Philips Selecon help transform the Durban Ice Arena for netball

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The Durban Ice Arena is currently closed for public skating from 16 to 31 May, and has undergone a transformation to host the Brutal Fruit Netball Premier League. Black Coffee, commissioned by Shaun Brickell from Umlilo Brands, an event management, brand activation and technical company, provided the television lighting, a few Philips Selecon Arena and Rama Fresnels providing a lighting solution. Brandon Bunyan, owner of Black Coffee, gives a delightful rendition.

“This is a gig that has turned into an interesting science for us and a nightmare for our client,” said Brandon. “Because it is in an ice rink with a special sports wooden floor covering, there is a major moisture / condensation problem making the play field very slippery. There were so many theories and factors such as: people breathing, the arched concrete roof with the Durban sun, too many doors open with the Durban humidity and near proximity from the ocean, the floor having been in Pretoria for 3 months then sitting in a hot container for a week and needs to acclimatize to the ice rink, the air flow between the ice and the wooden floor is too much or too little, the vertical temperature migration from the ice to the surface of the wooden floor is causing a climatic meniscus on the stratosphere of the primary coating of the floor…………blah blah blah.

A professor of physics was even pulled in for consultation.

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Anyway, we were looking for an LED sports arena flood solution for this job that would not affect the temperature of the Play Field, would be the right flicker rate for HD cameras would save lots of power and would illuminate globe failure and maintenance over the next two weeks of constant use. We could not find a “confident” product in time to test so went the 2k fresnel route.

We beefed up the 2kw Selecon Arena Fresnels stock to 30 fixtures. After focusing, we added a few 1k Selecon Rama Fresnels to fix up dark spots, and at 80% intensity, the camera guys are happy.

Next time, if we have the same height restrictions of 6.8m from the lens, we will use 33 fixtures to cover the 30m / 15m court.

The regulation roof height for Net Ball is 8.3m and we are sitting at 6.8m to the lens so we are looking forward to some spectacular ball strikes on these units and therefore some adventurous between match “high speed technician globe change” displays.

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Now, if we had found and purchased an LED product for this event, the condensation problem would have crippled my client – we are leaving the lights on at 15% overnight which is, as we found out this morning, just enough to keep the floor evenly dry. The branding team are relieved and are frantically doing the decal on the floor before the first match today. Practice happened last night and the players are happy.

We had set the dimmers to 5% pre heat to keep the fixtures and globes warm for the next 2 weeks anyway.

Roy and Kerry Wood from Riggology designed, engineered and installed the 9 rigging points, permanently in the venue.

List of gear:

 

30 x 2kw Selecon Arena Fresnels

6 x 1 kw Selecon Rama Fresnels

3 x Avolites Power Cube

9 x Loadstar 1/4 Ton – 250kgs

3 x 30m Prolyte H30V truss bars

Philips Strand 200 Plus