Modern music festivals and outdoor sporting occasions can be huge events. They pose major logistical challenges for their organisers when it comes to setting up and breaking down all the facilities and ensuring the smooth running of the event during the ‘live’ days of the actual festival or sports event.
Good communications are vital during all of these phases and Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) is very much the favoured solution, as it provides full control over the system, while coverage and capacity can be tailored to exactly match the size and location of the event.
Not the least of the organiser’s headaches is ensuring the safety of the general public attending the festival, the contracted workforce and the performers or athletes. Good crowd control is vital, so stewards and security staff need guaranteed, always available, and reliable communications to enable this to happen.
A major music festival can be effectively run using a Hytera DMR XPT (Extended Pseudo Trunking) solution, which can now accommodate eight repeaters to ensure full coverage across the site. A key feature is the ‘all call’, which allows the broadcast of urgent messages to all festival staff.
Hytera RD625 repeaters are often used as they are ideal for hire purposes, due to the size and weight, but rack-mounted RD985 repeaters are also deployed for multi-channel systems.
Very large festivals are now using Hytera DMR Tier III trunking, partly for the additional capacity, but also for the wider range of applications and dispatching functionality that it provides.
A large number of call groups are needed to cover all the job roles at a festival including: the production department; site services; site stewards; security; event liaison team; ticketing; medics, traffic managers; local council staff; and radio channels for the sponsors/partners, of whom there can be up to 20.
It is important to understand what the job roles are and to match them with the right-hand portable radios, headsets, earpieces and accessories to enable everyone to do their job properly.
Major sporting events can have additional challenges as something like a marathon or long-distance cycle race requires radio communications along the whole length of the route. Hytera repeaters can be networked along the route using IP links.
Vehicle-mounted DMR mobile radios may also be required for use around the event, along the race route, or to ensure communications are maintained when transporting top performers or athletes to and from airports, hotels, and venues.
