Carnivals, ovals, pools, courts and road courses
PA, commentary, two-way radios and screens for sporting events — built for sites with no walls, no power and a full day of running.
Indoors, the walls do half the work for you. On a beach or an oval there is nothing to reflect off, nothing to contain the sound, and a sea breeze carrying a good part of it away. Turning up a single speaker louder does not fix it — it just annoys the people standing near it while the far end still cannot hear the call.
Sport also runs long and runs to a program. A carnival or a club day is an early bump-in, eight hours of events, officials who need to be heard over a crowd, and a presentation at the end when everyone is tired and the light is going. And unlike a wedding, there are people spread across the whole site who need to talk to each other all day.
All of it is solvable with the right system design. Most general hire companies do not design it at all — they drop off a speaker.
Athletics and school carnivals. Coverage across an oval, event calls and results that reach the tents at the far end.
Swimming carnivals. The hardest room in sport — hard surfaces, water and a roof. Announcements that survive the reverberation.
Netball, basketball and multi-court complexes. Court-by-court calls without every court hearing every announcement.
Football, cricket and finals days. Ground announcing, walk-on music, sponsor reads and presentations.
Surf life saving carnivals. Arena announcing, marshalling, start and finish, and presentations.
Triathlons, fun runs and road courses. Start line, course points and a finish chute that sounds like something.
Equestrian, motorsport and club grounds. Distributed announcing across large sites, with comms between officials.
The kit changes with the site. These are the six we see most on the Sunshine Coast.
Speakers at the boundary facing in, so the call reaches the far goals and the tents behind them without deafening the canteen queue.
Positions spread along the arena, all on battery, with nothing cabled across the competition area.
Tight, controlled coverage aimed down at the deck rather than across it, because every hard surface in the building is trying to send it back at you.
Zoned so court four hears its own call and court one does not. One announcer, separate destinations.
Independent positions at start, course points and finish, linked wirelessly rather than by kilometres of cable.
Speech-first systems that stay intelligible in a space built for bounce, not for talking.
Loudness is not coverage. A single stack punishes the people near it and still leaves the far end guessing — on a beach, an oval or a course.
An event is not one PA. It is several small systems doing different jobs, kept in step with each other. A surf carnival is drawn here, but an oval, a course or a court complex works the same way.
Every position runs off battery or a quiet generator, with wireless links between them so there are no cables across a competition area. Commentary microphones are chosen for wind rejection, and we carry spares of everything that can fail, because a carnival does not stop while you go back to the van.
The PA is for the crowd. The radios are for your officials — and on most club days they matter more.
Every sporting event has the same problem: the people who need to talk to each other are the furthest apart. Timing at the finish, marshals at the far end, first aid somewhere in the middle, and whoever is running the program trying to hold it together from the tent. Mobile phones are useless for it — one-to-one, slow, and flat by lunchtime.
We hire two-way handsets in fleets, charged, labelled and set to your channels before they leave us. Split them across channels so marshalling chatter does not talk over event control, and hand them out at the morning briefing.
Radios are also the cheapest thing on a quote that makes the biggest difference to how a day feels. Clubs that hire them once tend to keep hiring them.
A radio hire package includes:
Wind, dust, salt and eight hours of sun will find every weakness in a hire kit by about ten in the morning.
Salt air gets into connectors. Sand and dust get into everything else. Direct sun pushes amplifiers into thermal protection right when the crowd is largest. Batteries that tested fine in the workshop discover their limits at hour six.
We plan for all of it — covered and elevated positions, sealed connectors, more battery capacity than the day should need, and gear that gets serviced after an outdoor job rather than thrown back on the shelf. It is unglamorous and it is the difference between a day that runs and a day that stops.
Most clubs and associations run a series rather than a single event. Quoting each one from scratch wastes everybody's time.
If you have a calendar of carnivals or race days across a season, we would rather price the season. It gives you a rate you can put in a budget and give to a committee, and it means the same crew arrive each time already knowing your site, your run sheet and how your officials like to work.
It also means your dates are locked in our calendar early, which matters — the good weekends fill first and we would rather hold them for a club we already work with.
What we need to quote a season:
Almost never, and we do not assume there is. Our carnival systems run on battery, with a quiet generator as backup for long days. If your site does have power we will use it, but nothing depends on it.
Usually you do — clubs generally have someone who knows the events and the names. We provide the microphones, the position and the system, and we will sit with your announcer beforehand so they know how it works. If you do need someone, tell us early and we will see who is available.
As far as you need, within reason. Coverage comes from how many positions we put out rather than how loud one speaker is, so a longer beach means more positions rather than a different approach. Tell us the length of your arena and we will size it.
We will tell you our cancellation terms up front and in writing. Surf events get moved and called off — that is normal and we would rather agree how it is handled before it happens than argue about it afterwards.
Before you need us. Carnival bump-ins are early and we plan to be set up, tested and out of the way before competitors and officials start arriving.
Yes. Public liability cover, plus test-and-tag records and risk assessments where a council or venue asks for them. Tell us what your permit requires and we will send it through.
Send the date, the beach or ground, and roughly how many competitors. We will come back with an itemised quote — and if you have a season of dates, send the lot and we will price it properly.