RF weirdness. EW500 had no available channels, but the EW300 found many.

M

Matt Vivlamore

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Jan 11, 2011
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Southern MD, USA
www.meerkatsound.com
Last night I was setting up the RF rack for tonight’s gig; I need 10 mono mixes. And I am puzzled about something.

On my EW500 handhelds I ran the Easy Set-up/Scan New List and it came up with 0 available channels across all the banks. I did the same thing on the IEMs and I had several dozen available channels.

I used the rig a couple days ago and everything was working a couple days ago without any issues, I did add an AC3 (IEM combiner) and an isolated BNC rack panel this week to clean the rack up.

I swapped cables around and no change. I even tried the antenna on the UA844 without any luck.

My Rack consists of:
(handlhelds)
1x Shure UA844 with ½ wave whips
2x Senn EW500-G3 (Range A – 516-558)
2x Shure SLX (H5 - 518-542)
(IEMs)
1x Senn AC3 with Directional antenna
2x Senn EW300-G3 (Range A – 516-558)
1x Senn AC2 with Directional antenna
4x Senn EW300-G2 (Range B – 626-668)
 
Re: RF weirdness. EW500 had no available channels, but the EW300 found many.

To me it sounds like you were scanning on the wireless mic receiver, with better (non-beltpack) antennas, and seeing more stuff that could count as interference. The IEM beltpacks, having a smaller antenna, did not see as much distant background stuff.
 
Re: RF weirdness. EW500 had no available channels, but the EW300 found many.

Just a shot in the dark, but before you scan for a new list, be sure to select the option to reset the current list.

Also, was your IEM antenna on and transmitting near your wireless mic receiver antennas? Could have been overloading the inputs. Try separating them.
 
Re: RF weirdness. EW500 had no available channels, but the EW300 found many.

Tom Manchester said:
Just a shot in the dark, but before you scan for a new list, be sure to select the option to reset the current list.

Also, was your IEM antenna on and transmitting near your wireless mic receiver antennas? Could have been overloading the inputs. Try separating them.
Click to expand...

Tom, I think you nailed it on the head... I am playing with it more to figure something out. I've been playing with the rack for the last hour and seeing if I could duplicate it; I did and I don't think the AC2, AC3 & UA844 like the little OEM (Sennheiser P/N 522419) 4" antennas.

Last night, I didn't want to pull out the Paddles, Half Wave & BNC cables... which it has taught me something.

Attached is a RF scan of all 4 antennas being the 4" ones.
 

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Re: RF weirdness. EW500 had no available channels, but the EW300 found many.

Alright, I feel more comfortable now when I use the HalfWave whips & A2003UHF paddles. I did the Scan New List on everything and sync'd it all up. Here is my RF Scan, really tall red spikes are my RF assignments.
 

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Re: RF weirdness. EW500 had no available channels, but the EW300 found many.

Matt Vivlamore said:
Last night I was setting up the RF rack for tonight’s gig; I need 10 mono mixes. And I am puzzled about something.

On my EW500 handhelds I ran the Easy Set-up/Scan New List and it came up with 0 available channels across all the banks. I did the same thing on the IEMs and I had several dozen available channels.

I used the rig a couple days ago and everything was working a couple days ago without any issues, I did add an AC3 (IEM combiner) and an isolated BNC rack panel this week to clean the rack up.

I swapped cables around and no change. I even tried the antenna on the UA844 without any luck.

My Rack consists of:
(handlhelds)
1x Shure UA844 with ½ wave whips
2x Senn EW500-G3 (Range A – 516-558)
2x Shure SLX (H5 - 518-542)
(IEMs)
1x Senn AC3 with Directional antenna
2x Senn EW300-G3 (Range A – 516-558)
1x Senn AC2 with Directional antenna
4x Senn EW300-G2 (Range B – 626-668)
Click to expand...

A couple of obersvations.
-On the IEM packs, the squelch setting affects the number of open channels found during a scan. The lower the squelch, the more "picky" it will be=less free channels.
-Having mic and IEM in the same range is generally bad practice, so you really need to make sure you seperate RX and TX antennas. I would say to keep 5 metres of seperation.
 
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