Water Country, a large waterpark offering attractions that include more than a dozen water slides as well as a 700,000-gallon wave pool (the largest in the region) and more on more than 26 acres in in Portsmouth, NH, recently underwent an audio infrastructure upgrade that includes RF Venue antennas to solidify wireless communications.
Portsmouth-based Williams Communications Services undertook the project, which also includes new One Audio pole-mounted loudspeakers along with new amplifiers and processing to deliver audio that includes announcements, life-safety messaging, paging and music around the facility.
Getting a signal from a comms building to the main building 800 feet away was a particular challenge addressed with a CP Beam circularly polarized antenna mounted 30 feet above ground and connected to a Sennheiser wireless transmitter with a line of sight to a Diversity Fin cross-polarized true-diversity receiving antenna coupled to a Sennheiser receiver. This combination, sold through retailer The Music People, provided the water park with uninterrupted audio throughout the summer season.
“Years ago, they had pipes between the main building and a secondary building where the telephone, music sources, and other technology systems were, and they used to transport those signals over copper,” explains Michael Demmons, vice president of Williams Communications Services. “But over time, the pavement had been dug up several times and the wires were never fully replaced. It was really a situation well-suited for wireless, and the RF Venue antennas were the perfect solution.”
Moving to a wireless setup also helped the venue in another way in eliminating much of the damage potential caused by lightning strikes that would hit the cabling and send surges in both directions, damaging loudspeakers, amplifiers and other electrical equipment. “Lighting strikes would regularly blow up the gear once or twice a year,” Demmons notes. “Now, the infrastructure is much more insulated from that.”
He adds that the approach has proven to work so well that he’s planning on implementing another wireless connection at the water park next year using the same CP Beam and Diversity Fin antenna combination in bringing audio to an area of the campus that had been too challenging to reach via wired loudspeakers. “RF Venue just works,” he concludes. “Totally dependable, no drop-outs.”
