Letters from the Loadout — the FAQ, addressed.

Three weeks is plenty for the work itself. Three days is the minimum for our side — the cable goes on the truck on the morning of, the gear is staged in the bay by the night before. What three weeks gives us is the AHJ walkthrough and the venue’s house electrician on the call sheet, both of which we will not skip. Our advance window is at least ten working days before doors for a venue we haven’t worked, and three days for a venue (Bridgestone, TPAC, Ryman) we have. Send the production manager the link to /advance/; we need stage plot, rider, gauge plan, and load-in window, and the rest is mechanics. Looking forward to it.

28 channels at full intensity is 95.2 A on a single phase if your fixture pack averages 410 W per channel, which is roughly an L-Acoustics audio rack’s worth of draw concentrated on one phase. The TPAC panel can handle that, but only if the circuits are distributed across the three phases rather than landed on the same leg. We did your show — see PRD-2026-055. The reroute took 78 minutes including LOTO, PPE on, the actual circuit moves, and the panel directory updates. If you’re working other venues with similar architecture, the question to ask in advance is which phase each dimmer channel lands on; the answer should be balanced within 15% across all three.

Don’t take the fairground manager’s word for the 200 A — get the utility’s inspector to confirm what’s actually at the meter, and ask the AHJ what permit modifications a 200 A temp drop will need. Two stages plus food trucks plus dressing rooms is more like 400 A peak under coincident load (we use a 0.7 coincidence factor on temporary services), so even if the 200 A is real, you’ll need a second tap or a paralleled gen bank. We carry two DCA-150s and a Cat XQ230 that can back-feed; that’s the configuration we ran at the South Main Street Festival last month. Send the site plan and we can put numbers to it. NEC Article 525 is the governing section; P-06 walks the procedure.

The format we use is in the bound issue at the bay; send a SASE and we’ll mail you a sample. Short answer: one binder per tour, with tabs for advance (the stage plot and rider that came from the production manager), cable manifest (which we generate from the plot), daily log (Megger, GFCI trip-test, phase-rotation, ground-rod readings — one row per day per venue), and a venue-specific tab for any AHJ quirks. The format is patterned on USITT stage management practice and the StudioBinder call-sheet template, with the columns that don’t belong to electrical taken out. After three or four tours you’ll have your own version that fits your hand. Keep your daily log honest; it’s the only document that survives the season.

Yes — that’s a P-06 with a film twist. Two HMI 18K’s pull 60 A each at 208 V single-phase; the Skypanel pack is ~10 A per fixture; base-camp adds another 80 A nominal. Total nameplate is around 240 A coincident; we’d size at 300 A continuous to account for inrush on the HMI ballasts. A single Cat XQ60 covers that comfortably and we can stage one on a graveled pad outside the studio if the property allows the noise. For five days the fuel logistics is one Mansfield delivery on Day 1 and one on Day 4, with quiet hours observed if the studio has neighbors. Send the production plan; we’ll quote.