the show is better than the Lighing designer bringing up the stage lights and putting the audience in the dark durring intermission because they don't know the equipment


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## Grog12 (Apr 17, 2007)

I usually use warm up cue's in colder environments, theatres that blast the ac, outdoor theatre etc. Put everything at 5% to warm up the filliments on your lamps so the sudden temp change doesn't blow half the lamps on your rig.


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