rec.arts.movies.production.sound

To the Group:
Off and on it has been proposed to put the close mounted antennas on a
compact receiver at angles to the receiver to add some additional
diversity to the system. The idea was that the receiver antennas on a
small unit are too close together and that bending them 45 degrees
left and right would add some polarization diversity. We tried the
experiment both indoors and out with the idea that reflections indoors
would give us random polarization and the idea would work well; lack
of reflections out doors might not give us the improvement since the
signal from the body pack would be primarily vertical.

The criteria was the number of dropouts as the "talent" walked a
defined course three times each with the antennas vertical and then
angled. We did this indoors and out. Indoors was in our plant and
included a lot of through the walls transmission. Outdoors was line of
sight and required some pretty long walks. The talents body blocked
the antenna going out but did not coming back.

After all 12 walks were done, the results were very consistent. The
angled antennas were always worse! We had picked clear frequencies but
we changed them anyway and tried it again since this was not expected.
Same results. Vertical parallel antennas win out solidly against the
V arrangement. Unexpected but there it is.
Best Regards,
Larry Fisher
Lectrosonics