Professional Wireless Systems Manages Frequency Coordination at BottleRock Napa Valley Festival

When the inaugural BottleRock Napa Valley festival, a celebration of music, comedy, food, and drink in California's legendary Napa Valley, kicked off on May 9, Professional Wireless Systems (PWS), a Masque Sound Company and supplier of supporting wireless systems for live and broadcast events, was on-hand providing frequency coordination for the more than 80 bands and performers at the event, as well as media in attendance.

In its debut year, BottleRock Napa Valley featured a lineup of more than 80 artists, bands, and performers from a variety of genres, including rock, soul/R&B, country, hip-hop, comedy, and more. In addition, more than 30 iconic restaurateurs shared the culinary stage with 40 superstar vintners. Close to 200,000 people attended the extravaganza.

"With five stages and more than 800 frequencies for the week, pre-planning is key in helping to avoid any interference issues, allowing us to react to any potential frequency problems ahead of time," says Jim Van Winkle, general manager, PWS. "As this was the first year for the event, we tried to get as much information as possible ahead of time from the vendor, artists, engineers, and media so that when our team arrived on-site, we were ahead of the game. This way, we kept any potential challenges or issues to a minimum. In addition, as with any event this size, we worked closely with the audio vendor, Delicate Productions."

PWS was brought on to support the festival by Delicate Productions and production manager Chris Sorlie. One of the initial concerns in planning for the event was the close proximity to one of Pacific Gas and Electric Company's (PG&E) power stations from the festival's stages. "We worked closely with George Edwards and Sergey Bailleul at Delicate Productions and we all did our due diligence to ensure that there would be no frequency interference or signal issues associated with the plant."

Four PWS staff members were on-site throughout the five-day celebration. "We stationed a dedicated frequency coordination expert at each of the three stages to mitigate any issues that may have presented themselves. In addition we regularly checked in on the other two stages," adds Van Winkle. "We also used spectrum analyzers during the festival to determine occupied bandwidth and track interference sources, putting them on a safe frequency once we located them. An event of this size is always challenging, but once again, the PWS team did a fantastic job and the show went off as expected."