I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t use a fly loop when they wire and fly their truss. In a nutshell, a fly loop consists of all the cable that will go from a flown truss to the ground. Say your front truss is going to trim at 30 feet. First run the cable out on the truss and plug it in. Then take each cable from the end of the truss and run the excess parallel to it for 15 feet and loop it back the other way another 15 feet to return it to the end of the truss. This loop of cable will disappear as the truss is flown. From the end of the loop, simply run the excess back to your dimmer area and coil it in a figure eight before plugging it into its proper receptacle. Notice you have now touched each cable once and you are done with it. Because everything is plugged in, you can now turn everything on to see if it works while the truss is floating at head height. Is there a bad lamp? It’s a lot simpler to change when the truss is floating head-high. Got a moving light with a stuck gobo wheel? It’s a one-minute fix when you can stand there and slide the lid off to realign it. There’s no climbing, no need to lower a truss and no cable mess. It’s just common sense. Did I mention that I hate stopping my afternoon focus for someone to change a lamp or replace a moving light?
From “LD-at-Large” by Nook Schoenfeld, PLSN, Nov. 2009
