It's old, its underused......its a high school theatre... :(
So anyways, our high school has 2 studio spots, and being one of the few students actually dedicated enough to learn how to operate them in a short term, I've run into a few things I've got questions about, and this seems the place to ask.
In terms of equipment we're using an ETC express 125 board, and I don't know about the dimmers (but they're quite old).
Right now what I've been told is that every aspect of the intelligents has been programmed to a channel on the board (ie, Horizontal movement on stage left light is channel 58, Primary gels on stage right are channel 108) and whatever level you put that channel at will change that particular aspect (to make this even easier I've gone and programmed each channel to a submaster). Now this doesn't seem to be exactly the proper way to do things, but it's working so far. So if anyone has suggestions that don't require a whole reprogramming of the board, please let me know.
Now a few specific things;
-One of the lights makes a distinctly loud click when the dimmer is shut off quickly, or when quickly adjusting the shutters or iris. Mechanical problem or normal operation?
-I see mention of an effects wheel (I've got gobos, but not the wheel with "fog" and "glass") throughout the manuals and DMX charts, yet they aren't something on the channel list I was handed. Is this something that may or may not be included in any particular device or did someone just forget to program it to the board?
-At the end of the DMX charts there is a list of control options (display brightness, shutdown, etc) that I also can't seem to control. Would that be on a specific channel as well?
-And finally, I've seen this once already here, but is there any protocol on shutting down once they're not being used anymore? I just bring all the channels to zero and then shut off the breakers and get to my next class. Right? Wrong?
Thanks in advance :)