The attached pictures are from a project my team and I worked on at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fl. We were tasked with providing wireless network access (WiFi) to over 10,000 guests at this center. The coverage area was around 1.5 million sq. ft.
Most of the pics are of the ground crew assembling all the sound, lighting, stage and visual gear. My co worker and myself stayed on a 3’ wide catwalk for 2 days. We worked around 18 hours each day. This catwalk was on average about 53’ above the floor and covered the entire area of the floor. We ran a little over 1.5 miles of cable. I forget the total number of APs and network switches we installed. Let’s just say there were several of each.
Being 53’ off of the ground was not a problem. The biggest problems were that we were above the house lights and the air conditioning vents. This left us in the dark and in the heat the entire time we were up there. I will admit that this is not our prettiest job. The mountings are tacky. The cables are everywhere, but we had limited time and all of this material had to be taken down five days later. So no need to make it pretty. Just make it work.
We do similar jobs to this regularly. Provide wireless to city parks. Setup networks, servers and other features at local hospitals and city governments. We even take care of many local mom and pop shops. They don’t all have to be big jobs. I suppose we they appreciated our work. They invited us back to do their Indianapolis convention later this year. We have not decided if we are going to take it.
